MY CALL: The death scenes suck. The bad guys are lame. The villain has insanely questionable yet unexplained motives. So watching this with friends throwing vicious mockery at the screen is the recommended method of viewing. This is a deliciously bad movie. MORE MOVIES LIKE Hellmaster: Well, if you want something of the same ‘caliber’ as Hellmaster, perhaps Neon Maniacs (1986). But if you want something superficially similar but actually ‘good’, then I’d aim more for Prince of Darkness (1987).
This roughly made film struggles to find the feel of a real movie in its opening sequence. The scenes feel like scattered, incomplete thoughts as we meet students and faculty of the Kant Institute of Technology and we get glimpses of some undead-like drones lurking about.
Right away, we know that several professors are aware of what’s going on. No one seems to be contacting an sort of authorities or seeking help… but they know what’s going on. Robert (David Emge; Dawn of the Dead, Basket Case 2) seems to be our good guy, and professor Jones (John Saxon; Black Christmas, Blood Beach, A Nightmare on Elm Street 1 & 3) is the evil mastermind behind it all. Using a serum he developed, Jones has created ‘mildly mutated’ killers who serve him, call him father, and wander the college campus trying to kill whomever they encounter.
I’m not sure how an injection creates these instant followers with cult-like devotion and a sudden understanding of Jones’ grand vision and that they should all call him Father… but it does. The movie makes no effort to explain why or how—I question if director and writer Douglas Schulze (Dark Heaven, Dark Fields, Mimesis) even cared. Still, such a hokey premise could turn out to be a really fun bad movie, right? Well, you’d hope…
Watch out for some miserably terrible death scenes; like inept student film quality death scenes. The noose death scene actually added zero to the movie, which would have been truly better without the death at all. Oof! This movie is rough. The geometrically scarred killer (featured on many of the movie posters) whispers about desires for a “reward,” then goes on to kill someone with a 100% off-screen stab. That’s two big death scene strikes against this crap movie. And what’s this reward of which he spoke? Apparently, it’s a world populated by murderous, balding, Jonesian zealots. So Jones seeks world domination, and he decided to start on his college campus. I’m guessing at this, by the way. But he’s gonna’ need a worldwide vaccine distribution plan for this plan to work! Otherwise he’d die of old age before totally taking over New Jersey.
Many of these murderous mutants come off more like low budget zombies or generic brand Neon Maniacs (1986), slowly limping and lumbering about towards anyone who hasn’t yet received this injection. There’s a twisted ‘murder nun’ who gets stabbed in the face with a syringe, a child (or perhaps a very small man) with his hair burned off who dies of a goopy green and red ‘nosebleed to death’, an alopecia-stricken school girl giggles about… these Jonesians are not the most inspired creature creations of the genre. So, yeah. The “monsters” are weak and the death scenes are bad. Really bad. Yet the blood and gore is actually tolerable. Somehow our hero Robert figures out that a ‘little’ of the Hell serum creates the Jonesian fiends. But a bigger dose induces the gross, slimy, melty deaths we’ve seen a couple times.
So during this whole movie Jones struts around with a horrifyingly big ‘triple syringe’ he uses to inject his squad of hellions. It’s really hokey, and his lines about creating Hell on Earth are… well… stupid. But this whole movie is stupid. I’m not entirely sure what the premise even is! But I know it’s stupid. I mean, Jones wants pretty much everyone (on campus at the very least) dead. Not sure what his plans are after that… or why he’s doing this. But as I’m watching I’m realizing this strikes me as a poor man’s Prince of Darkness (1987) but without the physics or antigod. It all comes to a bloody finish as Jones burns to death and melts away. Meh. Just okay.
Not gonna’ lie. This is among the clunkier bad movies I’ve seen in a long while. But I guess this would make for a really fun, deliberately ‘bad movie night’ with friends.