Michael_Elliott Twisted Nightmare (1987) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A group of adults win a weekend pass to the summer camp that they once attended when they were younger. Once there the party starts but before long a death from their past will come back to kill them one by one.TWISTED NIGHTMARE is a slasher film that got a limited theatrically release before hitting VHS where it became a minor cult favorite. The film pretty much went away for a while but it has slowly picked up another cult following thanks to it simply being a slasher as well as it being shot at the same place that Friday THE 13TH PART III was. The barn and house from that Jason movie is used here so it is pretty cool getting to see the same location used.As far as the actual film goes, look, you're dealing with a low-budget horror movie that was made by people just trying to make some money. The Slasher 101 Handbook is pretty much followed throughout as we get the backstory, we get the camp setting, the partying, the nudity and of course a mysterious old man and several bloody deaths. There's obviously nothing new or original here but for the most part it kept me entertained. If anything director Paul Hunt at least got some atmosphere out of the material, which is a plus.The death scenes are decent for what they are as there is at least some blood being thrown around. If nudity is your thing then you'll be happy to know that several of the young ladies here get totally naked. The one major problem with the film is the cinematography. The film's lighting was so poor that often times the scenes are beyond dark. I'm sure this issue was even worse for those watching this on a bootleg or VHS. The Blu-ray has at least been cleaned up but it's still quite dark due to the way the film was shot.

Luisito Joaquin Gonzalez (LuisitoJoaquinGonzalez) So you like clichés eh? Well, I'll give you clichés alright. I'll give you so many clichés that you'll loose count before the ten-minute mark!Completed in eighty-two, but shelved for five years due to a total lack of confidence from the entire production team, Twisted Nightmare is not a movie. It may have a cast and a crew and all the ingredients that you would associate with a feature film, but in fact it's just a check-list of slasher platitudes rapped up into ninety-minutes of cheap videotape and cunningly disguised as a motion picture. What you don't believe me? Then why don't you check out this fabulous synopsis: A group of 'ahem' teenagers head off to a summer camp (Friday the 13th) where a few years earlier, the brother of one of their number was burned beyond recognition by an unseen menace. (The Burning). Before the accident, he had been the victim of malicious bullying by the rest of the group, who tormented his inability to attract the opposite sex (Terror Train). This particular camp site is not the best place for a summer vacation as it had been cursed by Native Americans many years ago and it's rumoured that the curse lives on (Ghost Dance). Before long a disfigured lunatic turns up and begins killing off the cast members one by one. (Just about every slasher movie ever produced).Now do you believe me? In all seriousness, Twisted Nightmare is an uncomfortably tough film to review. That's simply because it's hard to explain exactly what went wrong with the feature and why it never lived up to its obvious potential. It's not an awkward task to write a mocking review of a bad movie, but it's a lot harder to try and define the reasons why an offering so full of possibilities just didn't make the grade. It would be easy to blame the rancid dramatics or the inane scripting, but the cast of Friday the 13th were hardly method actors and that was still an infinitely better effort than this. Slasher flicks are different from almost every other genre, because they can still make a profit or at least grab an audience without most of the ingredients that other categories of cinema take for granted. For example, could you imagine a poorly acted drama being successful? Or perhaps an awfully scripted comedy? Stalk and slash features consistently commit gross cinema crimes and still the production line of titles shows no sign of slowing down.If anything, Twisted Nightmare tries too hard and due to the director's insistence of ticking every single box on the slasher check list, the movie breaks that age-old 'less is more' ground rule. Alfred Hitchcock once said that the key ingredient to the production of suspense is isolation, but that's where Paul Hunt's opus comes unstuck. His feature boasts an unusually high body count and there's also some impressive gore sequences. Unfortunately, with so many characters getting butchered in such a small space of time, things get very boring very quickly and the deaths rapidly loose their impact.Another negative is the film's one-tone pacing, which never seems to change throughout the runtime. Characters get killed, characters get naked. Characters make-out and characters argue, but it all happens at such a snail-like momentum that that any attempts at a 'money-shot' just pass by without recognition. The plodding direction adds no bite to the suspense scenarios and an infuriating lack of lighting takes the credit away from Cleve Hall's decent make-up effects. The script doesn't help matters and the plot is littered with more holes than a hash smoker's mattress. Cast members are slaughtered and none of their colleagues question their disappearances and some of the gaps in continuity are so obviously dumb that it's almost unbelievable that this was the effort of a man with as much cinematic experience as Paul Hunt.The slasher genre is no stranger to poor movies. However, if you take an experienced director, a good budget, an excellent location, some great gore effects, a group of ambitious cast members and still end up with a feature as jumbled as this, then something is very, very wrong.On the plus side as I mentioned earlier there's some decent gore and as many people have noted previously, Nightmare generates an eighties feel much better than many of its counterparts from the period. It's also worth noting that this was one of the first slashers to incorporate African-American victims into its body count, which is an interesting piece of trivia. But aside from that there's really nothing here to recommend and the movie only remains notable for being one of the biggest wastes of potential in the history of splatter cinema.It's impossible to recommend Twisted Nightmare to anybody as it really is that irredeemably bad. At least its original production date of 1982 means that it was among the first of its ilk and I guess that makes it slightly collectible. As I said in my opening sentence, this is not much of a feature film. It's best remembered as a long-winded collection of poorly-delivered clichés.

demonchirps I've just finished watching this movie with a mate and thought it was so bad it was great. Firstly I thought the overall look of the film as well as the gore were quite good (not great but good). While the plot is very basic and flawed, it is the bad acting that really makes this movie fun to watch. Often you will watch a movie where all the actors are putting in such a bad performance that they have a certain chemistry between them. With this movie not only are they all acting poorly, but they have no chemistry with one another at all. Extra bad points go to the muscle Asian guy Tak who never changes expression or tone, and the aggressive moustache boyfriend with the over the top bad attitude. It is the bad acting that make this film enjoyable. If you want a good and effective horror movie then stay away. If you want a good unintentional laugh, then check it out.

reptilicus I found this movie way back on a shelf in my closet. I had to blow the dust off the video box to read the title. With our curiosity aroused my wife and I sat down to watch it. When it was finished she made me promise to clean out the closet more often!Among the slasher sub-genre this is a forgotten film; and perhaps we'd all be better off if it stayed that way. It is certainly disjointed enough to seem like a dream and there are plot points which we think will be important but which are forgotten immediately after they are introduced. The film begins with an American Indian Medicine Man being burned at the stake by Cavalry troops for allegedly practising black magic. He vows to return from the dead for revenge. Flash forward 200 years (give or take a decade) to some college pals returning to a campsite where they spent a summer holiday a few years before.Now here is where the plot gets going. The retarded brother of one of the kids was burned to death in an accident, after which the group all went their separate ways; apparently through a collective feeling of guilt. Hardly has night fallen before someone starts getting rid of the visitors one by one in increasingly gory ways. Is it a resurrected Indian spirit? Has the burned boy come back from the dead? Does the dead boy's sister know more than she is saying about what is happening? Will you hit the fast forward button on the remote? Only the answer to the last question is obvious!The plot is so full of holes even the minimal gore cannot save the plot. In fact the few bloody moments are photographed so dark you can barely see what is happening. The "tearing an arm out by the roots" scene was done much better, and clearer, in the equally obscure Bigfoot movie NIGHT OF THE DEMON.This one is for lovers of obscure movies only . . . and even they will come away from it scratching their heads in disbelief.