NECRONOMICON Review On "Violent Maniac's Cage"

NECRONOMICON

(1995, USA)

DIRECTED BY: Brian Yuzna

After finally being offically released in North America I had to see this film as I heard that is was supposed to be spectacular with all the make-up effects and wild storylines. It was supposed to be good, right? wrong. Usually competent director Brian Yuzna(Bride Of Re-animator, Return Of The Living Dead III and The Dentist) did not do a good job here, it was reminiscant of his work on the dull and unenjoyable Society. Everything should have been there the effects, the story and comedy all three of these in any abundance were hard to be found especially the humor.

I began watching and it became a bore real fast. This whole mess begins sometime in the 20's or 30's where H.P Lovecraft looking quite young for his age played by Jeffery Combs visits a palace to have a look at the book of the dead itself. Combs gets placed in a room where he begins reading passages which make-up the film. There are three stories in total with names I cannot remember.

The first involves a man (Bruce Payne of Passenger 57) who inherits an old mansion. Once there he discovers a ressurrection which took place there years ago which brought back a mans wife from the dead. The whole thing went quite badly but Payne still grieving over his own wifes loss tries to conduct a ressurrection his own self. After going through the proper preperations (chickens, symbols, blood the usual) Payne starts the ceremony to revive his dead wife. He succeeds but she is not exactly happy to see him. Before all the shit is through Payne accidently also rises a giant monster from un under the house which rips up through the floor. No real good ol fashioned gore in this one just a lot of technical make-up and this one is treated so damn serious which is strange because its so unbelievable.

The second has a reporter investigating the disappearance of a lady and a docter. The young lady telling the story goes back to when her mother came to the same house and was taken in by the housekeeper. The woman meets a docter upstairs and soon begins to realize strange things like
blood dripping from her ceiling. She goes upstairs to meet the docter to find out what is going on up there and this is when the two form a relationship which results in the housekeeper becoming jealous. The woman boarding in the house is going out with a fellow whom constantly abuses her so the docter kills him and brings his body upstairs. It turns out that the docter uses freshly dead peoples skin to put on himself to stay alive. As the story unfolds to present time where the
reporter learns that the woman he is talking too is not the other womans daughter but the woman hersef whom also has become a skin grafting maniac. Zero in the gore department in this one and not a laugh to be found.

The third story is the goriest but too strange for my tastes especially how it all unfolds. A pregnant cop and her partner chase a suspect into an abandoned downtown warehouse where the killer has a lot more planned than you would expect. The pregnant cops partner dies from a gunshot wound and she continues to persue the suspect into the warehouse. Once inside she encounters a number of strange people especially a couple of old folks who pop up here and there. The lady starts to have strange encounters with her husband while chasing the suspect who has by this time completely disappeared. The story then goes down to the very depths of the building where everything starts to go blotto. A giant pit where dead bodies and breeding chambers lay. The old folks are actually hosts to weird looking creatures which rip flesh apart. The lady hallucinates seeing her dead partner turn into one of the things while being stripped limb from limb. The outcome is that it was all a plan to get the woman into the warehouse to give birth to some mutant offspring, its gonna be a painful birth!. Fucking bizzaro to say the least.

Then we have the final outcome of the movie where H.P Lovecraft tries to steal the book from the palace. They attempt to stop him but he manages to get the book and escape. I wouldn't watch this again, its very dull and slow. The stories are uninteresting or just plain bizzarre. Lets put it this way I expected a lot more with the talent involved.

Rating: 2 Skulls

Review by: Richard J. Taylor

Email: rtaylor@roadrunner.nf.net

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