(1988)
Directed by Andrew Fleming
Starring Jennifer Rubin, Richard Lynch, Bruce Abbott, Harris Yulin, E.G. Daily, Dean Cameron, Susan Ruttan, Sy Richardson

I would make a strong guess this film was made to jump on the Freddy bandwagon when it first was being made. First, it came out right after Nightmare 3, which seemed to be at the peak of Freddy-mania, and even getting one of the cast from the film, Jennifer Rubin to play the lead protagonist. Whatever the reasoning behind it, I remember not really caring for it when it first came out in the theaters way back then. When I recently watched it again, I tried to watch it with a fresh set of eyes and see if it played any better this time. Well . . . not so much.

Let’s start off by saying that half of this movie is really good! Okay, maybe a third. The story starts off with some footage in the ‘70s with some members of the Unity Field, a cult / commune of some free loving hippies. Their leader is played by Richard Lynch, who preaches that death is just another state of existence. In one of the more disturbing and horrifying sequences, Lynch is ‘anointing’ the members with gasoline, as they sit there and stare at him with loving eyes. Then he strikes a match. Young Cynthia somehow survives the fire but is a coma for the last 13 years. When she does wake up in the present day, she finds herself in a mental hospital. Since all of her relatives are gone, the doctors figure she might not be able to adapt too quickly to the modern world.

Bruce Abbott, of Re-Animator fame, plays one of the doctors trying to help Cynthia (now played by Rubin). Both Abbott and Rubin do a decent job with their characters. Rubin comes across as a flower child, still thinking in terms of ‘love and peace’, even though the word has drastically changed in that last dozen or so years that she’s been in a coma. As she tries to adapt to her new surroundings, not to mention having to deal with the other patients she has been lumped in with, she starts to see Lynch. Sometimes he is his normal looking self, while other times he has the severely burned-to-a-crisp look. He tells her that she was supposed to die with them in the fire, and that it is not too late to join them. If they would have stuck with just that idea, it might have been a better film.

It is the other patients that bring down the film. E.G. Daily is okay, in one of her early roles, but I honestly couldn’t hear her talk and not hear Tommy Pickles from Rugrats when spoke. Not her fault, just a fact. I think it is Dean Cameron that does the most damage here. Not necessarily him, but his character, which could/should have been taking completely out of the picture. Anytime he comes onscreen, as it seems he’s trying to make it more of a ‘80s comedy, it brings the story to a screeching halt.

But if anything, the film is worth watching if only for Lynch alone. He has always been a favorite of mine and he does his usual top-notch job here. Going a little against his usually character, here he is not playing the typical heavy, but a kind and caring individual, that speaks of love and devotion. Sure, maybe he’s covered in bloody burn makeup while he’s saying it, but that’s beside the point! But it was cool to see him playing something a little different, even though the message might be the same.

Directed by Andrew Fleming, this being his feature film debut. It would be another 8 years before his next and last genre effort, the cult classic The Craft (1996). You really could do worse for a late ‘80s horror film, but I do think that it is worth seeing at least once for the reasons I explained above.