Doctor Mordrid (1992) – Review

In 1992, Doctor Mordrid emerged from the depths of B-movie magic, a film that feels like a low-budget Doctor Strange movie — because, well, it almost was. This was to be an adaptation of that Marvel Comics character, that is, until the pre-production phase took so long that by the time filming started, they lost the rights to the name. But instead of scrapping the film altogether, they decided, “Let’s just change it enough so as not to get sued.”

In the realm of cult cinema, few films embody the spirit of low-budget ambition quite like Doctor Mordrid. Directed by Charles and Albert Band, this direct-to-video fantasy film is a fascinating example of Full Moon Entertainment’s ability to craft entertaining, if derivative, genre films on a shoestring budget. Originally conceived as an adaptation of Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Doctor Mordrid was repurposed into an original property when Full Moon lost the rights to the character. The result is a film that clearly echoes its Marvel origins but manages to carve out its own niche within the pantheon of B-movie magic.

 

“I see lawyers in our near future.”

The plot involves centuries-old inter-dimensional sorcerer Doctor Anton Mordrid (Jeffrey Coombs) living incognito as a New York scholar, who is tasked with guarding the world from evil forces that threaten the mortal plane. Mordrid spends most of the movie pacing around his apartment, brooding over magical glyphs, and occasionally glaring at people really hard. When his old nemesis, Kabal (Brian Thompson), escapes from his prison dimension and threatens to conquer the world with dark magic, Mordrid must step out of the shadows to stop him. Assisting him is Samantha Hunt (Yvette Nipar), a skeptical but curious researcher who gets swept into his mystical war. 

 

I wonder if he can get cable on that thing.

Upon realizing that Kabal is loose, Mordrid finally stops brooding in his lair and gets to work. This involves the classic superhero move of getting arrested—yes, he’s picked up for owning an artifact that links him to one of Kabal’s murders. He is taken to the police precinct by obtuse Detective Tony Gaudio (Jay Acovone). Thankfully, Samantha helps him escape, because she just knows there’s something special about this strange, robe-wearing landlord of hers. Once she learns that Mordrid is, in fact, an inter-dimensional wizard protecting Earth, she goes from skeptical scientist to ride-or-die sidekick in record time. Together, they attempt to stop Kabal before he can unleash his master plan.

 

“Now, shall you deal with me, oh Doctor, and all the powers of HELL!”

What follows is Doctor Mordrid’s pièce de resistance: a battle of stop-motion dinosaur skeletons, because if you’re going to have a low-budget wizard duel, why not involve prehistoric fossils? Mordrid uses his magic to bring a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton to life, and it goes head-to-head with a mammoth skeleton controlled by Kabal. The fight is as ridiculous as it sounds, with the stop-motion effects looking like they wandered in from a 1950s Ray Harryhausen film. But let’s be honest—this is exactly the kind of absurd spectacle that makes B-movies so much fun. In the end, Mordrid out-magics Kabal, sending him back to his inter-dimensional prison. Samantha, now fully invested in this wizard life, sticks around, and Mordrid goes back to his mystical surveillance job, waiting for the next threat.

 

“Quick, someone call Ben Stiller!”

Stray Observations:

• In the opening credits, it states “Based on an original idea by Charles Band,” which is a bold statement considering the film started out as a Doctor Strange adaptation.
• Anton Mordrid uses a flashy magical doohickey to escape pesky questions from the neighbours, a device one could say inspired the neuralyzer from MIB.
• One of the stop-motion werewolves from The Howling appears in the climax as one of Kabal’s minions.
• Mordrid has a Raven named Edgar Allen, and Jeffrey Coombs would later play Edgar Allen Poe in the Masters of Horror episode “The Black Cat.”
• The film takes place in New York City, but the sign on the museum where Mordrid battles Kabal clearly reads “Los Angeles County Historical and Art Museum.” Is this a case of more inter-dimensional mischief?
• This “knockoff” Doctor Strange was not the first attempt at creating a “Sorcerer Supreme,” as CBS released a made-for-television Doctor Strange back in 1978.

 

Who is the real Sorcerer Supreme?

Without a doubt, Jeffrey Combs, best known for his role as Herbert West in Re-Animator or his many appearances on Star Trek, is the film’s biggest asset as he plays Mordrid with a mix of deadpan seriousness and wry detachment, giving the character a gravitas the script doesn’t always earn. He delivers a performance that elevates Doctor Mordrid beyond its limited production values. His portrayal of this “Sorcerer Supreme” is restrained yet commanding, lending the character an air of authority and mystique. Unlike the more eccentric roles Combs often plays, Mordrid is a stoic, noble figure, which allows Combs to showcase his versatility as an actor. While the script does not give him much depth to explore, his presence alone makes the character engaging. He’s got a great mystical lair, complete with floating orbs and a glowing amulet, and he rocks a flowing blue robe like he was born to command the astral plane. 

 

“Do you come here often?”

Every good sorcerer needs a great villain, and Brian Thompson’s Kabal is… well, he’s a villain. With his chiselled jaw, menacing stare, and a voice that sounds like he gargles with gravel, Thompson was clearly having a blast playing the bad guy. And what is Kabal’s plan? Open some sort of inter-dimensional portal, unleash destruction upon the world, and wear lots of black leather while doing it. He’s basically the goth cousin of every ‘80s action movie villain, and it’s glorious. He provides a serviceable foil to Mordrid, with his imposing stature and gravelly voice, he looks the part of a formidable villain. However, his performance is more theatrical than menacing, and the character lacks the depth needed to be truly memorable. Despite this, the dynamic between Combs and Thompson provides enough tension to drive the film forward.

 

Evil sorcerer or cyborg from the future?

As for the film’s special effects, all the good intentions in the world can’t help if the money isn’t there, and in the case of Doctor Mordrid, you can feel the budget constraints everywhere. As with most Full Moon Entertainment productions, this film operated on a very limited budget, which is both its greatest fault and a source of its charm. The highlight is the aforementioned stop-motion dinosaur skeleton battle, animated by David Allen, whose work recalls the classic effects of Ray Harryhausen. This sequence stands out as an impressive feat given the film’s modest resources. Unfortunately, the rest of the magic is your standard B-movie fare: glowing eyes, hand gestures, and occasional energy blasts that look like they were drawn on the film with a crayon. The mystical elements, which should be awe-inspiring, often come across as flat and uninspired.

 

“Help me, I’m trapped in a 90s screensaver!”

The key limiting factor of Doctor Mordrid is Albert Band’s direction, as it is functional at best. The pacing drags interminably at times as the film clocks in at just over 70 minutes, yet somehow still feels slow. The plot is formulaic, and the dialogue is packed with heavy-handed exposition. There’s no real tension—every scene unfolds exactly as expected, with minimal surprises. The film’s world-building is also disappointingly thin. Mordrid has supposedly been watching over humanity for centuries, but we get little sense of his history or the stakes of his battle. Everything about the conflict feels small, which is a problem when the story is supposed to be about the Fate of the World.

 

“Says here, we’re not getting a sequel.”

Ultimately, Doctor Mordrid is more a missed opportunity than anything else. Had Full Moon been able to make this Doctor Strange adaptation, as they originally planned, it still would have been goofy and cheap. Still, what we did get is a mildly amusing curiosity for B-movie fans and Jeffrey Combs completists. What I’m saying is, don’t expect anything too epic—it’s more Sorcerer’s Apprentice than Sorcerer Supreme. For fans of Full Moon Entertainment, it represents one of the studio’s more ambitious efforts, and for Jeffrey Combs fans, it offers another memorable performance from a true genre icon.

The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959) – Review

Kenji Misumi’s The Ghost of Yotsuya is one of those films that proves ghost stories don’t need jump scares to crawl under your skin. It’s a tale of betrayal, greed, and vengeance that trades gore for atmosphere, letting guilt and paranoia do the heavy lifting. By the time Oiwa’s spectral face floats across the screen, you’re already halfway haunted.

Ruthless samurai Iemon Tamiya (Kazuo Hasegawa) wants to marry Oiwa (Yasuko Nakada), but when he waits outside her home to beg her father, Samon (Shinjirō Asano), for permission, he’s met with ridicule from the man and his companion. Insulted and humiliated, Iemon does what any reasonable suitor would do in a samurai ghost story: he pulls out his sword and butchers them both. Unfortunately for him, a low-rent thug named Naosuke (Hideo Takamatsu) sees the whole thing. Rather than running to the authorities, Naosuke proposes a devil’s bargain—silence in exchange for a slice of the action. Together, they spin a tale blaming the murder on local criminal Usaburo, then decide to really sweeten the pot by tossing Sato’s son and Sode’s fiancé, Yomoschichi (Narutoshi Hayashi), off a waterfall.

It’s less a romance than a crime spree with wedding bells.

A year later, Iemon has married Oiwa and settled in Edo with their infant son, while Naosuke has slithered his way into Sode’s orbit. But domestic bliss bores Iemon, and the idea of being a respectable family man pales next to the chance to marry Oume Itō (Yôko Uraji), the daughter of nobleman Kihē Ito (San’emon Arashi). He and Naosuke hatch a plan straight out of a kabuki tabloid: poison Oiwa and pin adultery on her, clearing Iemon’s path to the big leagues. Enter Takuetsu (Ryônosuke Azuma), a hapless masseur bribed to seduce Oiwa. But instead of bedding her, he spills the plot. It’s too late—Oiwa, poisoned, finds her face disfigured with grotesque boils. In a delirium of rage, she slashes at Takuetsu and fatally wounds herself. Before she dies, she swears eternal vengeance. Iemon, never one to leave loose ends, kills Takuetsu, nails both corpses to shutters, and tosses them into the river like unwanted furniture.

When you said ‘til death do us part, you forgot the fine print.

On the very night Iemon weds Ume, the ghosts arrive to collect. Oiwa’s deformed spectre stalks him, and in his panic, he strikes at the ghost but, instead, slaughters not only his new bride but her parents as well—so much for social climbing. Seeking sanctuary in a Buddhist temple, Iemon finds only more torment. Oiwa’s spirit also pays a visit to Sode, leading her to discover that Yomoschichi survived his waterfall freefall. Reunited, they vow to avenge their families. At the temple, Naosuke tries to outfox Iemon, but ends up butchered for his trouble. When Yomoschichi and Sode confront the fallen samurai, Iemon is finally undone—not by steel, but by the phantoms of Oiwa and Takuetsu, who drive him into madness and leave him helpless. In the end, Oiwa’s spirit is restored to her former beauty, cradling her child in the afterlife, her revenge sated and her soul finally at peace.

So…um…a happy ending?

Stray Observations:

• Iemon might be the most useless samurai ever—he’s bad at loyalty, bad at ambition, and somehow manages to be bad at murder too.
• Poisoning someone via “medicine” is peak 18th-century villain efficiency. Subtle, but you still get caught by ghost karma.
• Fun fact: some productions of Yotsuya Kaidan in kabuki theatre were said to be cursed, because actors claimed strange accidents happened during performances. Imagine trying to collect hazard pay for that.
• Oiwa’s transformation is still terrifying despite being done with simple makeup effects—proof that you don’t need CGI to ruin a face (Hollywood, take notes).

“Her beauty rotted, but her rage is eternal.”

Kenji Misumi, best known in the West for directing samurai epics like Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub, takes a very different tack here. His direction is deliberate, almost suffocating, grounding the supernatural in a world of oppressive shadows and tatami rooms where every sliding door hides potential menace. Misumi understands that horror thrives on patience, and he milks each scene for dread rather than cheap shocks. Every pause, every lingering silence becomes a knife-edge of suspense, as though the film itself is holding its breath. It’s a filmmaker used to swordplay and spectacle, instead turning his blade inward, cutting down to the marrow of fear.

“Her whisper freezes the blood. Her gaze burns the soul.”

Cinematographer Yukimasa Makita’s work is equally essential. The film is drenched in chiaroscuro lighting, with heavy shadows swallowing corners of the frame, while Oiwa’s ghost often emerges from darkness with eerie precision. The camera lingers on faces—especially Iemon’s—as if trying to peel back his soul, and when Oiwa finally appears, the effect is unforgettable: less an apparition than the embodiment of rotting guilt. Makita frames these moments like living scroll paintings, balancing beauty and dread until they feel inseparable. The result isn’t just a ghost story, but a visual descent into psychological torment, where the boundaries between the external world and inner conscience collapse under the weight of betrayal.

Some brides toss the bouquet. Others toss your sanity.

In the larger context of Japanese horror, The Ghost of Yotsuya stands as a milestone. It’s part of a long lineage of kaidan tales, ghost stories rooted in Edo-period folklore and kabuki tradition, and arguably the most famous of them all. Long before Sadako crawled out of a television set in Ringu, Oiwa was setting the gold standard for vengeful spirits—an image of betrayal and injustice so potent it has been retold in film after film. Misumi’s version, however, captures that story with stark elegance, stripping away theatrical excess to focus on raw human cruelty and its spectral aftermath. In doing so, he not only honours the kabuki roots of the tale but also ensures that Oiwa’s suffering and vengeance resonate with a timeless, bone-deep chill.

She’s not just turning in her grave—she’s climbing out of it.

In conclusion, The Ghost of Yotsuya leaves you with the kind of chill that has nothing to do with sudden shocks and everything to do with festering guilt and betrayal. Misumi’s direction and Makita’s cinematography trap the story in claustrophobic darkness, while Oiwa’s ghost burns herself into cinema history as the ultimate avenger. It’s elegant, merciless, and still one of the defining works of Japanese horror.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) – Review

Some movies are classics because they’re brilliant. Others are classics because they’re accidents. And then there’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, a film so dedicated to proving “science has gone too far” that it basically becomes a PSA for never letting your boyfriend operate on you in a basement. It’s a Frankenstein riff, a medical morality tale, and an unintentional comedy masterpiece.

We open with Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers), the world’s smuggest young surgeon, pulling off a miracle by reviving a patient declared dead. His dad, Dr. Cortner Sr. (Bruce Brighton), instead of saying, “Nice work, son,” goes full lecture mode about how Bill is a reckless maniac with crazy ideas about transplants. It’s a bold stance — condemning your kid for saving lives — but hey, this is a B-movie. Clearly, the only way to show us that Bill is dangerous is to punish him with a severed head.

 

“No son of mine is going to be a mad scientist.”

Bill decides to take his fiancée, Jan Compton (Virginia Leith), up to the country house/laboratory where he stores his weird hobbies. On the way, the film decides “romantic car ride” is boring, so it stages the clumsiest car accident ever committed to celluloid. Bill walks away fine, but poor Jan loses her head — literally. Bill scoops it up like he’s picking leftovers from a buffet and rushes it home. In the basement, he and his Igor-knockoff assistant Kurt (Anthony La Penna), who has one mangled arm due to numerous failed arm transplants, plop Jan’s noggin in a dish of glowing Jell-O and call it science.

 

“Is this part of the ‘For better or for worse’ in our vows?”

Here’s where things really start to cook, or at least simmer: Jan is alive, in a tray, with no body. She begs to die, and Bill responds with, “Yeah, no thanks, babe. I’ve got plans.” His plan? Find her a new body by trolling burlesque clubs, beauty contests, and random sidewalks. Because when you’re a serious scientist, the only way to continue your work is to window shop like a pervert at the mall. Meanwhile, Jan develops psychic powers (sure, why not?) and chats with the lab’s caged mutant — a seven-foot giant (Eddie Carmel) with a face that looks like Play-Doh left out in the sun. With Jan’s urgings, the monster grabs and tears off Kurt’s arm – the good one, not the mutilated one – and the poor bastard dies of blood loss.

 

Sadly, mad science doesn’t come with death benefits.

Meanwhile, after an endless search for a good body, Bill finally settles on an old flame, Doris Powell (Adele Lamont), who has a scar on her face, which apparently makes her expendable in Bill’s surgical to-do list. He drugs her, hauls her back to the lab, and Jan screams telepathic bloody murder. Bill tapes Jan’s mouth shut (pro tip: not the best move when your girlfriend is already just a head in a pan). Naturally, the monster breaks loose, rips Bill’s face like it’s jerky, and the whole lab goes up in flames. Jan cackles maniacally as she finally gets her wish to die. Now, the monster does carry poor Doris out of the inferno, but to where?

 

“Shall we go throw daisies into the pond?”

Stray Observations:

• Jan begs to die repeatedly — but Bill doubles down, because what’s love if not performing ethically questionable lobotomies in your basement?
• Upon waking up as a severed head, Jan immediately begins planning her revenge – teaming up with the thing in the closet – and you to give her credit for not wasting time moping.
• Virginia Leith reportedly disliked the finished film enough that she refused to return for post-production, and some of Jan’s lines were later dubbed — which explains some of the film’s disjointed audio moments.
• Kurt, the crippled assistant, leaves the monster’s hatch unlocked. If there were an Academy Award for “Most Convenient Neglect,” Kurt would be nominated.
• The monster is played by Eddie Carmel, a real-life circus giant whose screen presence is far more interesting than the dialogue. The casting choice is peak B-movie audacity.
• The film’s original working title was The Black Door, and it was at one point considered to be marketed as I Was a Teenage Brain Surgeon. Whoever proposed that deserves a medal for marketing whimsy.

 

“And the winner for best supporting head goes to…”

Directed by Joseph Green, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die sits squarely in the late-’50s/early-’60s American cheapo sci-fi/horror tradition — drive-in fare built on a tiny budget but a big appetite for gimmicks. It trades on the era’s anxieties about medical hubris and body-horror (the same root that produced Frankenstein knockoffs and mad-scientist melodramas), but it also traffics in exploitation: gore, cheesecake, and lurid poster art. AIP’s double-feature circuit loved this material because it delivered thrills and titillation without asking for class or bank-breaking production values. In short, it’s exactly the kind of film that became midnight-movie canon for being gloriously ridiculous.

 

“Bill, I think we’re way outside the bounds of the Hippocratic Oath here.”

Green treats the script like Shakespeare and ends up with…community theatre Frankenstein. Jason Evers as Bill is hilariously committed to the part; he delivers lines like, “I’ll find you a body!” with such sincerity that you almost buy it. Virginia Leith, despite being reduced to a head in a pan, gives Jan surprising pathos (and later, dubbed sarcasm). Everyone else is just kind of there, orbiting around Eddie Carmel’s mutant, who steals the show by existing. Green shoots most of the movie in tight, static frames, which makes the absurdity more obvious — like he thought if the camera didn’t move, no one would notice the plot was nonsense.

 

He does throw in a catfight to spice things up.

Here, “special effects” means cheap rubber prosthetics applied with Elmer’s glue, and the monster — a seven-foot behemoth with an … interesting head — is physically imposing (thanks to Eddie Carmel’s stature) but visually crude. The severed-head-in-a-tray bit still manages to squirm into the viewer’s brain because the sound design and Virginia Leith’s anguish sell the concept more than the actual props do. It’s low-budget, occasionally inventive, and frequently hilarious in the way practical effects often are when they don’t quite meet the brief.

 

Who needs special effects when you’ve got cheesecake?

Joseph Green‘s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is a gleeful train wreck of scientific hubris, dubious moral choices, and small-town basement set design. But “great” isn’t the point; the point is that it exists, defiantly earnest and gloriously inelegant, like a roadside carnival attraction that refuses to go quietly. Watch it for the audacity, for the monster who steals scenes by eating faces and for the unrepentant moral cluelessness of its lead. It’s a B-movie that knows exactly how messy it should be, and for that messy, desperate energy alone, it’s an absolute midnight-screening treasure.

The Wraith (1986) – Review

In one of the most 80s movies ever made — and I mean that as both a compliment and a warning — we get Charlie Sheen showing up in a small Arizona town in the role of a mysterious stranger. At the very same time, a black, otherworldly turbo interceptor rolls into town like Darth Vader’s hot rod and starts tearing through the ranks of a local gang of car thieves. Coincidence? Of course not. This is the 80s: coincidence is just code for “Don’t worry about it, it’s cool.”

The premise of The Wraith is straight out of a midnight double-feature or an EC Comic. A murdered young man comes back from the grave, rebuilt as some kind of avenging angel — or, in this case, a biker leather-clad spirit fused with a Dodge M4S concept car. His mission? Exact stylish revenge on the gang of psychos who killed him, one fiery car wreck at a time. This idea owes more than a little to the 70s cult horror film The Car, where an evil vehicle stalks a desert town, but here the menace is flipped — the car is the good guy, or at least the anti-hero. The difference is that The Wraith adds neon lights, mullets, and synths until the whole thing practically bleeds VHS static.

 

This is how the 80s looked to me.

The movie opens in the sun-baked town of Brooks, Arizona, Packard Walsh (Nick Cassavetes) runs a gang of greaseball car thieves who terrorize locals with “race me or lose your ride” shakedowns. He also creepily claims Keri Johnson (Sherilyn Fenn) as his personal property, despite the fact that her boyfriend Jamie Hankins was brutally murdered not long ago. Enter Jake Kesey (Charlie Sheen), a mysterious new guy on a dirt bike whose body bears suspicious scars and whose timing is way too convenient to be random. He befriends Keri and Jamie’s brother, Billy Hankins (Matthew Barry), but clearly Jake isn’t just here to make small talk at the local swimming hole.

 

“Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat.”

Almost on cue, a black Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor — part concept car, part death machine — shows up with a faceless driver dressed like a motocross racer from hell. One by one, Packard’s gang members — including Skank (David Sherrill), Gutterboy (Jamie Bozian), and Rughead (Clint Howard), rocking the worst haircut in cinema) — get picked off in explosive street races that leave behind smouldering wrecks and corpses with burned-out eyes. Sheriff Loomis (Randy Quaid) tries to track the car, but it vanishes in clouds of neon light, making him look more confused than ever.

Note: Like the devil car in the 1977 classic The Car, this vehicle has no problem evading police and blowing through roadblocks.

With his gang reduced to roadkill, Packard panics, kidnaps Keri, and heads for the border — only to be stopped cold by the Wraith in a fiery head-on collision that even his mullet can’t walk away from. When the dust settles, Jake reveals himself to Keri and Billy as Jamie reborn, a ghost on borrowed time who came back to settle the score. He gifts Billy the Interceptor like it’s just another hand-me-down, then rides off with Keri into the desert moonlight, proving that in the 80s, even vengeance from beyond the grave can have a happy ending.

 

Wait a second, she rides off with a dead guy?

Stray Observations:

• Charlie Sheen filmed all his scenes in a single day before running off to Platoon. Blink too long and you’ll miss half his screen time—he’s in the movie for less than 30 minutes.
• There was a 1984 Saturday morning cartoon called Turbo Teen, which was about a teenager with the ability to transform into a sports car. I sense some DNA of that in this film.
• A vengeful figure arriving in a corrupt town to mete out supernatural justice was also the premise of the classic Clint Eastwood film, High Plains Drifter.
• This film also bears a lot of similarity in plot to the TV movie starring Charlie’s father, Martin Sheen, The California Kid (1974).
• Skank comments about The Wraith: “I don’t know, but whoever he was, he’s weird and pissed off!” An obvious nod to the John Carpenter classic The Thing. 
• Sherilyn Fenn is meant to be in high school here, though she looks like she wandered in from a perfume commercial instead of third-period algebra.
• Despite the supernatural setup, the film never bothers to explain the rules—The Wraith shows up, blows up cars, and apparently has ghost traffic laws of his own.

 

“Where we’re going, we don’t need rules.”

Written and directed by Mike Marvin, The Wraith’s influence goes way beyond its own decade. Anyone who’s read James O’Barr’s The Crow or seen Alex Proyas’ gothic 1994 movie will notice the family resemblance. Both stories revolve around a man brutally killed who returns from the grave to wipe out the gang responsible. It’s not just the broad strokes — Proyas even named one of the gang members Skank, directly lifting from The Wraith. So, while this film might look like an oddball relic now, it quietly seeded DNA into one of the most iconic revenge sagas of the ’90s.

 

“You’re all dead. You just don’t know it yet.”

The supporting cast is gloriously 80s as well. Nick Cassavetes chews scenery as Packard, the head psycho whose idea of flirting is literally threatening women at knifepoint. Randy Quaid shows up as a sheriff who seems permanently two steps behind, and Clint Howard (yes, Ron Howard’s brother, rocking a bizarre skullet-and-glasses combo) plays the gang’s nerdy mechanic. It’s a rogues’ gallery of car-obsessed cartoon villains just begging to be exploded in increasingly creative vehicular deaths — and the movie happily obliges.

 

Clint Howard never disappoints. 

But the real star isn’t Sheen (who disappears for chunks of the runtime, off running around Vietnam with Oliver Stone), or Sherilyn Fenn (the requisite love interest in denim cutoffs), or even Quaid. No, the star is that car. The Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor was a genuine concept car loaned to the production by Chrysler, and it looks like something that would’ve been at home in Blade Runner. Every time it screeches onscreen, the movie suddenly feels ten times cooler, even if the plot is held together with duct tape and engine grease.

 

“Eat your heart out, K.I.T.T.”

Watching The Wraith today, you can’t take it seriously — and that’s the point. It’s part supernatural slasher, part gearhead fantasy, part MTV music video. The desert landscapes glow with sun-baked menace, the soundtrack pumps out peak-80s tracks (Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol, Robert Palmer), and the vibe is pure drive-in pulp. Sure, it’s derivative. Sure, the dialogue sounds like it was written on a cocktail napkin. But when the movie is firing on all cylinders (literally), it’s a neon revenge fairytale where Charlie Sheen’s spirit warrior vaporizes bad guys in a killer car. How much more 80s can you get?

The Hearse (1980) – Review

Some movies slip through the cracks of horror history—not quite cult classics, not quite forgotten relics, but instead hovering in that strange purgatory where genre fans know of them without necessarily having seen them. The Hearse, directed by George Bowers, is exactly that sort of film.

On paper, The Hearse has all the makings of a gothic horror standout: an isolated old house with a tragic history, a small town with suspiciously nosy locals, a mysterious stranger who may or may not be a ghost, and, of course, the titular hearse, gliding down shadowy backroads like a rolling omen. But the actual film we get? Well, let’s just say the coffin lid doesn’t always shut tightly. The story follows Jane Hardy (Trish Van Devere), a recently divorced schoolteacher who retreats to the rural town of Blackford to spend the summer in her late aunt Rebecca’s house. From the start, Jane faces hostility from locals like attorney Walter Pritchard (Joseph Cotten), who claims the house should be his, and unsettling visions of both her aunt’s ghost and a phantom hearse that appears and vanishes without explanation.

 

Not to mention, nightmares that may be more than dreams.

Jane’s attempts to settle in are further complicated by strange nocturnal disturbances, Rebecca’s diary—which reveals her involvement with devil worship—and her budding romance with the enigmatic Tom Sullivan (David Gautreaux), who first appears after rescuing her from a car accident in his vintage black car. Though charming, Tom’s connection to Rebecca and the sinister events in town becomes increasingly suspicious, while Jane finds herself drawn deeper into the house’s dark history. Meanwhile, young handyman Paul Gordon (Perry Lang) develops his own attachment to Jane, only to be caught in the supernatural crossfire.

 

“Miss Hardy, have you ever heard of the term MILF?”

The final act confirms Jane’s worst fears: Rebecca had made a pact with Satan, and Tom is not only linked to her but may in fact be the same man—undead, Immortal, and bound to fulfill the pact through Jane. After the deaths of both Pritchard and Paul, Jane learns the truth and is nearly ensnared in Tom’s bargain before Reverend Winston (Donald Hotton) intervenes with an attempted exorcism. The climax escalates into a desperate chase as Tom pursues Jane in the hearse, ending in fiery destruction when it crashes and explodes off a cliff. Yet even in defeat, the evil lingers—Rebecca’s apparition watching from the darkened house, as though the pact has never truly ended.

 

Don’t worry, there will not be a sequel.

Stray observations:

• If horror films have taught me anything, it’s that visiting your old hometown will lead to nothing but trouble. Just ask Ben Mears about his trip back to Salem’s Lot.
• If on your first night in an old house, a music box plays by itself, and is then not where you left it the following morning, pack your things and get out. That’s just common sense.
• She’s run off the road multiple times, someone breaks into her house, but she never calls the police. And sure, the sheriff’s a creep, but you could at least file a report.
• The film is practically allergic to speed — it takes almost an hour before anything truly happens, making it feel like a gothic horror trapped inside a real-estate dispute.
• Jane Hardy spends more time wandering through her aunt’s house than anyone spends wandering in Scooby-Doo. You start to think the real horror is poor interior lighting.
• The townspeople are weirdly hostile to Jane from the very first scene. Imagine moving to a small town and immediately having everyone tell you to get lost — it’s like The Wicker Man, but with less music and more awkward silences.
• Dennis Quaid shows up uncredited as a telephone repairman, and it had me questioning whether this was a horror film or a porno.

 

“Did someone call for a hook-up?”

The strongest element here is the sense of mood. Bowers leans heavily into gothic trappings—foggy woods, candlelit hallways, a piano that seems to play by itself—and the titular hearse, a black, silent, almost sentient vehicle that stalks Jane at odd moments, works well as a recurring image. There are even flashes of Carnival of Souls in the way the hearse appears: sudden, spectral, inexplicable. When the film embraces its uncanny imagery, it has a kind of dreamy potency, the sense that Jane has stepped into a nightmare that obeys its own strange rules.

 

Safety Tip: Do not approach a hearse in your nightgown at night.

But atmosphere can only take a movie so far, and The Hearse too often mistakes slow-burn pacing for suspense. Scenes that should build tension tend to drag, and Jane spends a lot of the movie wandering, staring, or repeating the same cycle of being spooked, doubted, and dismissed. The “romantic” subplot, with David Gautreaux as the charming yet suspicious Tom Sullivan, and Joseph Cotton’s turn as a shady lawyer, feels like padding rather than a plot. The supposed “mystery” of whether Jane is losing her mind or whether supernatural forces are really at work is handled with such clumsy repetition that by the time the finale arrives, the audience is more exasperated than intrigued.

 

We get a lot of wandering around in the dark.

Still, there’s something endearing about its old-fashioned earnestness. This was 1980, after all—the year that Friday the 13th and the slasher boom hit big—yet The Hearse looks backward instead of forward, clinging to gothic horror traditions of the ‘60s and ‘70s. In some ways, that makes it an oddity worth revisiting. It’s not interested in gore, not really interested in innovation, and definitely not interested in the new wave of horror excess. Instead, it’s a moody little throwback, caught between ghost story and melodrama, with occasional jolts of supernatural menace. The Hearse’s grill is even more evil-looking than the one from The Car (1977).

 

Sadly, it doesn’t have that one’s cool honking horn.

Does it succeed? Not entirely. The acting wavers, the script is repetitive, and the scares rarely land with much force. And yet, if you’re in the right frame of mind—say, late at night, with the lights down and the volume up—the movie can lull you into its creaky rhythms. The sight of the black hearse, its headlights cutting through mist as it silently appears and disappears, remains a striking image, and that alone almost justifies its minor cult reputation.

 

There’s always room for one more.

In the end, The Hearse is the kind of movie you watch less for thrills and more for vibes. It’s gothic wallpaper, a ghost story whispered half-heartedly, but there’s a certain charm in its refusal to be anything other than what it is: a small, slightly dusty horror curio. Not quite alive, not quite dead—much like the hearse itself, endlessly circling backroads, carrying something you can’t quite see but feel all the same.