User Reviews

The summary provided by my cable TV guide made it sound a lot more interesting than it actually is. "Slaughterhouse Rock" is by far the worst horror film that I have ever seen, a title previously held by "Urban Legends: Final Cut". From its opening scene I could tell it's going to be really bad, but I was so bored that I couldn't care less. This film contains laughable acting, especially by the guy who's tormented in his dreams, incredible as in not credible plot twists, and some of the crappiest music I've heard, and I'm living in a period when the likes of Britney Spears and Nsync dominate the air waves. The biggest problem with "Slaughterhouse Rock" is that it's not funny. One would a film as dull and boring and so NOT scary as this would try to spice things up a bit with a few funny one-liners here and there, but no. We have Tormented Guy's self-centered friend trying to be funny, but came across as annoying instead. (spoiler) And please, do tell me, who in this crazy world is insane and self-loathing enough to visit a creepy jail in the middle of the night? No one! If you're going to make a horror movie, at least make it believable. This one is anything but.

Dimitri Logothetis is still out there making movies. Just last year, he made the Nicholas Cage film Jui-Jitsu and before that he rebooted the Kickboxer movies. But way back when, he made this metal-themed film that finds a college kid named Alex Gardner (Nicholas Celozzi) reliving the murders of a vicious killer who died on Alcatraz.

You know, it's your typical human drama where your friends find you floating above a bed and when a college professor finds out, instead of recommending therapy, they tell you to go to Alcatraz and face down the ghost of the killer.

Of course, Alex's brother gets possessed by the killer, so our hero has to find a ghost for help. That ghost would be Sammy Mitchell (Toni Basil), who was once the singer for the band Bodybag. Seeing as how she's played by the woman who was one of the original seven Lockers, a dancer in films like Head and the choreographer of the Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime" - among so many other creative things - Sammy teaches our hero how to dance.

Dance your heart out Alex, so that your friends can blow your demon-addled brother up real good on Alcatraz! Now there's a metal lyric that I just wrote, free of charge, that your band may use for inspiration.

Well after three times through I still have no idea what this movie is about because, quite honestly, it failed to generate any real interest or concern. But here it goes: A bunch of too old to be teen Teen Actors dressed in horrifying latter 1980's fashions (did WE look like that too??) decide it would be a really good idea to get in a motorboat and go visit the abandoned Alcatraz after one of them has nightmares of people being slaughtered in various horrifying ways that manage to rip off POLTERGEIST, THE EVIL DEAD, and Freddy Kreuger in one fell swoop. The dimwit even envisions himself being roasted over an open fire with some deformed freak slicing off strips of tenderloin. Good thing it was only a dream or it might have hurt, and good thing his dreams had a decent special effects budget. Mine are usually pretty lame: Girls, model space ships, blowing things up with a bazooka, etc.

Once on the Alcatraz island they find themselves in a Slasher movie, and meet up with Tony Basil, who cannot help but break into a couple dance poses at times and had her own lighting crew (complete with a smoke machine for that 1980's smoky haze infused light look, which I kind of miss). And such reminded me that Ms. Basil helped choreograph David Byrne of the Talking Heads for some of his videos and performances. This of course has nothing at all to do with the film but kept popping into mind as the movie posed very little to actually think about. It sort of happens, and you can either watch or keep working on your page markup with it on the TV set off to the side. But since the film isn't really interesting, you'll keep deciding to finish one last thing instead of wasting time, the movie will keep ending, and you'll find yourself wondering what you missed every time you realize the end credits are starting to roll again, dammit ...

*SOME* 1980's Teen Horror movies can survive such specialized viewing: Umberto Lenzi's GHOSTHOUSE, CHOPPING MALL & it's Killbots, the hard to ignore NIGHT OF THE CREEPS and the over-the-top SLEEPAWAY CAMP all come to mind. They are films that, like them or not, demand your attention and usually pay off with some good gore or T&A, and typos in your work as evidence that you were watching the TV instead of your keyboard. I am sure that HELL ISLAND (as the British version I glommed onto is titled) does indeed have some good stuff in there, but frankly I don't care. And nothing is more annoying that encountering art of any genre that doesn't inspire admiration, some decent dislike or even good old honest hatred for it. The film is content with simpering away 80-whatever minutes of time and never really accomplishing anything more than being a sometimes distraction in spite of my best efforts to try and give it a chance, but no dice.

There is some offbeat production design going on, the use of lighting is striking at times, and the occasional outburst of mayhem will probably keep fans of 1980's Teen Horror interested. The rest of you be warned though: YOU WILL WONDER IF YOU DRESSED LIKE THAT IN 1987, and the answer is probably more hideous than anything which happens on screen. Try to watch it as a free rental if possible so that if disappointed you aren't stuck with the damn thing: Movies like this take up valuable shelf space that is often at a commodity these days, what with the world coming to an end & all ...

The late 80's saw an inexplicable rash of supernatural horror films set in gloomy penitentiary settings. Renny Harlin's superbly gritty and moody "Prison" got the whole haunted hoosegow ball rolling; it was immediately followed by the markedly inferior "The Chair," John Saxon's enjoyably trashy "Death House," the passable psycho picture "Destroyer," and this hideously limp'n'lethargic exercise in hopelessly comatose tedium.

Your usual annoying collection of horribly unsympathetic college student chowderheads lead by insufferably spineless tormented twerp Alex (the hugely unappealing Nicholas Celozzi) go to Alcatraz Island to investigate the bizarre circumstances surrounding the sudden gruesome death of up-and-coming rock star Sammy Mitchell (blandly played by Toni Basil of "Hey Micky" fame). Alex's brother becomes possessed by the evil demonic spirit of a vicious cannibalistic US Civil War cavalry commandant and goes on the expected killing spree, thus forcing wimpy Alex to overcome his passivity and make a stand against this ghoulish specter.

Although slickly photographed by Nicholas Von Sternberg, with a few decent gore set pieces and a fair amount of spooky atmosphere (the film was shot on location in the dismal, rusty, rundown ruins of Alcatraz Island), "Slaughterhouse rock" nonetheless just doesn't cut it as a solid, effective fright feature. This is largely due to the uniformly obnoxious and unlikeable collegiate smartaleck characters, a tiresomely smirky bunch whose inane comic antics prove to be grating rather than amusing. The flat acting from a noticeably disinterested cast hurts matters all the more, with onetime "Playboy" playmate and undeniable blonde cutie pie hottie supreme Hope Marie Carlton doing an especially irritating Linnea Quigley impersonation as the token oversexed nympho bimbo. Dimitri Logothetis' direction displays a modicum of flashy visual style, but the tone is unevenly pitched between grim seriousness and goofy, horrendously sophomoric silliness, and, most damagingly, Ted Landon's sloppy, inconsistent, overly complicated and finally quite confusing script miserably fails to develop the necessary internal logic to make the far-fetched story even remotely plausible. In other words, this stinker sadly succeeds in making a scant 90 minutes seem like an excruciatingly drawn-out cinematic jail sentence.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK is a cheap and cheesy horror film from the 1980s that feels very much like a rip-off of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. The story is about an ordinary guy who is plagued by sinister nightmares involving demons and death, so he decides to take a trip to the abandoned Alcatraz prison with some friends and family members in order to figure out what's going on.

Once there trouble soon begins when the guy's own brother is transformed into a demon with a penchant for human flesh. Luckily, a friendly female ghost is on hand to give him advice. And the latter sentence encapsulates all that's wrong with this film. The idea of having friendly, comedic ghosts hanging around imparting advice belongs in a kid's movie, not a supposedly adult film like this, and such scenes feel at odds with the various gore and effects on display elsewhere. Otherwise, it's very much a typical '80s production, with cheesy acting and rubbery effects inspired by the likes of FRIGHT NIGHT and AN American WEREWOLF IN London. It's not a classic, that's for sure.

Vinegar Syndrome Cuts #19

Slaughterhouse Rock (1988)

(8/10):Another Rock'n'Roll Horror flick of the eighties and I actually enjoyed this one more than Hard Rock Zombies.

It's bizarre as I think it was a supernatural slasher? At least I thought that going in but it didn't really have many kills, however it makes up for that in having some actually solid rock tunes, like some actually have good production value to them and aren't just played by the actors who are more or less amateurs.

Well we get a group of teens who visit Alcatraz Prison after one of them starts having bizarre dreams about people who have died there and then when they get there his brother becomes possessed and he has to work with the ghost of a female heavy metal singer to fight the monster.

So I don't know why I thought it was a slasher, but it is has some awesome visuals and strange scenes that do actually have some nice foggy atmosphere.

It's got a comedic aspect to it so it doesn't take itself too seriously and just decides to have fun with it, the demon that possesses his brother sometimes just nonchalantly stands there and makes sarcastic remarks, it's so cheesy.

Overall it's still not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination but it's silly fun entertainment that also I keep forgetting that it was actually scored by a member,maybe the whole group but at least a member of Devo! So that's why it had such great production value on the Music.

It's cheesy and fun, nothing more to say.

I love this movie so much I bought it on VHS and DVD, and seen them a lot... Sure, the plot isn't very original, but the effects I think were well done and graphic enough to please horror fans like myself. The location was creepy enough for me, the first time I watched I kept waiting for something or someone to jump out (and it did lol).

I found all the male cast members very attractive which didn't hurt either. For the guys there is the lovely and talented Hope Marie Carlton who appears nude and/or semi-nude a few times ( I'm a straight female, but have always enjoyed watching Hope in all of her movies, nude or not).