Curse of the Blue Lights

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.

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.

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

I hoped for something like Return of the Living Dead but got instead some muppets-like "horror" show. Well, show is maybe a too favorable word to describe Curse of the Blue Lights - the movie somewhat does not know if it wants to be a serious horror movie or a horror comedy, in the end the director and writer achieved to conjure up a bad mix that provides not much really funny jokes nor some serious gore and feel for horror. Anyway, this one is not a total waste or failure, and in the case you are one of those rare lone wolfs still hunting for some unknown 80s horror cheese, this one may fill your belly. Verdict: meanders on the thin line of really bad and cheesy.

The young me would probably have loved Curse of the Blue Lights. The seven to twelve year old me, free of expectations, free of growing into gore or serious horror cinema. Curse of the Blue Lights is a pretty juvenile affair really, and looking at it through the cold light of adulthood it isn't all that good, but on a Friday night peering back into the mists and yearnings of youth it does the trick. A low budget regional affair, it sees a group of teens out for the night in the Blue Lights area, an ill defined and ill lit place that seems to have a river nearby but most importantly a slope wherein is buried an ancient beast, the Muldoon Man. One teen slips and falls, revealing a petrified hand protruding from the dust, they also find a medallion which they take before heading home for a pick up truck, get apprehended for speeding, return and find the body gone. Following tracks they find nefarious ghouls beneath a cemetery and realise there are some bad shenanigans afoot, which they set about putting to rights with the help of a local witch. Its a fast paced film bounding with enthusiasm, the cast are generally as young looking as the ages they seek to portray and there's a pleasant feel of youthful endeavour to the film, friends getting together to make a movie and test their skills. Though the writing is poor and the acting often flat there's a drive and purpose to everything that makes it a pretty easy watch. Special effects are the highlight, much better than would be expected for a film of this budget. Quality ghoul make up and some neat melting effects, even an amusing old school shonky monster at the end, if nothing else the sum of the effects makes the film a decent cheesy time. Special effects man Michael Spatola went on to credits in Stargate and Terminator 2: Judgement Day as well as other more minor projects and there's loving craft here that seems to foretell such a career. Some of the performances are fun as well, mostly from folk who only did this one film. Cheers go out to Brent Ritter hamming as fiercely as he can beneath a lot of make-up as main ghoul Loath, Kent E. Fritzell and Willard Hall as his equally enthusiastic but inept assistants Bor and Forn and Bettina Julius as the aforementioned witch, who really isn't terribly comprehensible but is quite watchable in a weird sort of way. This stuff and the energy of the leads makes for a cheerful camp that buoys the film through its slower patches and gives a bit of an extra pop when things do hot up. The film is a bit too long at over an hour and a half and the lack of general gore (a spot of blood and melting effects mostly) puts a slight dampener on things, preventing it from ever reaching a full head of delirious steam, but its a fun watch nonetheless. Best recommended to younger viewers, those seeking films suitable for younger viewers and those seeking to revisit their earlier years, this one gets a fair 6/10 I think.