Customer Reviews

Petrified

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Oh brother! Where to start. First of all, this movie is bad. Very bad. It is so bad I could not give it one star. It had to get two just for actually being distributed and making it into video stores. I don't know where this took place but It wasn't in my part of the country. I've never seen so many sex starved gorgeous young ladies(?) together at one time. They all want to have sex and it doesn't matter with who, or what. Male, female, it makes no difference. Where is this world? When the first scene after the opening credits began I thought this could be one of the greatest movies of all time, easily making my top five list, although the two young ladies outside looked kind of cold to be doing whatever they were doing. ahem. Unfortunately they kept filming. The dialog was so incrediblby silly and so poorly delievered. Some of these people could not have been professional actors. Some had to be relatives of the producer. And what is with the scantily clad brunette actually putting on more clothes to have sex? She has the stand out lines of the whole movie. After she gets dressed to have sex, she says "Come and get me baby..." and the only one listening is the creature. And then this brunette, after being attacked by this creature of some sort while she is in bed waiting for her lover, goes right back to bed with a different guy in the same bed not 10 minutes later..Hey, can you take a hint? Then, as she is taking off the outfit she put on to have sex in.. This may be confusing. The guy she is about to have sex with gets turned to stone and her line is: "Oh baby, you're hard all over" I kid you not. Well, the plot involves some creature in a box that gets revived I guess by blood dripping onto it from a bad guy who gets shot because he is annoying to other bad guys. This creature is pretty gruesome looking with pointed teeth and claws for hands, but his real power is his glowing red eyes that petrify people. Usually the people getting petrified are involved in some kind of sexual activity, or they've just finished or they are about to begin. In addition to the sex starved cuties, there is a nutcase scientist who doesn't care who gets hurt as long as he can make contact with this strange new breed of life. Hmm, can you guess his fate? And then there is the solution. It's a hoot how ...well, I won't give it away, but the creature does have a wekness. The characters in this film can be summed up as being good looking, in heat and they all have the I.Q.'s of snails. Anyway, if you just want to watch a movie because it is so bad it is kind of funny, this would not be a bad choice. I hate to admit it, but I kind of enjoyed it. Kind of.

Charles Band, master of terrible horror films, is at it again in "Petrified." I enjoyed this more than many of Band's films, but the thing I appreciated most about it was that it's running time is just over an hour. This film throws a lot of B-movie ingredients in a cauldron, but they never make a palatable stew. The film starts off with a black market antiquities deal going horribly awry with a resultant mummy escape, ensuring mayhem for the brief duration of the film. The dialogue, plot, and acting are uniformly horrible, and the red glowing eyes of the mummy are one of the more hilarious special effects in recent memory.

The government agent in charge of illegal mummy stings, Buzz York (Roark Critchlow,) is from the Don Johnson cool-as-a-cucumber mold of agents, and while he is traversing the countryside on his mission he walks into what seems to be a house in the middle of the night. It's not a house, but rather in an amazing plot contrivance, is actually a clinic for the treatment of nymphomania run by insane Dr. Horatio Von Gelder (Osman Soykut,) who has some extremely unorthodox theories to say the least. This arrangement works out great, because in an icky and ancient coincidence, the mummy is also a bit of a voyeur. Before it's over there's an ancient hand running around doing evil bidding, lots of scantily clad women behaving in totally unnatural ways, and even a story connecting the mummy subplot with an alien subplot. If it sounds like a mess it is. So much so, in fact, that I actually gave it two stars for being so terrible that it's actually occasionally enjoyable as a movie so bad it's good.

The DVD also features some extras including a "making of" feature, some other Full Moon trailers, and miscellaneous other (boring) extras. This is definitely not one of Charles Band's worst movies, and while I don't recommend it in general, people with a high tolerance for B-movie camp value will likely find amusing moments in the convoluted but brief plot.

What horror fan doesn't have a special place in his/her black little heart for Charles Band and Full Moon? We're talking about the man who gave us the MonsterBra, the real puppet master behind The Puppet Master, the king of slow-moving, runtime-extending credits, the prolific B horror filmmaker who has now gone back to shooting on 35mm film (good for him). I mean, you can't throw a dead cat without hitting a low-budget horror film Charles Band was involved in. Petrified is one of the newest releases from the newly rechristened Full Moon Features, coming on the heels of Doll Graveyard and The Gingerdead Man. I can't say that Petrified is a very good movie because it isn't, not with its goofy storyline, low-budget special effects, and corny dialogue delivered by unskilled actors. It is, however, a real hoot of a Charles Band film.

You know this is low-budget when, in the very first scene, one guy shoots another without aiming the gun anywhere near him, and then the other characters barely even react to what just happened. The scene itself involves the illicit transfer of an ancient mummy and a separate mummified hand. When the deal goes south, Buzz (Roark Critchlow) makes a run for it with said hand, while the others are left to greet the ancient mummy, who, upon being reawakened by the blood of the gunshot victim, suddenly emerges from his crate. Waking up a little out of sorts, he immediately petrifies those left behind (literally) with his deadly gaze. Buzz, meanwhile, ducks into what appears to be a house, but guess what? It's actually a clinic specializing in the treatment of young ladies suffering from severe nymphomania. Needless to say, Buzz decides to hang around a while waiting for his backup to come and extract him from the scene. I don't want you to get too excited by this nymphomania thing, though. Every time one or more girls start getting all hot and bothered, the stupid mummy shows up and ruins everything. This direct-to-DVD release is unrated, but I would personally give it a PG-13 rating.

While a couple of investigators do some horrible acting as they follow the path of petrified bodies the mummy left in his wake, Buzz passes the time with Helen (Jessica Lancaster), her hot and horny sister Suze (Kimberly Pfeffer), and a handful of other saucy young patients at the clinic. Knowing that a nympho lesbian is a terrible thing to waste, he soon becomes the girls' protector when the mummy shows up. No matter how hairy things get, though, Buzz finds time to sort of flirt with Helen, the only young lady there who is not a nymphomaniacal hottie. Then, after the doctor finally turns up, Buzz listens patiently as the guy drones on and on about his research. Basically, Doc thinks that the pheromones of nymphomaniacs hold the key to eternal youth. This is why I love Charles Band. Who else is going to give you this kind of incredibly goofy storyline?

Like the mummy himself, the plot of this movie isn't wrapped all that tightly, but that's OK. Sure, it would be nice if the film were the least bit scary, but you can't help but have a good time laughing at all of the bad movie wares on display. If you ask me, I think the film's pretty darned hilarious. From a really bad joke about "hardened criminals" to moments of inane dialogue delivered quite woodenly by almost every one of the actors, there's just an abundance of campy badness to enjoy from the whole Petrified experience. It's just unfortunate that the movie runs only 76 minutes, and that's counting the heavily padded end credits.

It's pretty difficult to rate a film like this. It's really a two-star film, but I gave it a third star for all of its hilarious weaknesses. If you love goofy, low-budget horror films, a three-star Charles Band release is almost guaranteed to entertain you.

On a final note, Petrified undoubtedly has more executive producers than any other film in history - dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Be sure and stay tuned throughout the excruciatingly long end credits to find out how this came to be.

This movie reaches a new level of "suck" I didn't think was possible.If your looking for a horror flick along the lines of classic Full Moon (Puppet Master, Subspecies) you won't find it here. 1 star is too generous of a rating. At just over 1 hour long, it's not worth the twenty bucks I spent on it. If you must see this movie, rent it.

I'm going to stand alone in this, but the film is not that bad. Yes it does have some odd, strange things, like an all girl nymph-house/hospital (really, thats a whole nother movie in itself ha)

All kissing scenes are done with the girls, but poor angle and not much chemistry, which makes the scenes pointless.

The creature itself is not scary by any means. Heck I look worse in the mornings, but this film is not scary by any means and doesn't have that creepy music that most big horror films have.

I don't think the acting was that bad, I've seen lots of movies with just terrible acting, this film isn't that bad. Not on my top 10 favorites, but more like top 110.

Three criminals are selling an ancient mummy (plus an extra mummy hand) to some guy. After they get their money, they shoot the guy and then decide to get rid of the third criminal as well, so they only have to split the loot two ways. The third guy manages to run away, but the dead guy's blood gets on the mummy, bringing it to life. The guy who ran away takes shelter in a house, which turns out to be a clinic for the treatment of nymphomania. Best line of the movie: "Why would you want to cure that?". Anyhow, third guy turns out to be an undercover cop, and he calls his two partners to come and get him. Much of the movie is spent with the other two cops finding the bodies of the mummy's victims. They talk a lot. They never actually do anything except pad out the movie's run time.

In the nympho clinic the cop meets some woman who claims to be a doctor, but actually she's just trying to get her sister out of the clinic because the real doctor is conducting experiments to make people immortal. When we finally meet the real doctor, he spends five minutes explaining why he needs nympho's to conduct his experiments. None of this really matters, it's just an excuse to fill the movie with talking. The only discernible "plot" is about nympho girls in their undies getting friendly with each other and then being killed by the mummy. The mummy can apparently teleport itself directly behind its intended victim. One moment it's obviously not in the room, then the camera angle changes and presto! It attacks someone. Pretty laughable way of handling the attacks.

The ending is a huge anti-climax as well. Overall, some sexy babes in their undies, very, very little nudity, and most of the movie is wasted with boring talking to explain subplots that don't matter one bit. There's little character development, you really don't care about any of the characters, so the movie can't be very interesting. It would have been much better to jettison all the junk with the meaningless subplots, spend more time getting to know the nympho girls, having them run around fleeing the mummy, and developing a plan to defeat him. But no, we get explanations of subplots and completely undeveloped characters. I give it a two; I've seen much much worse, but it doesn't rise to the level of even an average campy movie. It's too boring and not enough fun.

This movie wasn't even B-grade. It was horrible. Horrible acting and horrible plot lines. It was called a mummy, but it resembled no mummy I had ever seen. It might be a mummy from some other world.