Hellmaster

This movie has some great scenes. The story is not very good, and the movie does not flow very well, but thanks to the miracle of fast forward, you can enjoy all the fun scenes and make up your own story.

David Emge of 1978's Dawn of the Dead is one of the good guys. John Saxon, who had a long and distinguished acting career is the evil villain, mad doctor. He invented a serum injected in the base of a victim's neck, that steals their souls. It also turns them into evil zombies of a sort.

Mama Jones is the evil nun, played by Ron Asheton of Iggy Pop and the Stooges fame. The guy with all the scars on his face is played by Eric Kingston. He had a very short career, but he does a really good job as a psychotic killer in this movie. Neil Savides plays a creepy little zombie boy, and he is excellent and super-creepy. There are a couple of other satanic zombies in the cast, and they all do a pretty good job of being creepy and scary.

Robert Dole plays the good professor who is trying to stop John Saxon. Emge, Dole, and a couple of students (Amy Raasch and John Croteau) are all trying to stop the satanic rights, but all of the good characters have issues with each other, and are not fighting together. That is one of the flaws that makes this movie more choppy and confusing than it had to be.

One bright spot is Dave Dixon, the famous Detroit DJ who also became a famous Night Owl movie host in Miami, makes a cameo here as the radio announcer.

You could say "Hellmaster" is one of those forgotten, daft on-the-cheap b-horror films, which gains ones interest with cult actors like David "Flyboy" Emge from the original "Dawn of the Dead" and the always suave John Saxon. The premise sounds like it can be fun, but you don't expect a good film. You just hoped to be entertained. It does that… well not at all times. What starts off rather interesting and ghastly (as I was thinking it's like something out of Clive Barker's mind), despite its randomly crude handling soon it becomes a boring muddle of aimless occurrences, a real lack of exposition shows from its clumsy script and fragmented editing only confuses even more. Then tack on its preachy religious subtext. The drearily hellish activity takes place on a campus with a terrible history, as Saxon plays the demented professor Jones who tests out a drug on the homeless which genetically disfigures them turning each homicidal as they follow him back to his university in their bus of doom. They serve him, as his known as Papa (???) to them. Waiting for him is a reporter (Emge), who did the story on him that unmasked the horrific experiments he was doing on the students on the campus in the past. Now Dr. Jones is back, he plans to experiment again on a new lot of students while his army simply loiter around injecting themselves or having some fun with a use of sickle but Jones might have met his match as one of the co-eds has psychic abilities. It's completely nonsensical and choppy (Jones has projectile powers?), but where it stands out is its competent use of make-up effects and there's some creativity within some sequences. I liked the campus setting, where the director tried to install Gothic atmospherics with his use of neon lighting or at times a lack of it amongst dark, shadowy corridors. Does it work? Not all the time, but some attempts have effective visuals. Jolts are cheaply done. Performances are mainly lousy and forgettable. Saxon seems to be sleepwalking through it, Emge looks all lost and Amy Raasch is capable enough as the heroine. While it seems to cop a real shellacking, this quickly made production has few, if clunky thrills.

"They're coming."

It's a fun film. Good story, good gore. John Saxon is great. It really captures the horror of the early 90's in my opinion. The antagonist characters are quite creative. I was surprised at how much I liked it. My wife even watched parts and had input. She doesn't watch horror. I also really liked the score. It's well done.

1969- "The Nietzche Experiment;" a US government scientific experiment has created a superman drug to induce telepathic abilities. The problem is it's headed over by a mad doctor (John Saxon) who's not above trying to cover up the grotesque mutations that ensue.

"20 Years Later," Saxon is still at work with the chemical, and four surviving mutants (his "children") attack and kill coeds at The Kant Institute of Technology. A reporter and others set out to stop the madness.

The main problems here are that most of the violence is offscreen (the best FX are saved for the ghouls), the film is overpopulated by boring college kid characters (most of whom can't act) and the script stinks (and is often downright senseless). The direction is flat and uninteresting aside from some minor Dario Argento-inspired sets and basic lighting tricks, which somehow fail to impress in this context. Still it's entertaining to see David (DAWN OF THE DEAD) Emge in a rare appearance and Saxon does what he can with his limited screen time. Aside from those two, the film is entirely forgettable.

Score: 3 out of 10

I apologise in advance if this comment isn't very enlightening, but after watching the DVD, reading the blurb on the back of the box, and checking out what others have to say, I still don't know what Hellmaster is really about. Terrible editing, a confusing script, and dark cinematography, plus a plot that is almost impossible to fathom, all go to make this one a bit of a head scratcher.

I understand that the great John Saxon is some kind of scientist who has developed a drug that he tests on homeless people, and that David Emge (Flyboy from Romero's Dawn of the Dead) is trying to stop him; I can see that a bunch of students are being offed by Saxon's mutated guinea pigs (who have silly names like Joey Monkey Boy and Bobby Razor Face), but why they are doing so escapes me. Beyond that, though, I haven't a clue.

Why are the mutants all disfigured in different ways? Where did the killer nun come from? Who painted that big spiral on the wall behind John Saxon? How did they find such a dreadful actress to play the little girl (she's all grown up by now, so I don't feel too bad criticising her performance)? These are just a few of the questions you'll find yourself asking about this execrable excuse for a horror film.

Oh well, at least there are some silly gore effects, and hottie Amy Raasch, who reminds me a bit of a young Jennifer Connelly, gets stripped down to her undies (the whole gubbins, sussies and all) and then takes off her bra to flash her thruppennies!