Mr_Ectoplasma "The Kiss" follows teenaged Amy (Meredith Salenger) whose mother has just died in a gruesome car accident. To complicate matters, her estranged aunt Felice (Joanna Pacula) arrives in town, who was separated from Amy's mother during their childhood in the Belgian Congo. Little does Amy know, Aunt Felice is under the thumb of an ancient curse, one which must be passed on to Amy before Felice's vessel disintegrates.I won't attempt to make "The Kiss" sound like something it's not—it is an absolutely absurd romp that stirs all of the '80s horror fixings into a melding pot and serves up a ragbag medley of witchcraft, African magic, mysterious talismans, and monster parasites passed on from mouth-to- mouth. Oh, and did I mention a therianthropic rabid cat?Derivative and impossible to take seriously, "The Kiss" is still a fantastic film in that it makes the most of all of its derivative elements, and has plenty of fun doing it. In some ways, it is a feminine answer to "Fright Night," and actually makes an intertextual reference to that very film. It evokes the small-town atmosphere which is ripe for teenaged terror, and the weird ancestral/incestuous undercurrents in the film are grotesque and utterly bizarre. The special effects team behind this is something of a technical powerhouse, having done the work for "Gremlins" among other things, and while some of the effects are dated (the cat, for example, is just ridiculous), there are also some impressive and legitimately gruesome effects that supersede the sillier ones.The film follows a familiar narrative trajectory that was seen before and would be seen again, especially in writer Stephen Volk's followup script, "The Guardian" (1990) which ended up being directed by William Friedkin two years later. There are some loose threads in the film (we, for example, are provided no significant followup to the recovery of Amy's friend Heather after she is nearly mangled to death by an escalator), but there is significant suspense in spite of some sloppy technicalities. Joanna Pacula is fantastically evil in the film, and Meredith Salenger plays your everyday likable teenage girl very well.Overall, I found "The Kiss" to be sublime, even in its most absurd of quandaries. It essentially epitomizes the entire landscape of '80s horror films, specifically the supernatural thrillers, and is undeniably fun. It offers solid performances, some fantastically gross (and other times hilariously bad) special effects, and a poolside finale that is perhaps one of the most thematically and aesthetically chaotic things I've ever seen. 8/10.

BA_Harrison After her mother dies in a terrible accident, pretty teenager Amy (the lovely Meredith Salenger) finally gets to meet her mysterious Aunt Felice (Joanna Pacula) but soon twigs that her mom's globe-trotting younger sister isn't as perfect as she makes out to be. Using the power of sex and voodoo, Felice controls the fates of Amy's loved ones, before attempting to pass on a very unusual 'heirloom' to her unwilling niece.For a film about an ancient African parasite that is transmitted between female members of the same family by a kiss, this is quite the disappointment, a rather charmless movie with generic direction from Pen Densham, surprisingly poor effects by makeup wiz Chris Walas (Gremlins, The Fly), and flat performances from all except Pacula, who makes up for the other actors' seeming disinterest by really hamming it up.Densham desperately tries to spice things up proceedings with a little gore and sex towards the end (Pacula going topless to seduce Amy's father), and randomly throws a hilariously naff zombie cat hand-puppet creature into the mix, but to no avail. This one could have done with a lot more gore and general outrageousness throughout in order to do the silly premise justice.5.5 out of 10, rounded down to 5 for not going all the way with the 'necklace in the escalator' scene and for failing to get Salenger to take a shower (although, to be fair, she looks pretty great in that white swimsuit).

moonspinner55 Suburban teen, mourning the recent death of her mother in a freak accident, is suspicious of her mother's estranged sister, an exotic model who comes to stay with the girl and her father; turns out this dangerous woman harbors an evil bloodline that must be passed down to a female relative by a kiss. Despite 'shock' deaths and a heavy-breathing feral cat (who pops up with alarming reliability), this entry in the '80s horror cycle is pretty bland. Director Pen Densham juices the proceedings with sex and voodoo--and a menacing mall escalator--but to no avail. Most of the cast is so laid-back, they evaporate on the screen, particularly young Meredith Salenger (a typical movie kid feigning a modern ordinariness that borders on laziness). As the villain, Joanna Pacula gives it a go, but the silliness of her role (and of the movie's entire concept) defeats her. *1/2 from ****

The_Void Well, I didn't go into this film expecting anything great; I was really just hoping for a decent timewaster along the same lines as Wes Craven made for TV opus 'Summer of Fear', and that's more or less what I got; though it cant be said that this film isn't as good as Craven's. The film is a mix of two very basic and very common horror themes; namely, the insider who works their way into a family unit, and of course the idea of witchcraft. After the first fifteen minutes, I feared the worst because = the way that the plot is set up is very messy; and that's never a good sign in a simple film like this one! However, it soon settles down and once I got an idea of what to expect, I found that the film became easier to enjoy. The film starts with two sisters in 1963 that get split up. One of them goes off with a relative who passes onto her a strange curse via a kiss. We then cut to twenty five years later, and the other sister has died in a car accident; leaving her husband and daughter behind. Then onto the scene comes the cursed sister, who wants her niece to bear her curse...It has to be said that this film could have been better if have handled by someone more adept, and if it had a better focus. The plot soon becomes predictable, and there are several things about it that don't make sense, and the film often veers off on a tangent with certain things that aren't really relevant. The Kiss seems to have taken a bit of influence from The Omen with regards to the way that the death scenes are carried out; mostly excessive and random, but also quite imaginative: the death scene on an escalator is well done...though the clues preceding it spoil the surprise. None of the characters are particularly interesting, which is a shame considering that the main one is a conniving witch. However, the film never becomes too boring. The special effects aren't over-used, but what we do get is generally quite realistic; the only exception to this rule being an aggressive cat, which looks like a stuffed toy. It all boils down to an exciting and explosive finale, which also happens to be the best ten minutes of the film. Overall, I won't be going round recommending this film to people; but there's worse ways to spend ninety minutes of your life.