Fiend

Baltimore director Don Dohler made a number of interesting very low budget horror and sci-fi features back in the day, probably the best of which was the highly entertaining The Alien Factor (1978). His films always at least attempted to make the most of the meagre production values at their disposal. Fiend is another such film and one which does some decent things on a shoe-string budget. This one is about a strange entity which reanimates a corpse, who then moves into a suburban neighbourhood and promptly begins a campaign of serial murder. This fiend hides under the guise of a music teacher.

The acting is basic and the make-up and effects work are of a cheap standard, although I did quite enjoy the animated red spectre which creates the undead fiend. But, as in other Dohler films, there is an unmistakable earnestness to proceedings and it always feels like he at least makes an effort to try things irrespective of his tiny budget. Like his other films, the Baltimore setting adds something different too, with lots of outdoor shooting and local flavour. As a horror film, it has its moments such as the closing scenes which carried at least a little bit of threat I thought. It's a film which should appeal to fans of this director and those who appreciate low budget horrors from the period. It's hardly a lost classic or anything like that but like other Dohler movies it does have a certain charm and honest endeavour.

OK, so I have a soft spot for low budget indie movies with typical 70's effects.

Alien Factor, the director's first movie, seemed to me to have one major problem: It was much bigger than its budget. The story had too much to accomplish. It seems to me that with Fiend writer/director, Don Dohler realized that a "smaller" movie would be better suited to his resources.

The script is pure genius at staying within its means. The main cast and locations are kept simple, the F/X aren't stupendous but they do the job and the storyline is out there enough to keep it interesting.

If you like movies with heart that just want to entertain you for 90 minutes or so, FIEND may be worth a watch. It's certainly worth having on your online video rental list or picking up on the cheap at a convention.

If you're looking for tons of gore and naked women, this one's not for you. In fact, big scares aren't really present either, but it did illicit a certain nostalgic feeling for me.

Despite his reputation of being one of the worst horror directors that ever lived, I personally always felt a strange respect and admiration towards good old Don Dohler. Both "Nightbeast" and "The Galaxy Invader" qualify as terrifically cheesy entertainment (if you fancy low-budget exploitation cinema, of course) and I even daresay this "Fiend" is his absolute finest achievement. Sure, "Fiend" is a slow-paced film with a total lack of logic or explanation, but simultaneously it's a truly spirited film with likable performances, better-than-average effects and (unintentionally?) clever undertones. The movie opens with a written definition of what exactly is a fiend and immediately after we witness how a demoniacally possessed reddish cloud enters a grave on a forsaken cemetery, possesses the corpse of a recently deceased music tutor and causes the body to emerge. Where did the evil cloud come from? Don't know… Why did it enter that grave specifically? Who cares…? What purpose will the walking and continuously rotting fiend now fulfill? Why even bother to contemplate about that? The fiend, Eric Longfellow, settles himself in a seemingly quiet Baltimore suburb but, unfortunately, he has one little problem to take into account. His body decays over and over again, so he frequently needs to recharge his vital batteries by strangling innocent victims – preferably young women – he picks up from the streets. His neighbor with too much free time on his hands suspects Longfellow to be involved in the unsolved murder spree and starts his own private investigation. "Fiend" is often too slow and tedious, but the delightfully cheese and clumsily shot murder sequences compensate for a lot! Whenever Longfellow strangles a new victim, his face and hands bath in a funky red glow and once or twice you even notice how his decomposing face revitalizes itself, which was really well-done. Unintentionally or not, "Fiend" also works as a parody on the typical life and relations in suburbs. The neighbors are noisy and suspicious towards newcomers and, at the same time, Longfellow himself wondrously depicts the prototypical social outcast. Every neighborhood has one like that, the strange guy your mom warns you not to go near or the bastard that never returns the ball when it accidentally falls in his garden. Don Leifert, who starred in practically all of Dohler's movies, is simply terrific as the emotionless corpse. I read in an article that Leifert was going through a rough personal period and struggled with an alcohol addiction at the time of shooting. Well, this is perhaps the only time that depressions and the effects of alcohol abuse contribute something good to someone's acting career. My advice would be to disregard the low rating, skip reading the bashing reviews and forget everything you heard about Don Dohler as a director. This film is a lot of fun too watch, Dohler's direction is actually quite steady and the script contains a handful of dared twists (child's death, for example) and a shocking finale. "Fiend" is a genuine smörgåsbord for experienced B-movie/cinematic trash fanatics.

Thanks to a very good performance by Don Leifert FIEND comes very close to being a good movie. Goodness knows it's at least watchable.

Dohler shot in 16mm. Watching this, I kept thinking that if he were working today with digital video he might have the luxury of more retakes, more flexibility with the camera, and this might have given him the opportunity to make this into the movie Dohler saw in his head.

The premise is great. A corpse is reanimated by a mysterious force, rises from the grave, and heads not for London or a castle in Transylvania but a Wonder Bread suburb in Maryland.

The freshly risen corpse takes on the name Mr. Longfellow and opens a music academy in his home. The neighbors find him strange and reclusive, but at first he doesn't seem menacing. It seems strange that I don't remember anyone in the film playing a musical instrument, but oh well.

What the neighbors don't know is that on a regular basis Mr. Longfellow has to go out and kill someone, wrapping his hands around their necks and draining their life essence. When he does this he glows red as he feeds on the innocent victims. He's not a vampire, at least not a traditional one: most of his attacks are in daylight. In the back of my mind there's the thought that filming in daylight is cheaper and faster than setting up lighting, but I'll let that slide.

He needs this life force to continue to live. He looks to be in his late thirties, but when his life force runs low he looks like a man of about seventy and if he goes too long between feeding he looks like the rotting corpse he is.

His next door neighbors are a young couple named Gary and Marsha. How nice a person is Marsha? She leads the local Scout troop. Although they don't have any children (there are a couple of oblique references to children, but we don't ever see them) she's a stay at home housewife content to clean house and cook like a good Stepford wife. If she's ever read THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, she never shows it.

With the passage of time they begin to suspect that Mr. Longfellow isn't as harmless as he'd like people to think. Then one afternoon, in the woods right behind their house....

Sure, this idea has been used before. It goes back to the Alfred Hitchcock/Thornton Wilder masterpiece SHADOW OF A DOUBT in which a girl in a small town in California comes to suspect that her much loved uncle is actually a cold blooded murderer. And I suspect that the circle at the end of the dead end street is actually Dohler's own neighborhood. But it's an effective use of setting.

The fatal flaw of this movie is the same one that affects so many ultra low budget ones. We have footage of people talking, then the fiend goes out and kills someone, then people talk some more.

If you use the standards of community theatre, these are good performances. Don Leifert makes a nice bad guy. I watched FIEND right after ALIEN FACTOR in which he plays the hero, and there is a clear difference between the two characterizations.

Dohler's direction is more assured here than in ALIEN FACTOR. I guess he learned on the job. He understands the basic structure of film (establishing shot, medium shot, closeup, reaction, etc.) well enough that the story in both films is told coherently. Here he really tries to go a little farther in adding some depth to the characters.

The movie makes extensive use of children, including Dohler's son in a key role. Somehow I don't think that there were the usual complications of child welfare workers and limited hours. Most if not all of the actors probably got pizza instead of a paycheck.

The thing of it is, though, great performances are a collaboration between a great writer, a strong director, and the actor. It's not a coincidence that Robert DeNiro's best performances have been under Martin Scorsese's direction. Look at the number of times Tom Hanks has worked with Spielberg. Adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams brought out something in Elizabeth Taylor that wasn't there in many of her other films.

And if Dohler had been given the opportunity to tighten up the script (ideally under the guidance of William Goldman, the ultimate unsung script doctor) FIEND could have been a really engrossing little movie.

A big budget doesn't guarantee anything. Look at the expensive flops that Hollywood squeezes out every year. ISHTAR, anyone? How about HEAVEN'S GATE? Star salaries don't guarantee results. Julia Roberts can get $20 million per film, but she still has a limited range and still isn't all that good an actress.

It would be nice if the people who made FIEND had been given a chance to go on and work on bigger projects. But watching the outtakes makes it clear that they had a lot of fun doing this. Since I got this from Netflix I didn't pay a lot to see it; if I'd paid even matinée prices at the movies, though, I'd have been royally ticked.

Parents' note: Nothing that would really disturb children. The violence is more suggested than shown. There are some situations where children are in peril, but there aren't any disturbing images. No nudity. No sex. No cursing. No graphic violence. This would probably have gotten a PG reason because it is about a serial killer, but it doesn't stray too far from G territory.

FIEND is awful. It's hilarious. It's about a dead guy who strangles people and takes their lifeforce away from them in order to replenish himself with blah, blah, blah. Who cares about plot? This cheese ball is good for only one thing. Ridiculing it. Dig the scene where the woman gives her friend a ride home and conveniently drops her off a mile away from her house. Another priceless piece of entertainment from Prism Pictures.