Nightmare Weekend

That's a snippet of choice dialogue delivered by the evil, ballbusting lady assistant of a famous scientist to her prim maid just before she lures three incredibly dumb college girls to a mansion for behavior modification experiments. Meanwhile, at the local bar, people drink and dance to lame 80s rock songs. A biker punk has sex with a cycle slut on a pinball table in front of a crowd of people, then tries to rape the scientist's virginal daughter Jessica (Debra Hunter), who is in love with another biker (Dale Midkiff, from PET SEMATARY), who, in turn, is in cohorts with the assistant! Back at the house, the sorority bimbos swim, shower, change clothes and have sex with men from the bar. A small silver ball (part of the experiment) flies into victims mouths and turns them into drooling, killer zombies!

If that isn't enough to entertain you, there's a hilarious theme song ("Nightmare Fantasy"), roller skating, some serious daisy dukes and a psychic hand puppet (!?) that warns "DANGER! DANGER!" just like the LOST IN SPACE robot and recommends hitchhiking as one of the best ways to pick up men!

This filmed-in-Florida mess is so mind-numbingly awful that multiple viewings are recommended to soak it all in. And, hey isn't that NYPD Blue's Detective Jill Kirkendall turned CNN newscaster Andrea Thompson as one of oft-nude bimbos? Sure is! Supposedly this was started in 1982 and new footage was added later for the video release in 1985.

Score: 1 out of 10 (and I mean that in a good way!)

There are no words to explain how bad NIGHTMARE WEEKEND is. It simply defies description. Something about a computer that can change personal objects into silver balls that enter the victims' mouth, which kills them or turns them into zombies. The whole thing is so wonky that it's stunning. There's also a girl with personal computer in her room and the computer talks via a hand puppet!!!!!!!! I'm not making this stuff up. The computer also controls things like cars, even though there's nothing linking the computer with the vehicle.

The "film" is total trash. Surreal bad trash. Spectacularly, one-of-a-kind bad trash. There's a lot of sex scenes thrown here and there, which aren't very hot or erotic. There's even one scene where a woman seemingly makes love or wants to French kiss a tarantula, which had me rolling on the floor.

Definitely one of the worst movies ever made. Up there with the equally wretched direct-to-home video BOARDINGHOUSE, or BOOGEYMAN II (both NIGHTMARE WEEKEND and BOOGEYMAN II have scenes with a killer toothbrush!). At least it's fun to watch it and try to make sense of whatever is going on.

I happen to be the director's nephew. It's taken me years to get my hands on a copy of this film and I can confirm that it is indeed one of the worst movies of all time. My uncle doesn't even have a copy of it anymore (I asked). I'm looking forward to bringing him a copy.

Currently the film's average rating is 1.9/10. As far as I can tell, that should put it somewhere in the mid-30s in the IMDb "bottom 100," however with only 206 votes, it hasn't yet placed.

It's sad that the film doesn't even get the respect of a bottom 100 title.

Anyhow, I'm giving copies of the movie to family members this year for holiday gifts. Best/Worst gift ever?

Nightmare Weekend (1986)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

I've seen a lot of horror movies from the 1980s and the truth of the matter is that for every great idea there are at least a dozen bad ideas. I've seen some pretty crazy movies from the horror genre but you're going to have a difficult time in finding a stranger one than NIGHTMARE WEEKEND. The story deals with a scientist, a spy, a machine, a puppet and how they all help create these magical silver balls that fly through the air and go into people's mouths. From there the people turn into bizarre creatures and kill.

NIGHTMARE WEEKEND is a really bizarre and at times poorly made film that is so downright strange that it's impossible not to recommend to fans of the genre. The film starts off with some very weird scenes and I must admit that it just keeps getting weirder. In fact, the movie somewhat kept me entertained for the first fifty-minutes or so because I just wanted to see what happened next and how much stranger it would be willing to go. Where the film goes bad is the fact that there's no decent idea with the material and everything just gets dragged out to the point where you get tired of it.

As I said, the badness kept me entertained for the first portion of the film but the final thirty-minutes or so were a real drag and this is where the film really falls apart. The film was obviously shot on a very low-budget and this shows with some of the special effects. The effects aren't horrible but at the same time they're at least mildly entertaining for what they are and they at least offer up some blood. I'm really not sure what the screenwriter was going for but the script is all over the place and more often than not it doesn't make much sense.

The film, in its uncut version, features the blood that I mentioned but it also features a lot of cute girls nude. I will give the film credit for this as there's a lot of nudity and some pretty silly sex scenes as well. The performances are all pretty bad as you might expect but this adds a little camp to the film. NIGHTMARE WEEKEND is pretty bad throughout but fans of bad cinema will want to check it out.

WTF?!?! I mean, seriously, what the fµ@k?! Who on earth concocted this script and went out and made this film? They must have had more than a couple of screws loose. So, we have a mansion in which a professor is working on some magical super-computer that can produce evil silver pinballs which can cause behavioral modifications on test subjects - a rottweiler in this case - but when amped up to a level of I-don't-know-what they can turn humans into demented & deformed, possessed beings as well as just plain kill them (like have them explode, for instance). That's about the best I can do in an attempt to describe the premise of this wretched film. So, the professor's evil mistress comes up with a plan to do some more testing - naturally, on humans this time - and invites three good-looking bimbos to the mansion. Some horny dudes are along for the ride as well, eventually. So, evil mistress goes nuts with the machine, producing one magical pinball after another to possess the bimbos & dudes. There's tons of nudity & sex and some gore thrown in for good measurement. There's an inexplicable sequence - many, in fact - where the daughter of the professor is playing a racing game on her computer that magically possesses a real car in the real world. There's even a possessed tooth brush. And this thing stars Dale Midkiff in an early role. And with all this, you haven't seen the half of it yet. Inept & illogical on all levels, I tell you. Everyone involved with this production must have thought the same thing, like pretty much "What the hell, let's just make this insane rubbish as we go along". Pinballs, man, possessed pinballs! Just when you thought you've seen it all...