Synopsis
Your nightmares will never be the same again.
When a young girl visiting a friend's mansion in the English countryside is suddenly taken prisoner after a costume party, she realizes that darker forces may be preventing her from leaving.
1982 Directed by Michael J. Murphy
When a young girl visiting a friend's mansion in the English countryside is suddenly taken prisoner after a costume party, she realizes that darker forces may be preventing her from leaving.
This feels like a nightmare you'd have when you're three after watching forty seconds of a soap opera with "scary" music. This review assumes that you, the reader, were also born in 1988. And because my comments are turned off you have no way of proving you weren't.
I quite enjoyed slasher Blood on Satan's Claw, I found the crucifixion on page 3 posters hilarious as well.
I do wonder did John Carpenter ask for his score back?
Sitting in the dark with droning Casio keyboard. An 8mm nightmare. The microbudget horror movies of Michael J. Murphy are a good pass/fail test for basic artistic literacy. Do you look at this and see a good or bad movie? Think carefully before you answer.
an eerie, brisk exercise in regional SOV dread, achieving in ~44 minutes what countless modern horror feature-lengths only hope to come close to doing, weaving zero-budget charm between wooden acting and glorious, glorious gore into a supernatural slasher, emerging perfectly in the ripe early years of the 80s like a blurred, post-Fulci/pre Ittenbach haze. phenomenally rendered, especially given its constraints, and gorgeously restored—a late, but new essential for micro-genre heads.
not usually one to rate short (“short,” as in, anything sub-70 minutes) films, but, seems only right to do so with cracking open this Powerhouse/Indicator box.
1980s / Favorite Horror / Favorite Short Films / Scores + OSTs / No Mans Land: Regional Horror Oddities
I cracked open that Michael J. Murphy box set from Indicator and, not knowing where to start, I decided to go for the film featured on the cover of the box set itself. I mean, it’s what made me drop $80 plus bucks on a filmmaker I had never heard of before. I was not disappointed.
I loved this film. It gave me everything I could have possibly wanted. A short running time (44 minutes). A plot that is never fully explained. Some British folk horror. Some nifty kills. October vibes. A perfect way to start out my exploration of this set.
I wonder if anything else will match the magic of this film for me. It’s fine if it doesn’t. But I sure hope that it does.
the british equivalent of a WAVE film, only here shot on actual film stock, delivering a decidedly lean (only 44 minutes) burst of genre imagination on a shoestring budget that melds slasher conventions with the supernatural and bops along to drone soundtrack that pairs well with stark images of the occult and bargain bin gore, all rendered in grainy small gauge film stock, which gives this the mood of watching an early 80s home movie turned nightmare -- as if unearthing a family's long lost vacation footage, one that opens with a costume party and ends with flames
Kind of a lo-fi soap opera teetering on the edge of becoming a snuff film. This would probably be kind of dull if weren’t for the synth score rumbling throughout; it sounds like the composer is playing live while watching the film, and it adds a nice sinister strangeness to the whole thing. It may just lull you to sleep depending on how late you’re watching. Worth checking out if only to see a demon crucify a man against a wall of nude pinups.
A woman goes to a party and discovers that her friends wanted her there so she could be sacrificed to the devil.
One thing that Michael J. Murphy does so well, is just give you the premise right away, no beating around the bush, so he can then explore it in interesting ways for no money. Reading that above premise, you'd assume it's a big reveal at the end, but nope, it happens within five minutes! Where it goes from there is what makes it really special.
And he does it in 45 minutes.
When the movie opens with a green man wearing a Hulk mask, you know you're in for a good time. Probably.
Invitation to Hell is best described as Michael J Murphy doing his own Rosemary's Baby. A woman visits an old college roommate for a costume party only to discover she's bait for a Pagan deity to impregnate with unholy offspring. Why? She's a virgin, of course! Cue many scenes of her trying to leave and being told she can't, and attempting in vain to thwart the curse. It's always lazy when the heroes complete the ritual or whatever to stop the evil and then they lose anyway for the sake of a stinger, but funny enough the sacrificial virgin…
Did Catherine Rolands / Caroline Aylward just pull a reverse Lina Romay / Candy Coaster by throwing on a black wig??? This follows her wig in “Death in the Family.”
I LOVE the tone here. Dreamy mood piece with elements of homegrown / regional horror and folk horror. The soundtrack works so well. I think this is the type of film I and many others expected from Michael J. Murphy - but I have loved seeing his giallo-esque, experimental, and myth-fueled journey before this. Unlike his other earlier work, this doesn’t feel like a theatre piece.
I might watch this again soon as a double-bill with “Beyond Dream's Door.”
Also:
* “Morris” is kinda hot!
* “Rick” has been so cute ever since my “Stay” watch
Link: Michael J Murphy Ranked
Magic, Myth & Mutilation: The Micro-Budget Cinema of Michael J. Murphy, 1967-2015
Michael Murphy took a huge leap here into full-on horror mode, and it's kind of glorious, even in all of its cheap aesthetic, unremarkable acting, and dodgy effects. The story, at least, was fascinating, if simple. A woman is called to a party at the farmhouse of her college chum, where she becomes the center of a supernatural conspiracy. No one is able to leave the farm, but no one will tell her why. It's chilling in a lo-fi way, and it turns into a slasher and a folk horror with some awesome kills and a kooky but cool creature. It's super-short at only 45 minutes, but it packs a lot into its runtime. Lots of fun!
Birth Year Challenge (27/36)
Hooperstar 666 Film #3
A woman goes to a costume party, but she doesn’t know it’s a costume party, so they provide one for her. Fun times are had, until the woman is drugged, and something mysterious takes place. The next morning, her friend is like “I’m so sorry, but I can’t tell you what happened to you last night, and also none of us are allowed to leave this house.” It turns out to all be part of a Druid ritual. Some people die. The dialogue is all very flat, synth music plays over every second of the movie, and even the murders are presented very matter-of-factly. For whatever reason, I kind of really loved this style and being inside of this world. Very glad I RSVP’ed to this Invite to Hell!