Death by Dialogue (1988)

One of just a couple of outings in the directors chair for regular stuntman Thomas Dewier (perhaps his genius was spent?), Death by Dialogue is quite an experience, that is, if you happen to groove to off the wall and frequently imbecilic late 80's horror cheese. It operates vaguely on a supernatural slasher template, but mostly it's an excuse to wallow in the clichés of the era, given carte blanche by a plot (evil screenplay) that allows for literally anything. For a while, things are just about perfect here. The obligatory opening slaying is amusing, wondrously atrocious cheese-tunage over the credits, then its just a hop, skip and jump into a totally rocking "teens capering around" montage. Volleyball! Running around! All set to upbeat synths, its heavenly stuff. Then we got musings on death before the mayhem kicks in, and it sure is a hoot. Budget and lack of imagination mean that events keep to pretty regular template, but that still means boobs, bikers, and a guy with a big sword wigging out Kurgan style among other things... It could have been truly swell, but direction tends to stutter, with captivating oddities separated by stretches of banality, there's little rhyme or reason to anything and acting is enthusiastic at best, cruddy at worst. Speaking of acting, for star power we have Ken Sagoes, of A Nightmare On Elm Street parts 4 and 5 fame, and his character is called Lenny. This amused me for some reason, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps he should have been called Carl? Anyways, he does as well as you might expect, while a little more talent is provided by delightful stunner Laura Albert, who also gives us nudity. Theodore Lehman puts on a likable expository show as Uncle I've, whilst varying degrees of non ability are provided by the likes of Lenny Delducca and Jude Gerard (nope, me neither) while inept sound recording does more damage than the acting by rendering bits and bobs of conversation inaudible. Music works nicely though, tailored to fit each scene there are the aforementioned synths, eerie tones, a gnarly metal tune and a splash of ominous drums. The film takes a nicely wild approach and is often interesting but peters out in the final twenty minutes with lack of budget and talent dooming the ambitious goings on and a fairly weak climax. At least it isn't too bad and by this point the film has built up a fair amount of goodwill with its crazy shenanigans. I would have liked more gore (don't worry, there is a little) and consistency here, but broadly this is a good fun piece of trash, 6/10 from me.

Death By Dialogue. What a title. What an amazingly rubbish title. I am stunned that there are no alternative names that this film went out under. But, then again, this film is something else.Synopsis: This film is about an evil film script. Its horrific contents come to life and terrorise a group of teenagers.I have seen some rubbish in my time but this movie possesses moments of such stunningly memorable idiocy that I was somewhat taken aback. The very idea of a film script that is possessed by an evil spirit is hilariously silly. The script was for a film called 'Victims' and it was clearly written by a thirteen year old boy. The horrors that are unleashed by the script include a killer poodle-permed rock band, a seven-foot tall sword-wielding madman and two motor-cycle morons. I don't know about 'Victims', I would have thought that a better name would've been 'Eighties Cheese'.This is one of those bad movies that contains moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity but also is hindered by atrocious pacing. Some scenes just go on and on and we do have to wait for the funny bits. But when those funny bits appear they are pretty much top-drawer, i.e. I challenge anyone not to laugh when the hair metal band pitches up in the woods. Too funny. At another time the protagonists decide that the best way to defeat the evil in the script would be to simply re-write it with happy stuff. Seems reasonable? Incredibly they mess up this very straightforward task by rewriting the script with one of the daftest non-escape plans ever conceived. In yet another random event – this film is a series of random events – we have a dream sequence involving a woman in a gown kneeling by a pool who meets an idiot in a racing car by a tree. Go figure.It's all senseless and very haphazardly put together. But it's worth one viewing, if only to be stunned by it's monumental daftness. It does have moments of anti-genius. It's like a cross between The Evil Dead, The Edge of Hell and an episode of Scooby Doo. Although, much worse than all of those. Venture at your peril.

Now here we see the other end of the extreme when it comes to movies with or without charisma. Earlier tonight I subjected myself to 1988's TEEN VAMP, an anemic attempt to blend comedy antics, American Graffiti nostalgia and vampire hyjinx that had all the charisma of a small soap dish from the dollar store. Now, we watch DEATH BY DIALOGUE, also from 1988 and a vehicle for the then red-hot Ken Sagoes, which by comparison is *ALL* charisma. It is entertaining, risqué, inappropriately amusing, riddled with nudity & graphic gore, filled with loud, cheesy 80's rock, has a muddled, incomprehensible plot line with maybe six brain cells in it's at times pretty head, and I've watched it twice now. No idea what happens during the story, but it's fun, sleazy, colorful and at times pretty inventive.The movie is supposedly about a group of teen agers who are all pushing 26 or so that find themselves trapped in a web of terror & murder patterned after a movie script found in the basement of a house next to a studio. What it *REALLY* is about, however, is blond girls with nice butts + bewbs, 1980s fashions & hair styles, low budget direct to home video horror movie production, and people getting their heads chopped off, exploded by horrific 80's arena metal rock, skewered with large chopping/cutting instruments, and seeing the blond girls with the nice bodies without their clothes on. By concentrating it's sights directly on the gutter and shooting straight about it's nature the movie succeeds brilliantly: This is the best party movie I have seen since NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR.Anyone looking for serious acting, artful cinematography, meaningful dialog and socially aware thematic relevance would be well advised to rent ERIN BROKOVICH and give their brains a rest. But if you need a movie to drink beer to here you go. A typical scene has a guy dressed up like Clancy Brown from HIGHLANDER swinging his sword around like a fool while pyrotechnic explosions highlight his two evil minions jumping their motorcycles while the Scorpion-esquire arena rock chugs out the beat. It looks waaay cool, but whatever ideas there are behind the imagery are not manifest. Here is a movie that is all surface image, devoid of sub-textural agendas and meanings that go beyond the obvious. My favorite part starts with a couple fornicating up in a barn loft: We are treated to ample shots of the amply chested blond riding her amply-bellied lover while weird, dry ice fog and blue lit events disturb the structure. At the height of their sexual coupling the female is literally blown through the wall of the barn to her (unseen) doom, and the understandably perplexed porker whom she had been riding stumbles out with his fashionable yellow trousers around his ankles, wondering aloud wazzup. He then has a nightmarish run through a patch of woods before coming upon an 80's Arena Rock Metal band playing "When The Ax Does Fall" or whatever it's called. They look like Def Leppard's unlucky younger brother. And again, at the climax of their performance the guitarist swings his guitar around in the air like Steve Jones from that Sex Pistols movie and smashes it down on the head of the bewildered porker, which naturally causes it to explode into a ball of spewing mush.What does it all mean? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And if you look for meaning or depth in this film you will be wasting your time. But if you want to laugh, check out hawt babez in various states of undress, see people get their heads chopped off and stuff get blowed up real good, bingo. I admire the movie's honesty in not trying to be anything but complete crap, and having a sense of humor about itself that is quite refreshing. So here you go: Two movies, same year, same kind of productions (though DEATH BY DIALOGUE does look like it had a healthier budget than TEEN VAMP), same kind of target audience, same medium of home video oriented productions and they could not have turned out more differently if they had been aware of each other & made a point to be different. DEATH BY DIALOGUE is easily the stupider of the two, but at least has the distinction of being entertaining.7/10: The expression "Garbage In, Garbage Out" comes to mind.

It turned out to be a mess."Death By Dialogue" is your typical low budget direct to video crap that is produced after someone's fame. The movie's tag line shown in the cover is "Staring Ken Sagoes, the survivor from "A Nightmare On Elm Street Part III". Sagoes character, Roland Kincaid became an instant favorite on the Elm Stree series and it's very lame to cast him only because of that and worse, make publicity on him.Anyways, "Death By Dialogue" is a joke. There's involuntary humor, cheesy (I mean CHEESY) f/x and boring situations that could desperate the most patient Horror fan. This isn't a must see even to criticize or laugh about. Please, stay away from this trash and don't get fooled by the cover art or the premise, which is as dumb as you can get.Ugh.