TWICE DEAD

Directed by Bert L. Dragin. 1988. United States.

Normally, inheriting a mansion from a dead relative you barely knew would be a major cause for celebration. The Cates family, on the other hand, is slightly less thrilled. The place clearly needs major renovations, and there are still some legal snaggles with the paperwork that need ironed out. There’s a bunch of junk that's been sitting around since the 1920s, meaning no one’s lived here since then or kept the place tidy. I can’t imagine the mold problems. Oh yeah, and it’s currently the hangout spot for a gang of miscreants who are none too happy to find a new place to squat. But aside from all that, the place is incredible. Spacious rooms, a nice view (or it will be once all the “urban renewal” is completed), and hey, it even comes with its very own ghost!

Depression era actor Tyler Walker, spurned by his one great love, Myrna, hanged himself in an upstairs room. Scott, the teenage son, finds Walker’s knick-knacks. He even discovers the mannequin Walker used to dress up in Myrna’s clothes. After some digging into local history, Scott discovers that not only was Myrna their great-aunt, but that his sister, Robin, looks exactly like her (they’re both played by the distractingly beautiful Jill Whitlow). But all that ghostly hullabaloo needs to wait. We have a much larger problem: midterms! Oh, and that gang still isn’t happy with losing their hangout spot. They’re determined to get it back, one way or another.

First, they bully Scott while he plays basketball. Rude. Then they attempt to rape Robin after killing her cat. Very rude. They chase the siblings around town and send pizzas to their house before finally deciding to lay siege to the place while Scott and Robin’s parents are out of town. But reclaiming their drinking spot might not be the only reason for the hostilities. Gang member Crip is developing a bizarre obsession with Robin. There’s something about her that he can’t shake. Maybe it has something to do with Crip’s resemblance to the late Tyler Walker. Either way, the gang wrecking the house and threatening Robin with violence isn’t sitting too well with the ghostly presence haunting the mansion hallways and bedrooms. Bloody hijinks ensue.

TWICE DEAD comes to us courtesy of Roger Corman’s low-budget genre distribution house, Concorde Pictures. Concorde gave us such fine classics of American cinema as THE TERROR WITHIN and SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE. That should clue you in to what kind of movie this is. It’s a low-logic, low-lighting, cheapo trash flick with zero attention to detail and little interest in anything other than set-pieces and payoffs. If you try to approach this film with any kind of real-world logic, it will collapse instantly. For example, after their daughter is nearly gang-raped (and has her cat tacked up to a door with a switchblade), the cops tell the father that because the culprits were wearing masks, there’s nothing they can do. Can’t even question potential suspects. It's out of our control. Sorry.

The ghost attempts to strangle Scott in his bed with a length of rope, but then spends the rest of the film acting as his protector. When the gang invades the house for the first time, Scott and Robin subdue them one by one with chloroform (!) and then use makeup from their high school special effects class (!!) to make it look like someone is bumping them off (!!!). A wad of gum prevents a door from locking. Scott steals a gang member’s motorcycle, rides it home, and then leaves it parked outside his own house like a dumbass. Also, someone in the production should have told the actors playing our siblings to dial down the sexual energy going on between them. It’s kinda weird how they always look like they're one jump cut away from getting it on.

There’s so much dumb shit going on that I could spend the rest of the review just listing all of it. Nothing about the film makes a lick of sense, but of course, no one cares. This wasn’t made to win the 1988 Critics’ Choice Award. This was produced solely to make as much money as possible for as little money as possible. As such, it is padded worse than the bras worn by the film’s extras. It’s clearly building to the gang settling into the home for a little abuse and possible gang rape, but it doesn’t get there until the one-hour mark.

Of course, once the ghostly retribution kicks in, it’s all (mostly) great stuff. Raymond Cruz and Charlie Spradling get both an unconvincing sex scene and an unconvincing death by electrocution. Someone has their head turned into hamburger by a dumbwaiter while another gang member is repeatedly battered by his own motorcycle. Someone has their brains blown out. It’s great. And while all of that is going on, Crip and Robin are in the throes of possession upstairs, ready to recreate the traumatic night that caused all of this haunting shit in the first place.

It felt like the last half hour of TWICE DEAD was what the director wanted the whole film to be: a high-energy, creepy, and effective little haunted house splatter flick. Unfortunately, the reality of low-budget filmmaking doesn’t care about wants and wishes. The film is a confusing mess of tone and pacing, with severe leaps of logic and way too many WTF moments that stretch credulity to the breaking point. I would have been happy had the film gone down the Scooby-Doo route of Robin and Scott fucking around (no, not that way, you pervert) with the gang using fake blood and high school props. Whoops! Turns out there really is a ghost in the house bumping people off. Oh no! Now we all need to work together to get out of here alive. Something like that would have fit the teenage trope-filled tone of the first half.

The film takes far too long to settle into a consistent tone, and by the time it does, I was ready for it to be over. Thankfully, that final half hour satisfactorily delivers the goofy goods. It’s the kind of send-off a movie like this needs because without it, I would be far more hostile than I am right now. I’m writing this less than 45 minutes after I shut the movie off. Had the ending been fumbled, I would be foaming at the mouth right now, but I was amused by the way the film massacred the gang. I was even a little surprised by how thoughtful the film was in handling the whole Crip (Tyler) / Robin (Myrna) stuff. It’s a proper, tragic ending, one that I didn’t expect from a film with zero subtlety. A good ending to a bad night is sometimes the best outcome you can hope for.