We, as a culture, as a people, as a species, don’t spend nearly enough time talking about how cute Meg Tilly was in the 80s. She has that “nice girl with a hidden edge” thing going on big time. I feel like I went to school with her and am now living with regret over how I didn’t talk to her nearly enough. Until The Big Chill quickly catapulted Ms. Tilly into prestige parts, there was about a year in which she was a horror movie scream queen. Her role in Psycho II is the one that everybody and their dentist’s pet parakeet knows, but there was also this little independent flick about a night spent trapped in a mausoleum where some seriously weird shit happens.
It starts out as two stories that eventually merge into one.
One plot follows the aftermath of the mysterious death of a creepy old telekinetic Merlin the Magician-type whose shaky grasp on his powers often resulted in people dying because he sucked out their life force somehow. His estranged adult daughter (Melissa Newman) has inherited his abilities and is haunted by psychic visions of his victims.
Meanwhile, over at the high school, Meg Tilly is a kid so insecure that she’s desperate to join The Sisters, the lamest girl gang ever. Think The Pink Ladies from Grease, but much more unpleasant and stupid. All they have going for them are their cool jackets. The leader is extra bitchy because Meg is dating her ex-boyfriend. So that means Meg’s initiation ritual is really just a revenge trap intended to traumatize her. She has to spend the night locked in a mausoleum straight out of Phantasm while The Sisters plot in secret to sneak in with masks and costumes and scare the piss out of her by making like the “ghosts” on the old Scooby-Doo cartoon.
The twist: Old Merlin’s fresh stiff just happens to be interned in that mausoleum and his powers work beyond the grave.
This all leads to a genuinely creepy and entertaining third act where the lighting turns day-glo and the burial chambers bust open and corpses in various stages of decay come out. They’re not zombies. They don’t walk around. They’re just a bunch of slabs of spoiled meat carried around by telekinesis. They can’t bite you, but they can push you around and pile on top of you. They can also bring a swift end to any teenage gang.
Be an individual. Don’t need to join clubs because, you never know, you just might end up smothered to death under a dozen slimy rotten dead bodies because of it. That’s the message of this movie and I approve.
It’s a satisfying film, loaded with good jump scares and directed with lots of style by Tom McLoughlin, who’d later helm Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (the most intentionally funny film of that series). Bonus points for the terrific low-budget effects and for Adam West as a skeptic when it comes to this whole telekinesis malarky. It’s perfect Halloween season viewing when you want to dig into 80s sleepers.