Director Rolfe Kanefsky has been making straight to video horror flicks for long enough (one doomed character here wears a “There’s Nothing Out There” T-shirt in honour of his 1989 slasher pastiche) to know that genre fans will sit through almost anything so long as Tiffany Shepis shows her butt. Shepis, whose typically cynical, sharp-witted interpretation of the Final Girl cuts through the clichés, doesn’t disappoint – and neither does her butt. They are part of a fairly decent and proficient supernaturally enhanced slasher-in-the-woods flick of the kind that Rolfe’s 1989 flick made fun of.
NIGHTMARE MAN is a somewhat odd choice to be part of After Dark’s “8 Films To Die For” 2007 line-up; even more so for British genre fans, who may have caught the movie five months ago when it was screened on the U.K.’s “Zone Horror” channel. Still, did we mention that Tiffany Shepis shows her ass?!
The first half consists entirely of familiar slasher scenarios, but taut direction and convincing performances give them a welcome dose of intensity. An effectively scary, lengthy opening sequence turns out to be a nightmare in the mind of pill-popping paranoiac Blythe Metz. It is her “Nightmare Man”, a relentless stalker/killer wearing a horned African fertility mask, that has somehow escaped into reality and is terrorizing her just she was en route to the booby hatch.
Meanwhile, bisexual hottie Shepis is partying with pals in a nearby cabin, stripping to her undies and watching in some kind of awe as comely Hannah Putnam (whom she once has a “thing” with in college) offers what may be cinema history’s noisiest “how to fake an orgasm” sequence during a game of Truth or Dare. Metz winds up taking refuge at the cabin and the “Nightmare Man” pursues them all.
Although the whole film seems to have been built around the image of Shepis in her skimpies wielding a crossbow, Kanefsky plays the slasher stuff straight, achieving bonafide scares (a blinking car indicator light briefly reveals a malevolent figure nearby) and brutal gore moments including a cringe-inducing knife-through the chin.
In fact, the film works so well as an old-school slasher flick that the now-inevitable climactic twists prove far less satisfying. The kitchen-sink final reels veer from the old DIABOLIQUE theme of a mean husband trying to off his crazy rich wife, to a riff on THE EVIL DEAD demon possession lark (also sampled in Kanefsky’s ace THE HAZING). This last minute detour doesn’t come off, but the demon does rip off Shepis’ bra before, um, entering her, so even this isn’t a complete loss….
-Steven West
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- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
