Skip to main content

Retribution (1987) - Guy Magar


George decides to commit suicide on Halloween at the exact same time as a gangster named Vito. Just so happens that due to supernatural events Georges body survives and houses both himself and Vito. Slowly, Vito starts to make his way back out with murderous results. George keeps envisioning himself murdering all of these people. Much to the annoyance of his psychiatrist. 

The acting is nothing to write home about. Dennis Lipscomb does a really respectable job. The other actors are passable. It's just a shame that the editing and direction is so subpar. It doesn't stop this from being a really interesting feature though. The plot is strange but I kinda like it. This is a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story that has been enhanced for the modern age. Well, maybe enhanced is too generous of a word. This movie is absurd, campy, gory and wonderful. It's not amazing but that doesn't really matter. It's fun. It's a shame that it took Guy Magar so long to find distribution. 

The movie isn't scary. I just can't seem to be frightened with Dennis Lipscomb's weird haircut making me laugh. This also has one of the most infamous b-movie death scenes of all time. George's alter-ego murders a guy in a meat packing plant by trapping him inside of a hanging carcass. Then he runs him down a conveyor belt to a spinning saw. It's great. It also has a really eerie synth-y sountrack. It's kind of Giorgio Moroder-ish. 

Parts of this movie are so outrageous the're laughable. It reminds me of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace on Adult Swim. I recommend this movie. It has that forgotten eighties cult charm. Definitely something to dust off and play at parties. Everyone will get a kick. It should be pretty easy to find. I looked online and saw that they actually have a three disk blu-ray set. Crazy. 

Director: Guy Magar
Producer: Guy Magar
Writer: Guy Magar, Lee Wasserman
Starring: Dennis Lipscomb, Leslie Wing, Hoyt Axton and Suzanne Snyder
Studio: Overseas FilmGroup, Taurus Entertainment Company and Taurus Entertainment Company
Release Date: March 1987
Did ya know: This never had an official theatrical release. It was funded by director Guy Magar.







Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t...
Post a Comment
Not scared yet? »

Le Diable au Convent (1899) - George Melies

Le Diable au Convent is longer than the two previous Georges Méliès ventures into short form horror. This particular French short shows the Devil himself running a convent and terrorizing the poor old nuns that live there. However he is finally vanquished by the good of Faith. This is yet another Méliès classic, showcasing the art work that really goes into his short film-making. This is one of the earliest examples of a horror movie that could rely on its elaborate set design and artistic design. Everything in this film, although horribly aged, has been packaged extremely well. If you are a fan of production and set design then I would highly recommend just about anything that Melies has his name on. Though nothing that is considered too extreme actually happens, Satan does have his way with a convent. The satanic imagery itself must have kept this film on the traveling carnival circuit. It certainly wouldn’t fit into the good moral bag that society shoved i...
1 comment
Not scared yet? »

Spookies (1986) - Genie Joseph, Thomas Doran, and Brendan Faulkner

It's impossible to get a decent movie when you take two films and just squash them together. That is essentially the story of how this movie came together. The film started as Twisted Souls. However, according to the financial backer they didn't have enough horror. So they ended up hiring another guy to come in and add a monster in virtually every scene.  This movie started out being directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran. It basically is the tale of two sets of teenagers that arrive to a strange building surrounded by a strange cemetery. It was your usual tale of teenagers in a big hows with a few monsters. Then they brought in Genie Joseph and added even more. Like a haunted birthday party, a murderous cat-man, zombies, and an old wizard. It really became a smorgasbord of horror with a very thin plot-line leading it around. This movie is hard to summarize in a conventional way. It just packs so much.  The most interesting part of this movie are ...
2 comments
Not scared yet? »