Coming in strong as a mash up of ‘Children Shouldnt Play With Dead Things’, ‘Theater of Blood’ and ‘One Dark Night’, ‘Frightmare’ is a fun enough little romp, though ultimately it doesnt really feel like anything we havent already seen before.

The plot revolves around an aging horror icon Conrad Ragzoff (heavily modelled on a kind of hybrid of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price) who passes away unexpectedly but swears his imminant return as one of his dying words. A couple of nights later a group of hardcore superfans of the actors work, break into his crypt, abduct the body and take it back to there frat house, where they play with his corpse, pose with him and generally do things you shouldnt really be doing with a corpse, with the understanding that they’ll take the body back before sun up.

Unfortunately Conrad has other ideas, ressurecting with newly psychic/telekenetic/Scanners powers and murderous revenge on his mind. The students are suddenly thrust into one last horror film of Conrads making!

And…yeh, theres not really a whole lot to say about this one, its got a light campier tone, which is always welcome, its a little slow boil even at only an 86 minute runtime. It could have lost 10-15 and felt so much better for it. The characters are kinda one note and all fairly interchangable, but I felt Conrad as a character did bring a level of charisma and uniqueness to the role. I liked how they introduced some kind of magic viewing screen element in which Conrad could talk to the teens and advise them of their incoming demise, I thought that was a nice touch.

The act structures are a little messy here and there, but I think they do keep a fairly well balanced three act run here.

The direction and cine are to standard, even going a little above and beyond in places with some of the more gory kills being particularly well handled with this one, I liked that the cast were much more animated than some of these films tend to be, I just wish they really got a bit more lively and physically involved in the sets to really help take this to the next level.

Cine composition is fine, everything blocked nicely, colour use is a little underplayed which is a shame, and as mentioned the editing probably would have benefitted from one more pass through just to ensure everything was as tight as it could be.

The performances outside of Ferdy Mayne as Conrad are kind of unforgettable, which is a big problem with this genre, so I wasnt too surprised to see it here…but it is a shame non the less.

and the soundtrack was pretty solid too for what its worth.

All in all this ones *just* barely above average for me. The script is interesting but a little too slow going for my taste, the direction is technically pretty solid, but again; a little pedestrian for 1981 standards, the cine is above average in their attempt to try and keep things as fresh as possible, but it is held back from greatness by a slower edit and some underdeveloped performances.

It’s…fine. Im a little dissapointed by it honestly as I’d had this one my ‘To Watch’ list for about 10 years. But I think the dissapointment is more a me problem than the movies problem. This is a fine enough production, it does the job a supernatural slasher should do. It just doesnt do any more than that. a bit of a mediocre offering. I could see myself watching this one again, I couldnt see myself recommending this one though.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/frightmare-1981/