Curse of the Blue Lights

I had actually never heard about this 1988 horror movie titled "Curse of the Blue Lights", but of course I opted to watch it, as I happened to stumble upon it by random chance. And having grown up with horror movies in the 1980s, of course there was a certain appeal to finding a movie such as this.

However, writers John Henry Johnson and Bryan Sisson didn't exactly deliver anything grand or wholesome in terms of script and storyline for the movie. It was actually a rather boring, monotonous and sort of uninteresting storyline, and the movie failed to capture my interest, much less provide much of any entertainment or enjoyment for me. So it was quite an ordeal to suffer through 93 minutes of watching "Curse of the Blue Lights".

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Curse of the Blue Lights", nor can I say that I was really impressed with anything that transpired on the screen. But then again, and fair should be fair, the actors and actresses didn't really have much to work with , now did they?

Visually then "Curse of the Blue Lights" was low key. It wasn't good or memorable special effects, prostethics, and such. And the movie was suffering from that aspect.

This movie came and went without leaving a lasting impression on me, and it turned out that I hadn't been missing out on a great 1980s horror gem here from director John Henry Johnson.

My rating of "Curse of the Blue Lights" lands on a two out of ten stars.

From the third minutes until the very end you will have to laugh (or cry). I think the hungarian version is much better than the original one... It was nice to hear famous hungarian artists become zombies :-))) We have already organized a "The curse of the blue lights fun club". We have the T-shirts, and poster on the wall. We are also planning to make a color like bikers have... :-))

In a sleepy little U.S. community, a cemetery is haunted by a family of ghouls intent on resurrecting an ancient demon. This evil deed cannot be accomplished until a certain artifact is retrieved from a group of local teenagers.

This juvenile regional chiller never found much of an audience upon its initial home-video release, and it remains relatively obscure to date. It's a bit more ambitious that the usual backyard monster movie, with some surprisingly inventive entry-level horror makeup being the highlight of the production. Beyond that, CURSE OF THE BLUE LIGHTS is precisely the amateur horror hayride you'd probably expect it would be, with cheesy Gothic sets that look like an annual Halloween spook-house attraction. Performances are uniformly substandard, and the whole film ultimately comes off feeling like a feature-length episode of the TV show "MONSTERS".

These criticisms aren't made to sway you from seeing it, mind you...it's actually pretty fun stuff, so long as your expectations remain squarely fixed at ground-level. Despite the perplexing(and quite possibly self-imposed) R rating, I would recommend this primarily to younger horror fans.

4.5/10

It's been a long time since I've seen this but I remember being tempted by the cover and the title in our local video store for months before I took a gamble and rented it. Boy, what a disappointment! I've got a pretty good memory when it comes to movie plots and the fact that I can't remember much about this one except for the gruesome makeup isn't a good sign. Like the other review here says, the script was horrid and the acting was worse. I get the idea that it was made by some guys with good makeup and FX skills... but not a lot else.

Despite being pretty bad I'd actually like to see it again to refresh my memory and see if there might be something worthwhile I'd missed the first time. Sometimes even the worst movies have redeeming qualities or a gem of a (badly executed) idea.

My review was written in April 1990 after watching the movie on Magnum video cassette.

Nice special effects highlight this regional horror pic, a one-man effort made in Colorado by John Henry Johnson three years ago and currently in video stores.

Title refers to a remote weekend hangout, reportedly haunted, on the outskirts of the small town of Dudley, where teens congregate. Unfortunately for Patrick Keller and his chums, three ghouls in a crypt led by Brent Ritter are conjuring up the dreaded Muldoon Man, a missing link of sorts, to take over Earth.

THe kids go to witch Bettina Julius for help. They ultimately defeat the baddies, including the Muldoon Man, who blows up real good at the cemetery climax.

Naive pic is fun to watch and could have been a sleeper success if Johnson had built his story around something less cliched than the old "teens on an outing" standby. The Acting is weak, but makeup effects are interesting. Johnson has done his homework, even coming up with a nice Jean Cocteau-invented mirror-to-another-dimension gimmick.