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Cthulhu Mansion
(1990)

Reviewed By Ragnarok

Also Known As: Black Magic Mansion
Genre: Haunted House Movie That Doesn't Deliver On It's Elder God Promises
Director: Juan "Pieces" Simón
Writer: see "Director"
Featuring: Frank "The Pianist" Finlay
Melanie "Yes, she's Bill's daughter!" Shatner

Origin: Spain

Review______________
We’re off to see the wizard! Or Chandu at least. We open with a shot of the aforementioned magician running through his usual routine at a show. Something goes tragically wrong, and his assistant, who is also his wife, turns into a wax dummy and bursts into flames. I don’t think they actually wanted you to know about the wax dummy part, but the Brotherhood’s power is omniscient. After her death, we’re treated to a little flashback relating how Chandu learned all about our good buddy Cthulhu. Or at least what passes for him in this movie. I really hope the brains of the people responsible for this movie have been thoroughly eaten by now. Blaspheming idiots.

Next up on The Price Is Death, we have some drug dealers floating through the tunnel of love. The main human villain, Hawk, kills the other and escapes back to his friends, but they get into a firefight with the amusement park’s elite drug taskforce. Or the lame-ass rent-a-cops, you decide. Anyway, Chris, a member of Hawk’s gang, takes a bullet through his leg. Chris is one strapping young lad and in the possession of bigfoot’s teleporter as well, because a few frames later we see him walking past in the crowd completely uninjured.

On the lamb from the elite amusement park SWAT team, the gang hijacks Chandu’s car and forces the old man to take them to his home and give them shelter. While Hawk is on the phone with his drug boss, who happens to be Devon Dudley, the rest of the crew searches for a television. What they find is an old video projector with a reel of one of Chandu’s previous acts when his wife was still alive. The light craps out in the middle of the show and Hawk and one of the girls, who looks terrifyingly similar to someone we know named Amy Herzberg, stay behind and make out while the others look for the fuse box. Herzberg suggests to Hawk that they ditch the others and share the money from the bag of crack they have between just the two of them.

Meanwhile, one of the guys in the gang, who looks terrifyingly similar to someone we know named Nathan Vandiver, hits unsuccessfully on Lisa, Chandu’s daughter. She runs from him, he gives chase, and an invisible force (or a POV cam, your call) chases both of them. Just when Vandiver catches up with Lisa, she turns to him and he hallucinates her face as a grisly skull. The terrifying sight gives him enough pause that Lisa escapes back upstairs with the others. Once they’re both back upstairs, the tension in the group rises and everyone just kinda loses it. All the yelling ends with Vandiver getting in a fight with Chandu’s huge-eyebrowed mute assistant, who by all rights should be able to kick Vandiver’s ass. Vandiver, however, comes out victorious and kills the older man by slamming his head into the floor.

To relieve the pressure, Vandiver and Herzberg disappear upstairs to have sex. Thank the real almighty Cthulhu we never have to see either one of them naked, although Vandiver’s boxers are a little too small for my taste. It’s yucky, folks. Real yucky.

While they’re doin’ that, Leanor’s ghost appears to Chandu and tells him that to save Lisa he must accept his own fate. Still not real sure what that means, but whatever. And Chris, who’s been laid up in bed (guess that gunshot wound finally caught up with him) the whole time, is getting very sick. The wound is infected. But not just any kind of infected, oh no. It’s infected by the evil in the house.

Well, Herzie and Vandiver finally finish whatever gross, squishy things they were doing, and she goes downstairs for a beer. But when she opens the fridge, huge clawed hands reach out and drag her into the depths of freezer burn damn I should have used Ziploc hell. Vandiver climbs out of bed and goes to take a shower, which promptly locks shut and drowns him in apparently acidic blood. When it drains away, there’s no body. Damn fine weather stripping. I’ll bet they had to special-order that. Can’t just find haunted acid blood-proof caulking on any old shelf at Menard’s. And just as the blood shower ends, Shaft pops up! He’s been lurkin’ around the house all movie long, but he never did anything so he wasn’t really worth mentioning ‘til now. He was sent to by the drug boss to follow the gang. He goes to steal the crack back from them, and gets blasted two minutes after his role actually starts going somewhere. Not that this entire movie is really going anywhere anyway.

At any rate, Chris is seven shades of fucked up by now. The infection is spread, and he’s all covered with demonic gangrene or some shit and hackin’ up toxic sludge. But wait, it’s just disappeared! But wait, its back again! Hey, demon gout, MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND!

There’s one brave soul in the group, however. It’s Ava, Hawk’s abused girlfriend, who’s been possessed on and off by Chandu’s dead wife throughout this ordeal. And she’s the only character anyone halfway gives a flying monkeyfuck about in this movie. The great William Shatner’s daughter plays her, by the way. Anyway, she finally snaps too, and starts attacking potted plants, but they turn on her and drag her away. Bye bye Ava. I hope all your friends die soon. Ah, and they do! The door in the basement, which apparently was keeping whatever evil lived in the house trapped, flies open with a really cool fireball effect. The saving grace of this movie was eight seconds of cool fireball action. Chris gets possessed and tries to kill Lisa, but Chandu stops him. Then some flying knives kill Hawk, Chandu gets possessed and falls into the ground, and the house explodes. Lisa and Chris escape with their lives, and the word Cthulhu, which was emblazoned on the gate, burns behind them.

Are we supposed to assume that Chandu sold his soul to Cthulhu to keep his dead wife alive as a ghost in their house or something? And that Cthulhu was then trapped in his basement by a simple CAST IRON FIRE DOOR?! I DON’T FUCKING THINK SO! Don’t be fooled. This mentally retarded movie has absolutely nothing to do with Cthulhu. I hate people who decide they can just cash in on a name and not even bother to learn the goddamn mythology and get it right. I hate all of you. I hope you suffer in R’lyeh for all eternity. Fuckers.

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