Delayed Reviews: Demons 5- The Devil's Veil (aka The Mask of Satan)

 It's about time I made good on a promise from 11 years ago!  

Back in 2010, I finished covering the quartet of Films by Lamberto Bava that included Demons 3: The Ogre.  

In the final one (seen here), I mentioned that I was done unless I can find Demons 5: Black Sunday.  I forgot...for a long time.  

This is Demons 5: The Devil's Veil, a 1990 Film from Italy.  

Why does it have a different Title?  Well, the Film is a partial homage to MARIO Bava's Black Sunday, hence the unofficial Title.  The Film thankfully stands on its own...but it sure is weird.  

The Plot involves people in an Ice Cavern, a Witch, a blind Priest and some freaky monsters.  

As far as notable Cast goes, there's not much.  Our Heroines was briefly engaged to Klaus Kinski (she must have some stories!), one of them was the Female Lead in Black Cobra (which gave us all Poor Bastards of Cinema) and one of the group is Director Michele Soavi.  

Fans of Rifftrax might recognize one Star from Ghosthouse, while fans of Bad Movies might recognize her from Troll 3/Creepers/Contamination .7.  That's basically it.  

Was it worth waiting 11 years to finally do this?  

To find out, read on...

The Earth shifts and a bunch of skiers fall into a crevice.

They thankfully don't jump right into cannibalism, which is almost always everyone's concern post-Donner Party.

While some of them look for a way out, others find a frozen body and decide to remove the mask on it...to sell, I guess.

Who does that?!?

The entryway collapses and kills one of them.  The desperate group finds a random entryway to an area and just goes through it.

This is people taking ALL OF the wrong choices in a Choose Your Own Adventure Book.

They find a Blind Priest alone in a snowy village (which is oddly lit for being unexposed to the Sun) and turn to Page 33 by choosing to immediately fall asleep in his House.

When he finds out what they did, he's not happy.  He only warns our Lead, however, as he thinks that the others have been compromised.

It all relates to a watch named Anabis who was given the titular mask (with nails in it!) and was kept there.

Only the Priest survives now, apparently, as the watch...but he also isn't there to see them take the mask, so...useless.

The group starts to get possessed in a particular order...

Going by first names, it happens in the order to spell out 'Anabis,' which means that our Heroine (Sabina) is last.

She keeps trying to get our Lead to sleep with her and, well, something is definitely up with her.

After killing her to save her soul, he wakes up...and everyone is fine?

"I had the craziest dream- and you were there and you were there?'

Well, we're only an hour in, so that was a lie.

It's all a continuous trick to get him to give in to Anabis and empower her.

He finally wins out and...wakes up to find his friends dead in the Cavern.  He rushes to escape as the Movie ends (without a shirt, so good luck!).

A weird mess of a Film that is at least endearing.  

I will certainly give the Film points right off the bat for creativity.  It's a lazy thing to say that it is a Remake of Black Sunday (the Italian one not the killer Blimp one).  It features a similar creature and very loose Themes, but that's it.  

Credit where credit is due, this is the kind of thing that Remakes should do.  

That said, the Movie itself is...interesting.  The premise starts out strong, but kind of has many, many problems.  The Characters are pretty cut-and-paste.  

I think the biggest reason for that is that the Plot necessitates so many Characters to spell out 'Anabis.'  If her name was like 'Rosa' or something, they could have been more nuanced.  

Once they get possessed, they just are there to be freaky and attack.  The Priest does well enough, but eventually is just a Plot Device.  

In the Third Act, he's dead and giving advice 'from the great beyond' to make things work.  The fake-out Ending is the big issue here.  

The Pacing is just killed by the Film just kind of restarting in a silly way.  The logic behind it is intriguing...but not great.  

I will give credit to the freaky effects that sometimes show up.  It's not awful, but it pales in comparison to Demons and Demons 2.  

My copy has the original Italian Audio and some Subtitles.  It is just too bad that, for some reason, the SRT (or Subtitle Reader Track) File mixes up the letters 'rt' for 'm,' giving me such lines like this...

Next up, I continue Make Up March with a Film that I meant to cover long ago.  Gotta love misleading Titles, no?  Stay tuned...

A Tribute to the Underrated Work of Daria Nicolodi

 2020 is a Year so rife with Bad News that you can still miss stuff!

For instance, back on November 26th, we lost a legend of Italian Cinema- Ms. Daria Nicolodi.

It is easy to see her for one thing, so let's address that first...

Depending on who you ask and when, she was either Married to Dario Argento or they were just a couple for a long time.

They are Italian, so it could be either.

That means that she was Asia Argento's Mother.

-------

There's more to her than that.  
She was also a pretty notable Writer...

While she only has 4 separate Credits (plus one for a Remake), the Films are

* The Black Cat
* Inferno
* Paganini Horror
* Suspiria

That's a good Resume!

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On top of that, she has many, many Acting Credits in notable Films.
Many of them are in Argento Films, but there's more to it than that.

She appeared in Films by Mario Bava, Lamberto Bava, Michele Soavi and Luigi Cozzi.

One of the latter Credits is as the Narrator in Sinbad of the Seven Seas, so that's something fun for me!

***

For her integral role in so many Classic Films, she'll be missed by all of us out there that never even met her.

RIP Daria Nicolodi

Legitimately-Cool Cover Art: Demons (1985)

It is no secret that I like Demons.

It is a Classic '80s Horror Film that can't be matched.

While this segment normally features Posters/Box Art too cool for the Film, this one...is just cool and the Movie is too.  Enjoy...

While not to be taken literally (as there is no giant Demon hand), it is quite great.

How can you not want to see the Film now?

Almost Heroes: Hank (Demons 2)

Well, the same Actor has another shot- this time in the Sequel!

In Demons 2, a Sequel to the Film-within-a-Film is being shown on TV.  One poor sap plays it in an Apartment Building, unknowingly-dooming everyone!

About 30-ish minutes in, 'Hank' appears.  He's running the Gym when the Power goes out.

When danger strikes, Hank takes the lead.  He tries to smash the way out...but to no avail.

When the Demons show up, he kicks some ass!

The group tries to barricade themselves in the Garage to wait things out.  Hank again takes the lead!

As things get worse and worse (as the Demons create more Demons), Hank keeps fighting...until he's grabbed in his one weak spot.

They don't show him after this, but...it can't be good, right?  So close!

Fortunately, Hank doesn't die anywhere near first, thus fighting that cliche about Black People in Horror Films.  Yea, Italy...I think.

He almost saves the day, but still goes down fighting!

Almost Heroes: Tony (Demons)

Demons is alot of movie to explain.  Here are the key points...

- Cursed Film-within-a-Film
- Theater full of People
- Demonic Killers

With that in mind, meet Tony and his girlfriend.  She was playing with a prop mask in the lobby and got cut, which is how the infection starts both here and in the Film they're watching.

Soon enough, she starts to transform (in one of the Film's most iconic moments) on stage!

Tony puts aside his feelings to try and save everyone, attempting to lead them to the exits.

Unfortunately (due to unclear reasons), that's a no-go and Plans B-D don't exactly work either.

As for Tony, he ends up hanging on a ledge between two Demons, death seeming imminent.

Death becomes pretty certain then when the rope hanging him there is quickly cut!

Sorry, Tony- you experienced the most personal loss AND failed to save the day.

There's always 'next time,' right?

Mario Party Jr: Macabre

Can the son ever be as good as the father?  Obviously in my case, the answer is 'yes.'  Self-boasting aside, let's look at today's film Macabre.  It's the debut film of Lamberto Bava, although even he admits its origin is sketchy.  As he says in an Interview on the DVD- thanks, Anchor Bay-, him and three friends wrote the Screenplay as a joke (of sorts) after hearing a weird story from America.  America- good for inspiring obscure horror film plots since 1776!  The plot is a weird one, escalating very quickly and then...just kind of meandering to a finish.  It's one thing to be a slow film- see Let Sleeping Corpses Lie-, but it's another thing to be a film that starts dramatically and then just grinds to a halt.  Imagine a James Bond film that begins with the Action Set Piece Opener cliche, only to be followed by 80 minutes of James Bond investigating the inner-workings of MI-6 a la Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  That would be weird, right?  That said, the movie is quite interesting.  To find out how it can be both, read on...

Like I said, this movie is supposedly inspired by a real story.  I'm sure that the Director of Dinner With A Vampire to do a true story justice.

In the beginning, a woman leaves her two kids at home with the token black gardener to have an affair.  The daughter knows that she's hiding something...somehow and has a logical solution to get her attention...

Drowning her brother in the bathtub!  Yeah, that's a logical reaction.

Oh and the pay-off to this comes at the end.  Kind of odd that the Police didn't solve this one right away.

On the way back home, she freaks out and her secret lover crashes the car, killing him.

After this, the movie jumps ahead 1 year and...turns into a Tennessee Williams play.  You think I'm kidding, don't you?

 Since the affair obviously came to light, our heroine moves into...the building where she was having the affair.  At the same time, she's trying to get back with her husband- who only has two real scenes- and her murdering daughter- who nobody caught.

Skipping ahead, she teases the guy who owns the building, who just so happens to be the brother of the guy she was screwing.  She fails to make up with her husband, but finds solace in some mysterious thing in her refrigerator.

Since I'm just flat-out telling you the plot, it sets up this new Meme I thought up today...

Here's the last third of the film in quick succession...

The thing in the Refrigerator is her lover's head.  She takes it out every night to...well, you figure it out.

Her daughter keeps coming over and finally tells her about how she killed her brother.  This leads her mother to kill her in the bathtub.  Ironic?

The dripping water wakes up the blind brother and he struggles with our head-keeping heroine, who falls face-first into...something on her oven...I think and dies.

To wrap shit up, the blind brother walks over to the bed and...is killed by the head of his brother leaping at his neck.  You were trying to outdo Pieces, weren't you?  The End.

It's slow as hell...but it is still good.  The film is supposedly-inspired by a real newspaper headline about a woman having a torrid affair with the decapitated head of her former-lover.  If that's remotely-true, it's very creepy.  That does raise my biggest issue with this film- unexplained events.  The movie says that our heroine went crazy after the boyfriend died and was locked up in an Asylum for about a year.  Apparently, she took his head, ran all of the way back to the Apartment Building, stuck it in the Refrigerator and got herself put away.  I should also mention that the blind guy supposedly had the power off for a long time, since, well, lights don't do him much good anyhow.  In comparison, the daughter never being found out as the killer is a minute error!  It was the twist ending to Mindhunters, so that's something.  If you can accept those inconsistencies, the movie is a great kind of slow-burn horror film.  I was beginning to think that I made a mistake labeling this as Horror for this week's reviews...but then everything came together.  It really does feel like someone turned a Tennessee Williams play into a horror film, which is especially interesting considering that it came from an Italian Director!  In place of a joke, i'll leave you with this inexplicable title card from the end of the film...

Next up, I'm not doing Vampiros...since it wasn't interesting.  Instead of that or the other film I had planned, it's something else!  Stay tuned...

Video Bava: Dinner with a Vampire

I'm almost done.  I'm almost done.  It helps when I say that a couple of times.  For those of you who may be new, here's the score.  Lamberto Bava made a series of horror films exclusively for a show called Brivido Giallo in 1987.  Despite him being the man behind Demons and Demons II- not to mention the underrated A Blade in the Dark- Bava did nothing good here.  

First there was The Ogre, a dull horror film that was falsely made into a sequel to Demons.  Next there was today's film- Dinner With A Vampire.  I'll get into that one further down.  Third for the show was Until Death (aka Changeling 2), a horror-styled version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Unfortunately, the acting, writing and overall production issues made it suffer.  Finally, there was Graveyard Disturbance, a movie with a great premise, some actual monsters...but terrible, terrible pacing, as well as a disappointing finale.  

After all of those failures- some worse than others, mind you- my hopes were not high for Dinner.  The film does have one thing going for it: George Hilton.  While not a major name to most people, Hilton has starred in such films as All the Colors of the Dark, Blade of the Ripper, The Case of the Scorpion's Tail and Atlantis Interceptors.  While those are not all great- or good- movies, the guy was also a treat in them.  

Can he make this one finally work for me?  Get out your non-descript film parodies for my review of...

The film begins with some cheesiness involving some people breaking into a castle and opening up a crypt.  This has a very old-school feel to it, complete with fake, film grain.  This is good...so they have to screw it up.  After all of this, we cut to a casting session for a new film.  You're making me remember Halloween: Resurrection, so I think that qualifies as 'screwing it up.'  The group consists of a wannabe dancer, a tough guy, a sarcastic guy and a Final Girl.  Yeah, that's pretty much her only trait.  

They are taken to a castle where they meet a butler who's a dead-ringer for Young Frankenstein's Igor (it's pronounced Eye-gor!).  Is this intentional?  There's really no jokes made with the character, but it also can't be a coincidence...can it?  Stop confusing me this early, movie!  The group is sat down in a wide-open room and allowed to watch a movie that appears to be by the same person we saw in the opening.  This film is in black-and-white, so I'm a little unclear on the timeline here.  Plus, was this film released?  Yet another thing that could easily be cleared up and make the film less confusing.  

On the plus side, the film-within-a-film (yes, this is a Lamberto Bava film) features the vampire pulling out a man's heart via telekinesis.  Time to start working on the THIRD Top 12 Strangest Vampire Powers list now...

Unfortunately, the film reel has a roll-out before the characters can explain how to kill the vampire.  Gee, this isn't a pretty obvious Plot-Point, huh?  They meet their host (Hilton) who is a film director casting them in his next movie.  

Of course, the title kind of gives away the twist.  

Yes, he's a vampire.  He's an odd vampire though.  His goal: to be killed.  Much like Talladega Nights' Jean Girard, he wants to be defeated, but he won't just lay down.  It seems like an odd stance to take when you're suicidal, but whatever.  Our heroes do the only natural thing: run like hell.  Unfortunately, this plan has its flaws, since the guy owns the castle and has lived there for years, thus knowing all of the shortcuts.  It's actually kind of funny when they run into a room, only to find him sitting there and reading the newspaper.  

Side note: why does he wear glasses?  I get that it's part of the joke, but I assume that there's no reason for the guy to need them, right?  I suppose that I'm the only one who would question this, so I'll move on.  

The fleeing proves even less effective when the vampire shows off his 'heart removal power' in person, killing one of the lesser characters.  

Oh no, not that guy whose name I have completely forgotten!!!

Our heroes find out that this vampire is really hard to kill!  They try all of the usual stuff- garlic, crosses, etc.- but it does no good.  One of them even runs a stake through the man's heart, leading him to bleed green blood and...not die.  That's what you get for being an Atheist!  Deep Hammer Film cut!   

Actually, that's the crux of this movie: Vampires are real, but vampire rules don't apply.  I don't really buy into it, but it's a bit too late to question it.  To add to the drama, the not-Igor is sent down to the basement to unleash the rest of the Vampires.  These are apparently the other people he's brought there in the past to do the same job.  Now there's another question: how does he not get caught?  

Before I can dwell on this, our heroes finally figure out how to kill the vampire.  Do you want to guess how?  Go on- guess!  As it turns out, you have to destroy the Film that was shot as he was revived in the beginning of the film.  I'll start work on another Top 12 Weirdest Vampire Rules List too now, I suppose!  

In the end, they manage to do so, causing the guy to age via bad make-up before finally exploding into fire (why?) and melting (why?!?).  As they leave, they are offered a ride by a man who is also played by George Hilton- so they run instead.  The End.

This movie kind of sucks, although not as much as the others.  The plot has a certain charm to it, aided by its simplicity.  Of course, they muck it up a bit with the jumping from the movie-within-a-movie to the actual film and back again.  Please just pick one, guys.  That goes for all of you out there, not just Bava.  Of course, the same day that I write this, one of my Christmas Week films does just that.  That's a discussion for another day.  Does the rewrite of vampire lore work for this movie?  Yes and no.  Yes, it is a unique twist, as they set up the obvious events and then flip the script.  In addition, the movie has a somewhat lighter tone, so I can accept this.  Mind you, the film also has two scenes of people getting their hearts pulled out and a vampire melting into bloody goo, so it's a trade-off.  

On the other side, the rewrite of the vampire rules is a bit lazy.  We don't want to play by the rules, so we'll just make shit up.  It's too hard to be original within the confines of a lore, so screw it!  The tone and pacing of this movie are a bit uneven, which makes me hesitant to recommend it.  It's not really an all-out comedy or a horror film.  It's one of those movies that wants to have it's cake and eat it too.  It's a shame that it's not better and it just proves the inherent flaw in the Lamberto Bava Made-For-TV Quadrilogy.  

Oh well, there's always Demons 5: Black Sunday...assuming that I can find it.  (UPDATE: Kind of forgot about this goal until 2021.  I'm on it!)

Next up, an obscure 1999 horror film that just so happens to feature a man who would be in a less-obscure 2000 horror film.  Oh yeah, a mummy fights Bruce Lee too.  Stay tuned...

Video Bava: Changeling 2 (aka Until Death)

After the last two films from the Lamberto Bava quadrilogy of TV films, my expectations are not high.  (Demons 3:) The Ogre was terrible.  Graveyard Disturbance was a stupid film that makes no sense.  On the plus side, this film can't possibly be any worse...could it?  

Well, I won't leave you in too much suspense here- this movie is not good.  It's not God awful, but it's not good.  If you want to see just how not good it is, read on further.  This movie is known by a couple different names, including Until Death and Changeling 2.  All of you film nerds will know this as the movie that shattered the working relationship between Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti (basically, the latter did it without the former and they stopped working together).  

For everyone else, Sacchetti was the man who wrote (at least partly) Beyond the Door II, City of the Living Dead and The Beyond.  In a nutshell, this film is a freaky, horror version of The Postman Always Rings Twice.  Of course, this one was made for TV, so there's really no violence, sex or nudity.  

There is more freaky content than you might think, but still not that much. 

 Now that you expect almost nothing good, you're ready for the review.  Get out your maggot-covered meat for my review of...

The film begins with a couple driving out in the rain in a truck.  They stop in the woods and the man gets out.  The woman is pregnant, but goes out with him anyways.  As it turns out, the pair killed the woman's husband and are going to bury his body.  While the man goes back for a shovel, the corpse has one last bit of life in it and pulls off her earring.  This ends when the man returns and bludgeons the body to death...more.  

The movie jumps ahead 8 years to show that life has gone on.  Yes, I'm sure that nothing interesting happened in the last 2,600+ days!  The kid who was the spawn of the woman and the dead man has weird dreams about a zombie rising from the water.  Never mind that the kid never actually met his father or anything.  The couple run a fishing company/bed and breakfast, since you can do that in small, Italian towns.  The woman shamelessly flirts with all of the men in the restaurant, a fact that he has no problems with.  What a loving relationship these two share!  

The new-husband is suspicious because the town's only Cop asks her if the dead-husband is still away.  Yes, now you pick the time to ask this!  One night, the couple's arguing/sex is interrupted by a man arriving in from the rain.  He rang just once, so that's not good news...

After staying for the night, the man quickly acquaints himself with the whole family.  Well, the husband still doesn't trust him.  How crazy of you not to trust the guy who came out of nowhere, knows things about your family and clearly has an ulterior motive!  

The wife has flashes of seeing him as her husband, despite the fact that he's a dead-ringer for the guy from Supernatural and the husband was a dead-ringer for a young Michael Chiklis.  They're like twins!  The kid likes him because he fixes up the swing outside, since kids only need one action to decide everything.  The man works in the kitchen during lunch and gets the new-husband upset when the cop remarks that his cooking reminds him of the dead-husband's.  I know that you're not as clever as you think, movie!  

The new-husband continues to be an abusive jerk, even going so far as to hit the wife on occasion.  He even forces the wife to have sex with him, although she does not complain about what he does- just how he does it.  On second thought, you guys deserve each other!  

The film sort of meanders for a bit, so let's just move on.  The kid sees more visions, even seeing the zombie break through his wall.  That's cool, but it amounts to nothing.

As the film comes towards it conclusion, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  We get more random flashes of the man as the dead-husband.  

Hey, do you actually want to explain any of this?  The husband finally gets tired of this whole affair and leaves.  Oddly, the movie makes very little out of this.  When the woman tells the kid that the only father he's ever known has gone, he says 'good.'  Burn!  

Speaking of burning, the house starts to burn down.  Yeah, don't ask me to explain it.  The ghost of her husband/the new guy taunts/scolds her for a bit.  It's confusing because the film alternates between showing the new guy, the dead husband and the new guy again.  

By the way, he waits until after they have sex to scold/condemn her.  At one point, he goes to walk into the lake with the son in his arms.  The woman begs him not to...so he doesn't.  He threatens to kill her, but...doesn't.  Eventually, she exits the house and runs off with the son.  The End.

This movie just hurts.  I wish that this movie would have been good, but it's not.  The third time is usually the charm with things.  Evidently, that's not a universal rule.  The film has potential enough, but just meanders about for far too long.  I get that they were going for a Hitchcock-style tone here- they just fail.  If they had maintained a consistent approach to the whole thing, it might have worked.  Sadly, they pad the hell out of this movie with false events, dreams and other crap.  The make-up related to the zombie dreams is great and you can see the quality work of Bava here.  Unfortunately, the limitations of the story make this whole thing to be entirely pointless.  If the zombie had actually risen up and killed somebody, I could deal with all of this silliness- it doesn't.  The ending is a mess that just makes you wish that anything leading up to it had amounted to anything.  You tried way too hard in the end and not enough everywhere else, Lamberto.  If this had been a real film and not a made-for-TV debacle, it might have been something to see.  As it is, it's a big mess that takes too long to do, well nothing.  Here's hoping for luck when it comes to Dinner with a Vampire.  See you in October, film that will probably disappoint me like everything else.

Up next, our second Lambert film of September is just as weird as the last one.  Lambert plays a computer hacker, so all bets are off.  Stay tuned...

Video Bava: Graveyard Disturbance

After the debacle that was Demons III: The Ogre, my expectations were not high for this movie.  As I've mentioned before, this is part of a four-movie set that Lamberto Bava made for Italian television, the others being The Ogre, Dinner with a Vampire and The Changeling 2.  What a group of films, huh?  

So what is this movie about?  It is about a group of 'teens' who end up at a mysterious bar, wander into a crypt and wander out again.  There- I just saved you 82 minutes.  I suppose I should admit that there is a little more to the plot, but not a whole lot.  There is more than one monster in the thing, so it immediately has one advantage over that other Bava film.  

Will it redeem the series or just confirm my fears?  Either way, it's a good chance to laugh at my pain.  Get out your stolen candy bars for my review of...

After showing us very clearly that the U.S. title is not at all like the Italian one (see above), we are introduced to our heroes.  They all ride in a van that is spray-painted like the entire decade of the '80s.  Seriously, this thing is a sight to behold!  

Amongst the airbrushed art, we get a shot of Madonna, a U2 album cover and that chick from Heavy Metal.  Is this what you think Americans are like, Lamberto?  Most of them linger around a convenience store until they decide...to steal a few random things and run out.  Seriously, that's it.  

They rush to their airbrushed van and try to escape, only to have it conveniently stall for a minute to build up tension.  Afterward, they drive away into the Italian forest and...get lost.  After a lot of bickering and one girl thinking that the only problem is her walk-man batteries dying, the group ditches the van and wanders around.  

They end up at a crypt which is oddly-lit up with no buildings nearby, so, of course, they decide to stay the night.  Are you sure?  I mean, there's a lovely, flaming-ant farm just a block down the road!  

After that, one of them wakes up in the middle of the night and hears a noise.  The group re-dresses and discovers...a bar on the opposite side of the place.  That doesn't seem out of place at all!

Our lovely heroes settle in to the place quickly, ordering some food and beer.  You're just over the 'Miller Lite sign on the back of an abandoned crypt' thing, huh?  

They get picked on by a local who pretends to have lost an arm while battling a werewolf- who hasn't been there?!?  One of them makes a joke that involves the word 'bet' and that sets everyone off though!  'We can take jokes about werewolves, but we take betting very seriously'- actual dialogue from this movie.  

Our heroes learn about a strange system the group has which involves people making a bet about spending one whole night in a crypt under the bar.  Note to self: avoid bars with accompanying crypts!  One of our heroes decides that he loves money so much that he'll take the bet, with the added plan that the others will sneak in later and join him.  He does so, but the bar owner seems well aware of the group's plan and...unlocks the door for them.  That will show them, I guess...maybe?  

When they get in there, they begin to regret this plan.  By this point in the film, my interest level was waning.  Why?  Because they pretty much just wander around for the next 25 minutes.  No, really.

Only one interesting thing really happens in this whole experience.  A pair of them stop by a gate, see a family of zombies crawl out for dinner and they flee when they see company.  I know I say this a lot, but...Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.  This comes out of nowhere, adds nothing and then disappears just as quickly- I'd say that it qualifies.  

Finally, the group reunites and...wanders around.  They get so dejected that they follow the weird blond girl's advice, since...she's attuned to spirits or something.  I don't know or care.  

They eventually get out after stalling some more, staring at the wall and even trying to climb up through a hole in the ground.  Yes, they try to climb up a hole.  When they get out, they're relieved, deciding to go through the jar full of gold and jewelry. 

The owner with the glowing eyes pulls off his face, however, revealing an ugly skeleton-style face.  He approaches the group and explains that he is The Grim Reaper and will take them to Hell.  They are a bit shocked by this, but one of them is quick on their feet.  

The idiot that got them into this mess grabs a dagger from the jar and stabs Mr. Reaper, promptly killing him.  I have at least seven problems with this!  

Following that, they go outside and get arrested for their earlier crime.  Lamberto, I'm sure that you like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but don't steal it's ending again.  Thanks.

This movie doth blow chunks!  The story is silly, the pacing is terrible and the whole thing just reeks of crap.  The premise is simple enough, but the movie fails due to its lack of scale and budget.  Since this was made for TV, nobody dies, there is no blood and you only get a few monsters.  Again- that's still better than the one monster from The Ogre!  Here's a thought for all of you people who make films for TV: don't try to make them like real movies.  If you can't do what theatrical films can do, don't try to be like them!  How complicated is this idea?  As far as everything in this movie, it is pretty bad too.  The film has a terrible pace, proving to have a bigger, more awkward mid-section than most of the people whose stomachs you see on local news exposes!  I mean, these schmucks just wander around for so freaking long!  You really built the whole movie around this shit?  How can the guy who made Demons and A Blade in the Dark seem this inept?!?  The worst part: I feel this uncontrollable urge as a completist to watch the other two films.  Someone stop me before it's too late!

Up next, I finally get to close out the direct-to-television Universal Soldier series.  When the best you can get is Burt Reynolds, there's a problem.  Stay tuned...