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The Worst Film Ever

The Age of Commercialism

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Conrad Radzoff is more or less a combination of Vincent Price and Christopher Lee:two famous Gothic horror icons.He sleeps in his coffin like Bela Lugosi and he considers himself a superstar.Unfortunately the times of his stardom are falling apart as he only gets silly roles in commercials.So Conrdad kills his director and after murder he suddenly dies.His body is kept in creepy Gothic mausoleum.A group of university students decide to steal his coffin and defile his corpse.But Conrad isn't really dead.He rises from his slumber and kills defilers one by one..."Frightmare" by Norman Thaddeus Vane is a likable supernatural slasher with few gory deaths including decapitated Jeffrey Combs.The storyline is absurd with standard scare techniques,but if you like supernatural slashers with levitating coffins give this one a chance.7 horror stars out of 10.

Not to be confused with Peter Walker's 1974 British shocker of the same title, the early 80s "Frightmare" was a cheesy low-budget supernatural slasher made the more interesting for it having Jeffrey Combs taking on his first main role. Other than that it was an unmemorable drawn-out fare, which sadly had a fun macabre premise which had shades of "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things", "The House of Seven Corpses", "Theatre of Death" and "One Dark Night" but the execution while proficient was stodgily drab with little imagination. Although some atmosphere did find its way in, especially with the fog machine getting a good workout within its shadowy foundation. After the death of a legendary horror actor, a group of film students steal his corpse from the crypt and go about fooling around with it within the house where the actor had made some of his best pictures. However they didn't count on the actor's corpse coming back to life to exact revenge on them. Ferdy Mayne's histrionically high maintenance turns as horror icon Conrad Radzoff is full of Grand Guignol as he comes back as a vengeful corpse reliving his glory horror days. In murderous impulses, he starts getting migraines (well that's what it looks like)… actually he's using mind control as he goes knocking off the obnoxiously detestable bunch of characters which featured the likes of Scott Thompson, Luca Bercovici and Nita Talbot as the actor's selfish wife. These were a rowdy bunch you cheered, when they succumb to their grisly fate. Of the lot, Bercovivi and Comb's deaths were the picks. The offbeat script (namely with those live interactive moments) is disjointed and gets a bit repetitive, but it had an amusingly diabolical sense of humour to go along with its cheap jolts and crazy low-rent special effects. A silly, slipshod b-horror movie."Let's call it a wrap".

There are a few positive things I can say about "Frightmare". Ferdy Mayne is well cast as the villainous horror actor - he's a cross of Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, and Bela Lugosi, and the movie gets a burst of energy whenever he's in action. Second, while this was a low budget movie, it doesn't look as cheap as other low budget horror movies of the era. Also, there is a lot of atmosphere here. There's a moody feel to most of the movie, and it could have been part of a great movie, which this isn't. This movie is extremely slow, for one thing. How slow? Well, for one thing, it takes over half of the movie before the first of the youths is killed. And none of the kills is that spectacular or memorable. Also, we learn nothing about these youths. They have no personalities, just brainless pieces of flesh that are waiting to be slaughtered. The movie also has poorly recorded audio that makes it hard to make out dialogue at times. If you still decide to buy this on DVD despite my warnings, beware. The Troma DVD release of the movie is not only full-frame, but has some video glitches, suggesting they simply copied from an ex-rental video tape.

Alright, I will be the very first to say that this is not a great film, but then ninety-nine percent of the horror films made are pure garbage. This one rises a little better than that. Ferdy Mayne (of Roman Polanski's "Dance of th Vampires") Is well suited to the vainglorious, aging horror star, determined to control things even after death. He manages to get his revenge from beyond the grave, against some college film students who have failed to respect his final remains, stealing his body from his mausoleum to have a party in his honor. Some of the acting is less than memorable, but there are true chills if you set out to watch this one in a dark room, all alone, after midnight. It is at least a middle of the road horror classic.