Nightmare Weekend - 1986

I turn 30 on March 30th next year.  I was an 86 baby.  As part of my turning 30, I decided that I should view a bunch of movies  that were released in the year I was born, as kind of retrospective to see what was "going on" in the film world when I was born.  It's an idea I had pretty recently, and this is my first film from 86 I've watched since the idea.  I have reviewed a few other 86 movies on this blog, but I wanna see a lot more.

Let's see how many of the "construction pieces" of this film we've witnessed before on this blog.
1) the movie is directed by a guy who's career otherwise has mostly been porn
2) the movie stars several people who have very, very little other credits on IMDb
3) the movie is extremely low budget, bare bones, and it shows
4) the movie has nonsensical puppet scenes
5) the movie offers very little intrigue outside of the few nude scenes and kills

I could probably go on.  Look back at number 4 up there though, and tell me that this movie deserves strict attention.  Did I mention that part of this movies "graphics" and "special effects" include footage from an old ColecoVision video game?  That's fuckin cutting edge right there man.

So you have a puppet.  The puppet is plugged into a computer system, and it seems that the computer program directly affects the real world.  The puppet is in charge of protecting Jessica, the daughter of brilliant inventor Edward.  A couple people die as result of the puppet over-protecting Jessica.  Also, there's three girls that die that are then brought back to life.  Also, none of this movie makes any goddamn sense.  The dead alive girls don't come around until the very end, and by that time I had no idea wtf was going on.  This is definitely one of those plots where it requires far too much attention for a really, really stupid movie.

This was distributed by Troma, as a final nail in the coffin.

It was nonsense, and I wasn't sure what to think of it.  A little bit in the same line as Lawnmower Man and other early "technology" films, it had a decent vibe to it and some good 80's cheese, but eventually the story got too convoluted and I had no idea who was who and what was going on.  The lighting also didn't exist, and there are actual scenes of people where you can't tell who is in the shot because it's so dark.  You just hear voices and see vague shapes.  That never helps an already confusing, bad movie.

I'll still give it 2 stars for some fun for the first 45 minutes, a random puppet that is never completely explained to satisfaction, and some decent nudity.