Horror Film Review: Night Feeder (dir by Jim Whiteaker)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This obscure 1988 film takes place in San Francisco.

Specifically, it takes place in the underground San Francisco art scene, a world where zoned out hipsters gather in a small clubs and listen to bands like Disease. Disease (played by a real-life San Francisco band that was called The Nuns) sings songs that encourage the listeners to slit their wrists. The police don’t care much for Disease and even several of the locals think that Disease is bad news. Rumor has it that three Disease groupies died under mysterious circumstances.

While Disease sings, their fans get hooked on the drug DZS, which is also pronounced Disease. (Yes, it gets a little bit hard to keep track of.) DZS was developed to battle schizophrenia but it can also be used as a party drug and cause overdoses.

Speaking of death, there’s people dying all over San Francisco and Inspector Bernardo (Jonathan Zeichner) thinks that it’s because Disease isn’t just a band but also a brain-stealing cult. Bodies are being found without huge sections of their brain. Apparently, the murderer gouges out its victim’s eye and then sucks the brain out through the eye socket. It does this while the victim is still alive. Ouch!

Also investigating the murders is a reporter named Jean (Kate Alexander). Jean has just recently left her husband so that she can be a member of the underground art scene. She’s currently living with the lead singer of Disease, though he insists that their relationship is totally casual and that there’s no commitment involved. Needless to say, Jean is not happy when Inspector Alonzo suggests that the band might be behind the murders. (For one thing, traces of DZS are found on the majority of the victims.) Jean’s investigation leads her to discover that not only is the city crawling with potential murderers but there’s also a mutant baby to deal with….

That’s right, a mutant baby.

Anyway, Night Feeder was shot on video and, from what I’ve been able to gather online, it was specifically sold in San Francisco video stores. It was a regional production, meaning that the cast was populated with local actors and the production crew was largely local as well. It was shot on location at clubs around the city, making the film into a bit of a time capsule if nothing else. Oddly enough, the movie somehow found its way to Poland, where it became something a cult hit among Polish horror fans. That’s just one of the many oddities of the film distribution. You never know where your low-budget, shot-on-video movie might become a hit.

But, you may be asking — is the movie itself any good? Eh …. it’s okay. I mean, it’s a low-budget film that was shot on video and, even more importantly, it looks like it was shot on video. It has the aesthetic quality of a student film. The majority of the actors deliver their lines stiffly, though I did appreciate the energetic performance of Kate Alexander. She did the best that one probably could with the material that she was given. That said, the special effects were done by a guy who was a part of the VFX crew for David Cronenberg’s The Fly and, even for a straight-to-video production, some of the imagery is memorably grotesque. So, if nothing else, the film has that going for it.

That said, I have a weakness for low-budget regional productions, especially ones that serve as a time capsule of a very particular time and place. Night Feeder definitely does that and, as such, it’s worth watching just for the chance to see how people once lived.

Horror Film Review: The Mummy’s Tomb (dir by Harold Young)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1942’s The Mummy’s Tomb picks up 30 years after the end of The Mummy’s Hand.

Archeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) is now living a peaceful life in the small town of Mapleton, Massachusetts. As the film opens, he is telling his guests about the time that he and his friend, Babe Hanson (Wallace Ford), went to Egypt and discovered the tomb of an Egyptian princess. He tells them how Andoheb (George Zucco) tried to use the ancient mummy, Kharis, to protect the tomb. Steve assures everyone that Andoheb is now dead and Kharis is no longer a threat to anyone.

The film then travels to Egypt where we discover that Steve was not quite correct. Adoheb survived being shot at the end of The Mummy’s Hand. He’s now an old man, dying but still obsessed with getting revenge. He instructs his disciple, Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey), to travel to America with Kharis (now played, under a bunch of bandages, by Lon Chaney, Jr.) and to get revenge on the remaining members of the Banning expedition.

Bey and Kharis travel to Massachusetts and soon, the entire town of Mapleton is gripped in fear as Kharis starts to murder people. Steve Banning is the first victim. Then Steve’s sister, Jane (Mary Gordon). Kharis even kills Babe Hanson, whose role in the previous film was largely comic relief. Seriously, not even Frankenstein’s Monster killed the comic relief. Kharis is a ruthless and unstoppable killer and, in a performance that is totally focused on his hulking physicality, Lon Chaney, Jr. makes for a frightening mummy. Kharis moves slowly, dragging one foot behind him. But when he does attack, he’s relentless. This movie reminded me of why the mummy has, to me, always been the scariest of the old Universal monsters.

Despite the fact that Kharis is leaving bandages and ancient mold all over the place, the authorities are not quite convinced that an ancient mummy has come to their small town. However, the townspeople have no doubt what’s happening and, since this is a Universal film, they are soon running around with torches and pitchforks. Meanwhile, Steve’s son, John (John Hubbard), tries to figure out how to destroy the mummy and how to protect his fiancée, Isobel (Elyse Knox). Bey has decided that he’s in love with Isobel and he orders Kharis to bring her to him. Even under all the bandages, Kharis’s facial expression still suggests that he knows this isn’t a good idea.

The Mummy’s Tomb suffers from the same problem that afflicted The Mummy’s Hand. It feels like it takes forever to actually get to the good stuff. This is only a 60-minute film and ten of those minutes is taken up with a flashback to The Mummy’s Hand. But no matter! Once Kharis arrives in America, the pace of the film picks up and it becomes an effective little horror film. Lon Chaney, Jr. is frightening Kharis. I wouldn’t want him following me down a dark alley!

Previous Universal Horror Reviews:

Horror on the Lens: Robot Monster (dir by Phil Tucker)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror film is a true classic of its kind, the 1953 science fiction epic Robot Monster.

Now, I should admit that this is not the first time that I’ve shared Robot Monster in October. I share it every year and, every year, YouTube seems to pull the video down in November. That sucks because Robot Monster is one of those weird films that everyone should see. So, I’m going to share it again. And, hopefully, YouTube will let the video stay up for a while.

As for what Robot Monster is about…

What happens with the Earth is attacked by aliens? Well, first off, dinosaurs come back to life. All of humanity is killed, except for one annoying family. Finally, the fearsome Ro-Man is sent down to the planet to make sure that it’s ready for colonization. (Or something like that. To be honest, Ro-Man’s exact goal remains a bit vague.)

Why is Ro-Man so fearsome? Well, he lives in a cave for one thing. He also owns a bubble machine. And finally, perhaps most horrifically, he’s a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet. However, Ro-Man is not just a one-dimensional bad guy. No, he actually gets to have a monologue about halfway through the film in which he considers the existential issues inherent in being a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet.

Can humanity defeat Ro-Man? Will Ro-Man ever get his intergalactic supervisor to appreciate him? And finally, why are the dinosaurs there?

Despite the film’s reputation for being borderline incoherent, most of those above questions actually are answered if you pay attention to the first few scenes of Robot Monster. In fact, one could even argue that Robot Monster is maybe a little bit more clever than it’s often given credit for. Of course, it’s still a zero-budget mess of a film but it’s also undeniably fun and, in some sections, unexpectedly dark. If you’ve never seen it before, you owe it to yourself to set aside an hour and two minutes in order to watch it. You’ve never see anything like it before.

Finally, I should note that Robot Monster’s hero was played by George Nader, who actually did go on to appear in several mainstream films. Despite his good looks and talent (which may not be obvious in this film but which he did have), George Nader struggled to get starring roles in Hollywood, where he was often dismissed as just being a member of Rock Hudson’s entourage. (It’s been theorized that Nader struggled because the studios feared that giving him too big of a role would lead to the gossip magazines writing about Nader’s relationship with Hudson, though the two were just friends. Nader was in a relationship with Hudson’s private secretary, Mark Miller, from 1947 until Nader’s death in 2001.) Nader finally left Hollywood and went on to have a pretty successful career in Europe. He was perhaps best known for playing secret agent Jerry Cotton in a series of films in the 60s.

Enjoy Robot Monster!

October Positivity: Step Over The Edge (dir by Bruce Lood)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, Trevor.

Played by Scott Wallace, Trevor is the main character and the narrator of the 1976 film, Step Over The Edge. Trevor is a young Christian who gets involved with something called the Vanguard Program. In Vanguard, young people are taken to the wilderness and are forced to go on hikes and climb mountains and brave rapids, all so that they can then spend three days alone with their thoughts and a journal. Trevor, writing in his journal, informs us that he knows that it’s weird for a guy to keep a diary but he’s glad that he did.

At the start of the program, Trevor was a bit of a jerk. He didn’t like any of the other campers. None of them measured up to his standards of what a mature and intelligent believer should be. The girls were either too giggly or too insecure or too popular. They either cared too much or cared too little. Either way, Trevor didn’t think much of them. As for the other boys, Trevor judged most of them to be idiots who were always either complaining or making stupid jokes. Trevor was especially hard on CJ, who Trevor judged to be too close to his mother and a “loser.” When CJ didn’t want to rappel down a mountain, Trevor acted like it was a personal affront. When another camper nearly died in the rapids, Trevor acted like it was everyone’s fault but his own.

Fortunately, Trevor spends his three days alone thinking about his behavior and staring at the sunset and he suddenly comes to realize that he was indeed being too judgmental. The film is only 65 minutes long and Trevor doesn’t actually go off by himself until about 55 minutes in. So, that means that the viewer has to sit through nearly an hour of Trevor being a jerk just to get to ten minutes of Trevor having a sudden epiphany. Watching the film, I got the feeling that perhaps the Vanguard Program was a real thing and this movie was meant to be a bit of infomercial for it. The film seemed to be saying, “Look at what we were able to do for even this jerk!”

To be honest, horror films have pretty much ruined me when it comes to viewing films like this through innocent eyes. Whenever I see any movie that features a bunch of teenagers camping in the wilderness, I automatically start looking for Jason Voorhees hiding behind a tree. Step Over The Edge features a perfectly innocent scene in which everyone sits around a campfire and talks. Rather than appreciating the fact that everyone was opening up, I was sitting there waiting for a monster to come jumping out of the woods.

Step Over The Edge is a low-budget film with grainy cinematography and imperfect performances. The film’s message, which essentially came down to “Don’t judge others,” was a positive one but, in the end, the film really only succeeded in making me happy that I’ve never been one for camping.

Seriously, you never know what might be hiding out there.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Nightmare Café 1.2 “Dying Well Is The Best Revenge”

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Nightmare Cafe, which ran on NBC from January to April of 1992. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Frank and Fay get involved in a case of ghost noir!

Episode 1.2 “Dying Well Is The Best Revenge”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired on March 6th, 1992)

This week’s episode of Nightmare Café begins with Frank and Fay feeling pretty comfortable in their new roles of working at the café under the watchful eye of Blackie. I guess some time has passed since the pilot, as both Frank and Fay seem to be totally okay with the fact that they’re both dead and destined to spend the rest of their existence working as, respectively, a cook and a waitress.

Don’t get me wrong, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being a cook or a waitress. If I was a waitress, I would definitely want to work for Robert Englund and get to wear a cute uniform like Fay does. I think what is throwing me is that Fay and Frank seem to be so comfortable with the idea of being dead. It would take me a bit longer to accept that.

As for tonight’s episode, the action starts when a sultry woman named Angela (Beth Toussaint) enters the café and asks for a cup of coffee. Frank immediately starts flirting with her and Angela flirts back in typical film noir fashion. All of the flirting ends, though, when Angela’s husband, Edward (Justin Deas), stumbles into the café, his face bloodied from apparently being attacked outside while he was waiting for Angela. Angela and Edward leave but Angela later returns so that she can talk to Frank.

Angela claims that Edward is abusive. Frank leaves the café so that he can visit Angela at home and eventually sleep with her. (Fay and Blackie watch on the television.) Fay doesn’t trust Angela, especially after her previous lover — a country club tennis pro (Andrew Airlie) — is mysteriously run over by a hit-and-run-driver. As Fay puts it, she thinks that Frank could be putting his life at risk. But, the thing with that is that Frank and Fay are already dead. That was established in the pilot. So, if Frank is already dead, how is he putting his life at risk? For that matter, if Frank and Fay are dead and the Nightmare Café is basically a dimensional portal, how are they both able to casually leave the café and walk around town? I mean, are they dead and in purgatory or not? Seriously, what are the rules of the Nightmare Café?

Eventually, Edward confronts Frank and Angela and Frank …. SHOOTS HIM! Well, I guess since Frank is dead, he can be a murderer. Except, in a clever twist, it turns out that Edward was already dead and the Nightmare Café gave him a second chance to prove that Angela was the one who set up his murder. When Angela tries to put Edward in the trunk of her car, Edward suddenly gets out of the trunk and Angela shoots him several times. Edward pretends to die once again, allowing the police to arrest Angela for murder. The episode ends with Angela in prison, with Edward as her ghostly companion.

So, as I said earlier, I’m still not sure what the rules of the Nightmare Café are supposed to be and, in this episode, it felt like Frank and Fay could basically just do whatever was convenient to the plot. That’s a bit of a problem because, when there are no rules, there aren’t any stakes either. That said, this episode was helped immensely by the friendly charm of Robert Englund. Blackie didn’t really get involved in the storyline but he did break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience a few times and Englund delivered the lines with just the right amount of cheery sarcasm. Robert Englund definitely kept things entertaining!

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 5.2 “In Living Color” (dir by John Laing)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, the title character (Page Fletcher) continues to come across the worst people on the planet.

This time, that person is Eric Coleman (Ray Sharkey), a once great photographer who now makes a disreputable living taking pictures of celebrities and tragedies. When Eric has a chance to stop a woman’s suicide, he instead decides to take pictures. His new assistant goes out of her way to make Eric feel the error of his ways.

This episode features a convincingly sleazy performance from Ray Sharkey. Eric Coleman is a character who you will definitely want to see receive his comeuppance.

This episode originally aired on April 29th, 1989.

October Hacks: X-Ray (dir by Boaz Davidson)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1982 film X-Ray (also known was Hospital Massacre) opens in the early 60s. A nerdy kid named Harold gives a Valentine’s Day card to a popular girl named Susan. Susan takes one look at the card and laughs. Harold responds by taking Susan’s friend, David, and hanging him from a coat rack. Yikes!

The film then jumps forward by 19 years. Susan (Barbi Benton) is an upper class, divorced mom who has just received a promotion at work. As a part of the promotion, she was required to get a medical exam for insurance purposes. On Valentine’s Day, she heads to the hospital so that she can get the results of that exam. It should be a routine thing that only takes a few minutes. Susan may be a chain smoker but, otherwise, she’s in good health.

Unfortunately, Harold is now working at the hospital and he finally sees his chance to give Susan “a piece of my heart.” Harold fakes Susan’s test results and then murders her doctor. Susan finds herself being checked into the hospital, pretty much against her will. Since Harold didn’t do a very good job at faking her results, the doctors are all confused by Susan’s results. Some of them want to operate. Some of them just want to hold her for observation. Susan desperately wants to leave, especially when she comes to realize that Harold is killing people in the ward. As the doctors and nurses strap Susan down to her bed and prepare to operate, Harold goes on a rampage….

Produced by Cannon Films and directed by Boaz Davidson, X-Ray is an effectively frightening slasher film. While the film’s plot doesn’t always hang together (for instance, Susan is remarkably untraumatized by the fact that, when she was a child, her best friend was hung from a coat rack), the hospital itself is a thoroughly creepy location and the supporting characters are all either extremely strange or extremely callous. This is a slasher film that works less because of the blood that’s spilled but instead because it captures the dread that everyone feels at the prospect of having to spend any time at the hospital. Even the doctors who aren’t trying to kill Susan come across as being cold and unfeeling. The scene where Susan finds herself being ordered to undress so that she can be examined by a brusque doctor who she only met a few minutes before is, quite frankly, just as nightmarish as anything that we see Harold doing to any of his victims. The fact that no one is willing to tell Susan what’s wrong and that everyone refuses to listen to her when she gets upset over the way she’s being treated is something to which many viewers will immediately relate. And, of course, it’s not just that Susan has a madman stalking her through the hospital. It’s also that all of the other patients seem to be so strange, from the guy who wanders around with his flask of bourbon to the three old women who share a hospital room with her and who talk about how, while Susan is beautiful on the outside, the inside of her body is slowly decaying.

Violent but quirky, X-Ray plays out like a filmed nightmare and it’s one of the most effective slasher films over the early 80s.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Night of the Cobra Woman (dir by Andrew Meyer)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1972 film, Night of the Cobra Woman, tells the story of Lena (Marlene Clark).

During World War II, Lena was a nurse assigned to the Philippines. When she and a friend were attacked in the jungle by a Japanese soldier, Lena’s friend was raped while Lena was bitten by a cobra named Movini. As the result of being raised by a snake cult, Movini’s super-powered venom conferred eternal youth, beauty, and sexual energy. It also gave Lena the power to turn into a snake. After subduing the Japanese soldier and turning him into her slave, Lena made a life for herself in the jungle. Worshipped by the locals, Lena became known for never aging.

Years later, a young UNICEF worker named Joanna (Joy Bang) is working at a laboratory in the Philippines. Having heard about Lena’s special snake venom, Joanna heads out to Lena’s compound to ask her how the venom works. However, Joanna is chased off by Lena’s mute man-servant (Vic Diaz). Later, Joanna’s boyfriend, Duff (Roger Garrett), decides to head out to the compound himself and see what’s going on.

When Duff doesn’t return, Joanna heads out to the compound a second time. This time, she brings along Duff’s pet eagle. Joanna is confronted by Lena, who claims that Duff has been bitten by a cobra and has been recovering at the compound. After Movini hisses at Joanna, Joanna released the eagle. The eagle promptly kills Movini.

Now, this sets up a bit of a problem. Lena needed Movini because it was Movini’s venom that was keeping her young and preventing her from turning into a snake and then not being able to change back. Now that Movini is dead, Lena has to head into Manila and find men to seduce so that she can live off of their life force. Helping her out is Duff, who has apparently been brainwashed by Lena and will now do anything to help her, including setting her up with an American serviceman (who is played by an actor named, I kid you not, Slash Marks.) Duff himself starts to rapidly age and turn into a snake. Can Joanna save him and, more importantly, why would she want to? Seriously, Duff left her for another woman. Joanna doesn’t owe him anything!

Night of the Cobra Woman is a thoroughly incoherent movie, one that feels as if it was made up on the spot while filming was taking place. Duff’s decision to go to Lena’s compound on his own never makes sense, nor does it really make much sense that Joanna doesn’t seem to be that upset by the fact that he basically just abandoned her to live with the Cobra Woman. That said, Night of the Cobra Woman does have a cult following because it’s one of the eight films that Joy Bang made during her career. Bang (and that was her real name, as her husband was named Paul Bang) specialized in playing flighty hippies and, as a result, she’s not exactly believable as an expert in snake venom. But the fact that she is so miscast adds to the film’s charm. She has pretty much the same freaked-out reaction to seeing a cobra that I would have, making her a character to whom I could at least relate.

Anyway, Night of the Cobra Woman is not that good but Joy Bang completists will definitely want to check it out.

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 1.5 “Calderone’s Return: The Hit List”

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, the squad loses a member!

Episode 1.5 “Calderone’s Return: The Hit List”

(Dir by Richard A. Colla, originally aired on October 19th, 1984)

This episode opens with Sonny Crockett …. shaving!

That’s right. After four episodes featuring Sonny with stubble, he finally shaves in this one. Tubbs is shocked to see it. However, Sonny has a good reason for shaving because he is due in divorce court, where he hopes that he can keep his soon to be ex-wife from taking his son to Georgia.

At the courthouse, Sonny and Caroline (Belinda Montgomery) take one look at each other and realize that they don’t want to give up on their marriage. They cancel the hearing and fire their attorneys. Caroline says that she’ll find a job in Miami and the Crockett family will stay together.

Yay! It’s a good thing Sonny shaved.

Unfortunately, the pilot’s main bad guy, Calderone, wants to return to Miami and he’s sent an assassin (Jim Zubiena) to not only take out his potential rivals but also to kill the cops who he blames for his downfall. When Tubbs and Rodriguez discover that Crockett is the 8th name on the assassin’s hit list and that six of the previous names are already dead, Rodriguez orders Crockett to go into productive custody. Knowing that Crockett has trouble with following orders, Lt. Rodriguez personally escorts Sonny to his boat so that Sonny can pack. When Rodriguez spots the reflection of a muzzle on a nearby building, Rodriguez pushes Sonny out of the way just as the Assassin pulls the trigger. Rodriguez takes the bullet that was meant for Sonny.

And I have to admit that I was a bit upset by Rodriguez getting shot, despite the fact that Rodriguez wasn’t a particularly well-developed character. He was the typical tough chief with a secret heart of gold and, for the most part, his brief role on the show consisted of barking at Sonny to do things by the book. But still, Gregory Sierra was a likable actor and, as a result, Rodriguez always came across as being nice even when he was angry at Crockett. Technically, the reason Rodriguez sacrificed his life was because Sierra requested to be written off the show. In the world of Miami Vice, though, Rodriguez’s death gave both Crockett and Tubbs even more motivation to seek revenge on Calderone.

But, before Crockett and Tubbs can head down to the Bahamas to get Calderone, they have to take care of the Assassin. After an hour of chases, misdirections, and one wonderfully over-the-top nightclub brawl, Crockett and the Assassin face each other in Crockett’s house, firing bullets at each other while Crockett’s wife and son cower in another room. It’s an exciting fight, containing one particularly memorable moment when the Assassin appears to be firing his machine gun directly at the camera. The Assassin was played by Jim Zubiena, who is a professional marksman and was a gun advisor on the set. The Assassin doesn’t say one word but he’s still terrifying precisely because he obviously knows how to handle a gun. In the end, it takes the entire Vice Squad to gun him down and it’s nice to see Crockett and Tubbs finally being helped out in a gunfight by Gina, Trudy, Switek, and Zito.

The Assassin may be dead but Calderone still lives. After Crockett tells his shaken wife that he’ll reschedule their divorce hearing, he and Tubbs head for the Bahamas as part one of Calderone’s Revenge comes to a close.

Goodbye, Lou Rodriguez. You will be missed.

Horror Novel Review: The Cheater by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1993’s The Cheater, R.L. Stine tells the story of Carter Phillips.

Carter has everything going for her. Her father is a judge. Her mother is socialite. She’s a member of the exclusive Shadyside Country Club, where she and her friend Jill tear it up on the tennis court. She’s got a sweet and sensitive boyfriend named Dan. She’s got the type of name that people are definitely going to remember. There’s just one problem.

Carter sucks at Math.

And if Carter can’t get a decent grade on the big math exam, she’ll never get into Princeton!

Finally, an R.L. Stine book to which I could relate! Seriously, much like Carter, I was a pretty good student in high school but Math was never my thing. I would look at those test papers with all of those numbers and symbols and all of those commands to “show your work” and my brain would just shut off. Fortunately, my sister had been a year ahead of me and she held onto all of her old math tests. Since our teacher pretty much reused the same tests from year to year, I was lucky enough to have an answer key.

Every test day, I would wear a skirt and, right before class, I would write the answers on my thigh. If the teacher walked by my desk while I was taking the test, I would just pull down on my skirt. Fortunately, the teacher was a male so even if he did suspect that I was cheating, it’s not like he could tell me to lift up my skirt or, for that matter, even get caught trying to look down at my legs.

And that’s how I managed to pass algebra without ever paying attention to anything that was said in class. I know that I should probably feel guilty about cheating but, to be honest, I don’t. If I had it to do all over again, I would do the exact same thing.

Unfortunately, Carter doesn’t have an older sister and when she suggests that maybe Dan could take the test for her, Dan is so shocked that Carter has to pretend like she was just telling a joke. However, Adam Messner, who is a rebel who always dressed in black and doesn’t come from as wealthy a family as Carter or Dan, overhears Carter talking to Dan. He offers to take the test for Carter, on the condition that Carter go on one date with him.

Carter agrees. Adam gets a good grade on the test and, as a result, Carter is not only Princeton-bound but her father gives her a pair of diamond earrings. But now there’s the fact that Carter has to go on a date with Adam and the fact that Adam has decided that he wants more than one date….

It’s an intriguing premise but unfortunately, Stine gets bogged down with one of those murder mysteries that ends with a rather silly twist. Reading this book, it was obvious that it was written in 1993 because the main theme of the book seemed to be that Carter and her friends were totally right to be annoyed with the idea of having to deal with not-rich teenagers who dress in black and who have tattoos. One gets the feeling that, if this book were written today, the roles would be reversed with Carter being portrayed as the villain and Adam as the misunderstood victim.

That said, I enjoyed The Cheater. Stine kept the action moving quickly, Adam was actually a fairly well-drawn character, and I could relate to Carter. Seriously, Math can be difficult! The Cheater does the right thing and embraces the melodrama.