Voodoo Black Exorcist

Voodoo Black Exorcist is really fucking bad. From the reverb drenched inner monologues to the constant and pointless panning on the (doughy) actors faces, the film is permeated by aura of suck disguised as 70s grindhouse stylings. What I think is most frustrating about the film is that, despite the unnerving awkwardness of the filming/editing style, the film still feels like a poverty row horror flick. In fact, it inexplicably brought to mind 1941's King of the Zombies. The unnecessarily abrupt ending in particular reminded me of older B-movies.

Typically I would start a review with some sort of plot summary, in this case it almost feels irrelevant, as the small amount I could ascertain from the muffled dialogue and the chainsaw editing is derivative of lowest common denominator horror. The basic plot is cribbed from The Mummy and relocated on a cruise-ship. As a side note, has there ever been a decent horror film that has taken place on a boat? (The Ghost Galleon definitely doesn't fucking count).

So a Voodoo mummy (because those totally exist) is taken aboard this ship in a coffin that splits the difference between a traditional Subsaharan mask and an Egyptian sarcophagus. He falls in love with a reincarnation of his long lost blah blah blah, and eventually gets down to finding excuses to kill people. From there pedestrian direction takes us through another 40 minutes of so of drawn out cliches until King Tut with a skin infection is trapped in a cave and is immolated (along with his romantic interest) by a rookie cop with a flamethrower. Mercifully we are almost immediately greeted with "The End", although, expectedly the cut is awkward (almost as poorly executed as the "End" of Kung Fu Zombie).

This is the second film I've seen (and reviewed) by director Manuel Cano. His previous film, The Swamp of the Ravens was quite a bit of fun, had a great off-kilter atmosphere, and set precedents for later films like Reanimator. Voodoo Black Exorcist… well, its really fucking bad.