source: Hellmaster

Trailer—Hellmaster

Hellmaster

I have a feeling the directors cut which is what I saw is a lot better than the 90s version. Has a lot of cheesy lines but also has a lot of creepy scenes and cool lighting. Plus Ron Ashton as a psycho nun! If seeing Ashton as a nun is not enough for anyone to like it then go watch some modern crap because you just won't get it.

It's a fun film. Good story, good gore. John Saxon is great. It really captures the horror of the early 90's in my opinion. The antagonist characters are quite creative. I was surprised at how much I liked it. My wife even watched parts and had input. She doesn't watch horror. I also really liked the score. It's well done.

A Michigan-lensed horror flick featuring John Saxon and David Emge ("Flyboy" from DOTD), this one shows potential but eventually just falls apart. In the 1960s, Prof. Jones (Saxon) is conducting an experiment on some coeds that goes horrible wrong. He develops a drug that turns them into mutants. He is stopped (or so we think) and flash forward 20 years where it all starts again with 80s students. This one is a real oddity. I can't for the life of me remember what the drug Saxon developed was supposed to do. On the plus side, Saxon has an interesting group of mutated helpers (a mutated boy, bald schoolgirl, nun, and homeless man nicknamed Razorface - Pinhead anyone?). Saxon gives a fine performance but is only in the film for 15 minutes tops. And Emge is good as the Reggie Bannister character who is hunting down the mad doc who killed his family. The rest of the cast is blah.

I knew that this was going to be bad, I'm one of those geeks that actively seek out such trash. Even the back cover was bad, stating that John Saxon had been in Dawn of the Dead & that David Emge had been in A Nightmare on Elm St! The dumb plot has already been covered elsewhere on this page, so pointless repeating it. Obviously done on a low budget the picture is very dark, the sound often muffled, there's plenty of bad acting (even Saxon & Emge put in weak performances, possibly down to embarrassment) but there is a fair amount of violence & cheap looking gore. Without Saxon's presence I'd have scored it less, he's the sole reason why I generously award this rubbish 3/10

At the "Kant School for Gifted Students" (I am sure pun intended) a former instructor is using chemicals/drugs to gather souls of students. He has done the experiment 20 years ago, and now has returned with a small group of homeless followers, of which one guy looks similar to the more popular Pinhead. The film is designed to be campy and an 80's style slasher, but doesn't accomplish much. The film is uneven with no character introduction of build up. Characters pop in and out at random with little of the film making sense. While there are some good individual scenes, when they add up the sum becomes less than the individual scenes. Parental Guide: Nudity