Rick Sloane | Through the Shattered Lens

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you’re having trouble sleeping tonight, you can go over to Tubi and watch 1992’s Mind, Body & Soul.

Brenda (Ginger Lynn) has a new boyfriend! After years of getting stuck with duds, Brenda is happy to finally be dating Carl (Jesse Kaye), who is handsome and successful and has a thing about wanting her to drip hot candle wax on his body. Everything’s going fine until Carl asks her to come hang out with some friends of his. It turns out that they’re all Satanists and they’re planning on sacrificing a woman. Fortunately, the police arrive before the sacrifice can be carried out. Unfortunately, all the Satanists run off and leave innocent Brenda takes the blame.

After she’s arrested and spends several days in jail, Brenda is finally bailed out by defense attorney John Stockton (Wings Hauser). Because Carl apparently blew up her apartment (and, the police say, himself with it), Brenda doesn’t have anywhere to stay. She accepts John’s offer to stay at his place. John promises to be a perfect gentleman. He’s a former probation officer and he just wants to help.

And Brenda definitely needs some help! She suspects that Carl isn’t really dead. She keeps having bizarre visions of the robed and masked leader of the cult. She suspects that the cult might still be after her and, when she agrees to appear on a local talk show to tell her story, she finds herself stunned to be sitting across from an actual witch. Her former cellmate, Rachel (Tamara Clatterbuck), has just been released from prison and is willing to help Brenda out. Again, Brenda needs the help. The cult is after her and it’s going to take a lot of intelligence to survive and that’s probably going to be Brenda’s downfall because it’s hard to think of a dumber character than Brenda.

(Seriously, if my boyfriend took me to a Satanic cult meeting on a date, I would be out of there before they even got around to the human sacrifice part of the night.)

This film is so incredibly dumb that I don’t even know where to begin. Occasionally, I’ll see an incoherent horror film and I’ll give it a good review because the incoherence can sometimes add to the terror. Two of my favorite directors, Lucio Fulci and Jean Rollin, both deliberately made horror films that didn’t make sense because they were tying to capture the feeling of being in a nightmare. Mind, Body & Soul makes sense as long as you accept that Brenda, Rachel, and almost every other character in this film is mind-numbingly dumb. The plot works as long as you accept that there is not a shred of intelligence to be found amongst any of the characters, including the bad guys. This is a dumb film that is never scary. It does feature a fair amount of nudity, which I imagine was probably meant to be the film’s main selling point.

On the plus side, Wings Hauser is always entertaining. You’ll be able to guess the big plot twist that involves his character but no matter. With his quick smirk, he at least seems to be enjoying himself. As was so often the case, Hauser’s performance is the only one in this film that feels like an actual performance. Wings Hauser was an actor who always gave it his all, even while appearing in something like this.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
The Haunting of Helen Walker
True Spirit
Project Kill
Replica
Rollergator
Hillbillys In A Haunted House
Once Upon A Midnight Scary
Girl Lost
Ghosts Can’t Do It
Heist

I have watched my share of not-good films but, as I sit here typing this, it’s hard for me to think of anything quite as mind-numbingly bad as 1984’s Blood Theatre.

Blood Theatre is a horror film without scares and a comedy without laughs. It starts at some point in the past, when a lovelorn movie theater owner (played, as a young man, by David Milbern) has a nervous breakdown upon discovering that the ticket girl doesn’t love him. So, he stabs her to death and then sets the theater on fire, killing the majority of the patrons inside. Years later, Mr. Murdock (Rob-Roy Fletcher) decides to increase his chain of Starlite Theaters by purchasing the old theater. He sends three of his employees over to get the place in shape. What he doesn’t stop to consider is that the theater owner (now played, as an old man, by Jonathan Blakely) is still haunting the old theater and killing anyone who shows up. Is the owner a ghost or a human killer? The film never quite makes up its mind, as sometimes he appears to have control of electricity and time and space and other times, he’s just an old geezer with a knife.

But the motives of the killer really aren’t that important because, oddly enough, he’s not really in the much of the film. Instead, the majority of the film is a broad comedy about the people working at the theater, none of whom are particularly funny or even likable. Selena (Joanna Foxx) gets mad when someone fails to pay for their popcorn so, for some reason, she follows them into theater and rips of her bra in front of them. I’m not really sure how that is supposed to get back at them for not paying for their popcorn but it does lead to a riot in the theater as everyone demands that she sit down so that they can enjoy the movie. Amazingly, this somehow does not lead to Selena getting fired but instead, she and her friend Darcy (Stephanie Dillard) are transferred to the new theater, much to the irritation of their co-worker, cheerleader Jennifer (Jenny Cunningham). Jennifer, Selena, and Darcy are all supposed to be in high school but they also all appear to be in their 30s.

Mary Woronov is also in this film. She’s totally wasted in the role of Murdock’s administrative assistant. She spends the entire movie answering the phone in the office and rolling her eyes and then making sarcastic comments about the fact that Murdock has gone to a theater owner’s convention but he hasn’t returned yet because he’s been mugged. For reasons that aren’t really clear, she hates Murdock and she hates everyone that she works with but then again, no one in this movie seems to like anyone else. Everyone in this movie dislikes everyone else and, as a result, it’s not as if any of the people are particularly pleasant to hang out with.

This is one of those comedies where every joke is repeated ad nauseum, to the point where it becomes impossible to watch the film without wanting to throw something at the screen. It would help, of course, if the jokes were funny but none of them are. It would also help if there was a shred of charisma to be found in the cast but, with the exception of Mary Woronov, everyone delivers their lines stiffly and without personality. Clocking in at 75 minutes but feeling much, much longer, Blood Theatre is one of the most incredibly dull films that I’ve ever seen. This is the slasher film that answers the question, “Just how bad can these films get?”