Death Row Diner (1988)

The universe demands balance. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every positive there is a negative. Good and evil, courage and fear, happiness and sadness, dark and light: one cannot exist without the other. Likewise, for every really cool '80s horror movie, there's an equally dire turd from the same decade and genre just waiting to be rediscovered.Death Row Diner is one such stinker, a foetid, almost unwatchable Z-grade crap-fest that attempts to inject some humour into its cheezy proceedings but which proves to be about as funny as an outbreak of Ebola. Set in an abandoned prison, it sees the vengeful spirit of film studio boss Otis Wilcox (John Content), who was wrongfully executed for the murder of his wife, returning from the dead to cause havoc for the cast and crew of a low-budget horror flick being produced by Otis's grand-daughter Julia (scream queen Michelle Bauer).With a pitiful script that fails to deliver either scares or laughs, an amateurish cast who seem to be improvising most of their dialogue, lousy direction from B. Dennis Wood (who now calls himself D3 and works exclusively in the porn industry), and woeful gore effects, Death Row Diner is truly terrible from start to finish. The film doesn't even manage to deliver that most basic of B-movie horror ingredients, gratuitous female nudity: despite being more than qualified, busty blonde make-up woman Phoebe (Dana Lis Mason) fails to go topless, while star Bauer, who can usually be relied upon to flash some flesh, keeps (most) of her clothes on.

Here goes my review of this low budget horror movie. First off, I agree with the above statement that it was cheaply made, sometimes the dialog goes a little long, and that it gives hope to any filmmaker but, that's what makes it great.... The cheesy special fx and peeing Elvis alone make it worth watching.... Come on, you can't get any better than that. I feel that anyone that's a fan of cheesy, 80's horror movies, should watch and enjoy. I promise that you will get a laugh out of this movie and will watch again and again. If not, then I am sure that the $5.00 that you spent to own this movie shouldn't break you.P.S. Please drink a lot of beer and watch with friends.

i couldn't believe this movie! the realism was above and beyond any movie of this genre that i have ever, in my long, long life, ever seen. it's even in color...which adds so much vividness to the gore. i like that. i play ping pong and i enjoyed that scene especially. i only used the paddle on young women. now i see it has other uses. the outtakes at the end should have been the movie itself. they were funny especially the bloody parts. i don't know why directors think they have to spare the viewer the reality of life. i really don't. i can't understand why this didn't get an award at Cannes! i mean this genre is so underrated. and there's not enough straight-to-video-trash on the shelves.

When I first watched this movie I had to crank up the volume on my T.V. set to actually hear what was said. I also thought that this would be a comedy/horror, but towards the end, it turned out to be just a plain stupid dark comedy!There's inside jokes on her movie "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers", which also featured Jay Richardson, who's also in this dumb movie and was distributed by the same company and director. C'mon Michelle do an interesting movie for once, with a better made budget!