Hellgate - 1989

What the fuck is going on here?  I add several movies to my Amazon queue thinking they're about zombies, this and Cave of the Living Dead, and then it turns out neither of them are zombie movies?!  Whose dick do I have to suck to get a freaking zombie movie goin here?  If it turns out that the other one I added, called fucking "Vengeance of the Zombies" also doesn't have zombies, I go on strike.  Which means, nothing really.  It's not like I get paid for this shit.  Basically it just means I get really angry, and write more reviews while drunk most likely.

Again, this movie had me set to enjoy a zombie flick.  Check da poster: 

You know on second thought, this did have people that were brought back from the dead, sort of the definition of a zombie, but I wanted a movie that was like the "zombie" zombie movie.  Where they bite, they're chasing people around, they're all decayed and gross and shit, they're idiotic, you know the typical zombie thing.  This is like, mystical magic brings people back but they're still intelligent, and they drive cars, and they obey their master - it's kinda like the dead people vampires can bring back in anime shows like Hellsing.  The "familiar", you know?

Yeah well whatever.  This one starts with some people telling scary stories.  This girl starts to tell one about a guy whose daughter was killed.  The father of the killed girl then finds a magic crystal which brings things back from the dead- although they also turn evil and then explode.  To living things, it just kills them.  Eventually he masters it, raises his daughter, and uses his undead daughter to get revenge on seemingly anyone.  The undead girl, Abigail Wolcott, is really hot and has some nudity, so, WIN.  Also the movie stars Ron Palillo, who was in a TV show called Welcome Back Kotter, which I've never seen.

Why did watching this film make me want to see old animal attack movies again?  Specifically I want to watch the movie Dogs from 1976.  Look for an upcoming review of it.  I hope.  

The movie was extremely dumb, it wanted to be funny and scary at the same time and succeeded in neither.  The humor is extremely stupid, it's the kind where you could tell the writers, maybe even the actors, thought it was really fucking funny - they were really fucking wrong.  It's soundtrack is a healthy supply of songs from the public domain and then the original songs are some dude noodling around on an electric guitar and synthesizer.  It's very minimal and extremely dull.  

The actors also suck.  A lot of them were never in other movies, or have minimal IMDb profiles.  Makes me wonder how Mr. Money from Welcome Back Kotter felt about being in this shit show.  The production values are bad, they obviously had some money but didn't spend it well, everything looks like a set, looks staged, looks like a prop.  There is no illusion of false reality here, it feels like the dumb fake movie that it is.  

But it's kind of original, it's B movie badness, and it could be okay to toke up to.  I guess that deserves a star.

Added 8/25/15:  On second thought 2 stars, this movie would be an okay movie to have on like, bad movie night with some friends.  It wasn't THAT bad, just know what you're getting in to.