I recently scored most of these movies on Blu-ray and just tossed Mirror of Death in as a bonus in this post because it’s from the same director as Bloodspell. it was on Tubi, and I need to see and own every horror movie I somehow missed in the 1980s before I die. Ironically, I think it’s the one I had the most fun with, but it’s currently only available on out-of-print DVD and selling for ridiculous prices on the used market.
BLOODSPELL (aka: The Boy from Hell) (1988)
This is like a male version of Carrie…at an orphanage…filled with 20-something orphans It’s as bad as direct-to-video horror of the 80s gets.
The adult kids at the orphanage are pretty much a bunch of assholes (not the assholes you’d see in the kind of 80s film the two guys above look like they’d be in…), so maybe I misunderstood and it’s actually a home for troubled kids. Their housemother is wacky, and the main kid they constantly harass has anger issues.
Then a woman drops her son off there to keep him safe from his evil father. That doesn’t work out. The psycho father shows up at the orphanage and possesses his son. I totally don’t understand this movie.
No, it’s not that. It’s just a thumb.
Anyway, the possessed son starts to do awful things to the other kids (who deserve it)—like setting one on fire and luring another into a wood chipper. The main kid realizes something is up with the newcomer, but no one will listen to him.
Silliness ensues until the kids can finally draw the dad out of his son to battle him face to face, and he looks like a corpse for some reason. I think maybe the dad died during an incident that occurs earlier in the movie, and so he’s basically a ghost, but I’m not sure.
MIRROR OF DEATH (aka: Dead of Night) (1988)
I watched this on Tubi right after killing some time watching an episode of Freddy’s Nightmares from the same era, and I can definitely say this silly low budget 80s flick feels just like an episode of that show. It’s blurry, nonsensical, late 80s nostalgia, and for that reason, I kind of liked it.
It also helps that it is so ridiculous that it could only come from the direct-to-VHS era. Our main girl escapes her abusive boyfriend the same night her sister is given a book of Haitian rituals at a party. The main girl stays with the sister and her husband, finds the book, and begins doing the rituals with candles in front of a mirror.
She appears to become possessed by a seductress, so she goes out to bars and seduces, naturally. She lures guys to her sister’s place then kills them, but the kills are rather bland.
Eventually, her sister catches her burying a body in the yard, and she decides to admit she killed a bunch of men. This is where things get ridiculous. Despite the possessed main girl bashing her sister over the head with the shovel when discovered burying bodies, the sister and her husband decide they need to keep the dead bodies a secret and call in a goofy dude who is supposed to be an exorcist. They draw the demon, who appears as a doppelgänger of the main girl, out of her body to conquer it. Like, it’s literally a physical manifestation that can simply be shot. Ah. The 80s.
BLOOD SYMBOL (1992)
This one is co-directed by the director of End of the Line, a favorite movie of mine. Shooting for this one began in 1984 and was completed in 1991, the main actress left during production and was replaced by a double, which required far shots, and the audio wasn’t recorded during filming, so they had to create an audio track by guessing what the actors were saying. However, there actually isn’t that much dialogue when all is said and done.
This is definitely a low budget production with rough film quality, but it does capture the very basic vibe of 80s movies that featured a high school kid being stalked by some sort of supernatural entity. They are actually the highlight here. While it’s definitely overkill, the many stalking sequences feature tight editing and camerawork that makes it seem like this is just one long demo reel showing what the director could do if given enough money to make a better movie.
Very briefly, the story is about our main girl being stalked mostly through the halls of her school and at home by a dude who looks like a flasher with a bad complexion. This shit is like Charlie Brown, because there are virtually no adults in sight.
The main girl does some reading and learns about a cult from centuries ago that needs blood from “the chosen ones” in order to become immortal. Safe to assume she is one of the chosen ones.
There’s not much more to it than that. She interacts with a few friends and a boyfriend, there’s a totally 80s sighting of a Trapper Keeper (awesome), there’s a bit of blood, and eventually the main girl has to fight the evil low budget style. It might not hold up today, but I definitely appreciate it for the director’s potential, and I don’t think I would have been totally disappointed watching this one back in the day.
BASEMENT JACK (2009)
There’s nothing more classic than beginning a slasher with sex in a car during a rainstorm. This scene really sets up the visual aesthetic of this film, which I think is one of the highlights.
The story is about an escaped killer who murders families in their house during rainstorms. We meet plenty of side players in a town he is now targeting, plus we get a rookie cop and a young woman he sort of teams up with because her family was killed by this dude, and she wants to find him. In fact, he’s trying to find her, too.
For me, that is the part that ends up getting in the way of the fun. Despite his brooding appearance, with long, disheveled hair and psychotic eyes, the killer is just background noise to the main girl and all the trouble she’s getting in for hindering police business.
Other than that, the kill scenes are bloody and macabre, Lynn Lowry play the abusive mother of the killer in flashbacks, Tiffany Shepis has a minor role as a cop, and veteran actor Joel Brooks, who used to guest star on tons of sitcoms and played Mrs. Garrett’s son on The Facts Of Life, has a small role. One of the best parts of the film is most definitely a massacre Basement Jack pulls off at the police station.
