Twisted Nightmare (1987)

Well here we go with another slasher from the ‘80s.  This time around we have a killer that goes after some teenagers (played by much older actors) in the woods because he wants some revenge.  Yeah I know I’ve never heard of such a thing…  Really though originality isn’t Twisted Nightmare’s strong point.  The kids go off in alone one by one and get picked off by the killer.  Now to be fair there is a nifty bit with the area being cursed by an Indian Medicine man, but mostly this is about what you would expect.  A body count that ends with a final surviving girl. 

Then again there isn’t anything wrong with giving your audience what it expects.  Twisted Nightmare is clearly inspired by the movies that preceded it.  We get the hulking supernatural killer that is immune to bullets (Jason after part V).  He even is created by an accident that sets him on fire (The Burning).  Hell for one of the kills a machete just sort of shows up.  Not only that but I’ve seen most of the memorable kills before including a couple getting pinned together (Friday the 13th part II), some mayhem with a pitchfork (My Bloody Valentine) and a guy getting pinned to the wall (Halloween) though it is with a pitchfork this time around.  Now I’ve heard that the movie was supposedly made in the early ‘80s, which if it was then predates some of this stuff.  But then again after doing some research I’ve also noticed that that filming dates from the director of the movie puts it in the mid ‘80s when it was released.  So I am trying to be fair here. 

Either way we do get a good body count and some decent gore.  The effects aren’t going to be up to say Friday the 13th or the uncut My Bloody Valentine, but they are good enough.  And as I’ve already said there is a good body count, so we get a lot of it.  Another thing that the movie delivers on is the female nudity.  I always feel like a pervert when I bring this up, but it is an important part of the slasher movie formula, and Twisted Nightmare delivers the goods.  These are my positives for the movie, now I need to talk about the negatives.

Twisted Nightmare has terrible acting, even when judged on the scale of a low budget horror movie.  There are a couple of characters that angry, happy, and scared speak in the same monotone voice.  They are clearly reciting memorized lines and it is distractingly bad.  The other big issue with the movie is the pacing.  In spite of the nudity and kills this movie is so freaking slow.  We get far too many scenes of inane dialogue that does nothing to move the plot along.  This combined with a flashback that is supposed to set the story up, but instead just causes questions and confusion.  I mean a guy just catches on fire and then runs into the yard.  This flashback is followed by the character reciting the story saying, “and they never found his body.”  Dude it is right over there by the house!  There isn’t a cliff or a lake for him to fall over or into… 

In the end we have good kills and nudity being drug down by terrible acting and an awful story/script.  I will give the movie some credit for being entertaining on some level because of the positives, but overall it is mediocre at best.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2011 John Shatzer