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.
Invitation to Hell
1982 Directed by Michael J. Murphy
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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.
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Birth Year Challenge (27/36)
Hooperstar 666 Film #3A 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!
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Satanic folk horror Invitation to Hell is 43 minutes of ultra low-budget fun. With a relentless synth score that never pauses for breath, and several gory and inventive murders, it feels akin to the North American regional horror movies of the 1970s, only with a cornucopia of different English accents.
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I knew this Murphy film was about the occult and such, but people had failed to inform me that there's a slasher in here as well.
Invitation to Hell has the production and lo-fi synth sounds of murderdrone with the budget ambition curio of American trash filmmakers. I love how accepting the main woman is of being captive to Satanists (or whatever they're supposed to be). Even at half the length of a regular feature there's enough sleaze to make it feel like a big ol' thing, and not just a pet project, though it certainly does look like such as a whole. I had a good time. Hypnotic at times. I would recommend to slasher completists and cult fans.
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I don't even know. British shenanigans with some mute fit good looking guy and a bonfire and some demon tacked on at the end.
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City girl Jacky accepts an invitation to a party at the remote rural farmhouse of her old college friend Laura, played by the enigmatic Catherine Rowlands (who looks uncannily like Caroline Aylward getting her money’s worth out of the Death in the Family wig). But what should be a fun getaway in the country with old friends soon descends into a Robin Redbreast/Wicker Man situation as she finds herself the target of an ancient occult presence long dormant in the land.
Quite the lurch from Murphy’s previous sedate seaside thrillers to this gonzo folk horror slasher. Not an ounce of fat on it, it rattles along at a great pace, and manages to cram in a hunky farmhand getting his…
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The version I watched was 43 minutes. It was amazing. All the usual eye-rolling joys of barrel-bottom synthdrone slashers but with the fat (mostly) trimmed, and replete with frightful English accents, genuinely great kills, nice on-location British countryside shooting, and a soupçon of occult/folk horror. This had me rolling & rapt in about equal measure.
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Wooden, unintelligible, built on a foundation of hypnotically woozy synths. Just how I like 'em.
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You have to trudge you A LOT of amateur acting and piss-poor production values to get to a fairly eventful, hellish finale.
Creative looking demon murders some teens including one that gets crucified against his pinup clippings (!!!!!!!) will inevitably overcome any incompetence.
Still hard to recommend since only 15% of this is good.
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From the opening synth jab that scared the shit out of my cat, I could tell that this was going to be one of the good ones. The blown out dialog walks the line between incomprehensible and perfectly crunchy. The hypnotic, heavy vibes just wash over you. Nonstop analog synth drone and rural England shot with a sheen of fuzzy haze. Perfect start to this, the spookiest of the seasons.
Also, maybe I just think this because they're British, but it's a rare S.O.V. movie that seems to star fully functional, sane adults? Which just adds to the dream drone
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Another gem from the sadly overlooked Michael J Murphy