Twice Dead

Trailer—Twice Dead

source: Twice Dead

Why is it the actress you want to get her kit off in a film, never does? I mean, we have two really good looking women in this otherwise completely forgettable movie, but instead of seeing their assets we end up viewing.. the Playboy reject's silicone enhanced bosoms.I may not get what I want, but I get what I deserve. Anyhoo, if you like endlessly recycled horror story lines you'll love this. Family on the verge of bankruptcy.. forced to move to an old dilapidated house.. a gang of hooligans start harassing them.. place turns out to be haunted.. the daughter resembles the ghost's true love.. family defends home when the thugs attack in force.. the spirit aids them by dispatching the gang members in various gory ways. Then it concludes with a COMPLETELY UNPREDICTABLE TWIST ENDING! You'll never guess.. The hooligans are by far the best thing about the film. Each one has got their own unique dress sense and personality traits which make them more interesting than the two bland leads. The violence is a lot more comical than scary half the time, and the blood is seemingly tomato sauce mixed up with red food dye (although in one case it is deliberately fake). Essentially, this isn't a brilliant film but with a no-name cast and limited financing, what do you expect? Worth a 4/10 just about..

A preppy brother and sister very stupidly play a prank on a gang of heavies who have been making their life hell. Obviously they didn't take the gang seriously because of their Kajagoogoo hairdos. What they forgot was that this is the eighties, and even violent sadists had silly hair. Naturally, the gang seek their revenge. The leader Silk wants to maim Preppy Boy, and the tough but attractive Crip wants to have his way with the sister. They're aided by a the obese Melvin, who's literally attached to his motorbike, and the stereotypical sex-crazed Latino. The only person on the goody-goodies' side is the bloke who played Willis In Different Strokes. They don't have a chance

Twice Dead starts in the 1930's as stage actor Tyler Walker (Jonathan Chapin) is having a hard time, firstly he's skint & to add insult to injury his large Beverly Hills house is about to be taken away from him by Harry Cates Sr. (Bob McLean) the man who stole his one true love off him. It's all too much for poor Tyler & he is found dead having hanged himself... Jump to the late 80's & Harry Cates Jr. (Sam Melville) has inherited the house from his uncle, in an uncanny resemblance to past events Harry is also dead skint so decides to move his family into the house to ease their financial burden. Unfortunately when they turn up they find a local gang of punks have decided the front garden is theirs, after a stand off involving the police the gang moves on. Scott (Tom Bresnahan) & his sister Robin (Jill Whitlow) have an ugly encounter the gang at school & a feud begins to develop. The gang, lead by Silk (Christopher Burgard), lie in wait for Robin & one of them tries to rape her but Scott saves the day. Silk & the rest of the gang are really annoyed now & decide to have their revenge by breaking into the Cates house but a supernatural presence lurks that start to kill the intruders off one-by-one... Co-written & directed by Bert L. Dragin I thought Twice Dead was a pretty decent film & much better than I had any right to expect. The script by Dragin & Robert McDonnell moves along at a reasonable pace & provides a fair amount of mindless entertainment. It mixes revenge film with a little bit of a ghost story & finally adds a touch of teenage slasher film to round things off, for the most part it works quite well as it's balanced & no one single theme overly dominates the running time. The character's aren't as clichéd as one may expect, apart from the stereotypical punk gang consisting of leather wearing, flick knife wielding, motorbike riding tough guys sporting bad attitudes wherever they go. There is a great twist about halfway through that I must admit I didn't see coming & succeeded in surprising me which isn't easy after you've seen as many of these low budget horror films as I have. No explanation is given as to why Tyler is a ghost, don't people commit suicide all the time? Do they all come back as vengeful spirits? I don't think so. The place is haunted by Tyler & thats it we have to accept it. The ending & various events throughout the film seems to indicate that history is repeating itself including something about a coffin in the basement but these plot threads are never really tied together that well & it comes across as a bit of an afterthought. Made by the Roger Corman owned Concorde Pictures Twice Dead was director Dragin's second & to this point in time last film which seems a bit of a shame because he turns in a throughly decent & credible horror film, it has that late 80's look & feel while it also has a nice atmosphere to it as he films everything with minimal use of colour. There is even a nice little car chase in here as well. I could have done with a bit more blood & gore but what we get is OK, there are a few decapitated heads, a squashed head, death by motorcycle, a couple electrocuted while having sex & someone shooting themselves with a shotgun. Now, one thing I have to mention is the boom mike. I have never seen a film where the boom mike is in shot as many times as it is in Twice Dead, I was thinking that it should get some sort of recognition in the credits as it has more screen time in the film than some of the character's! I counted at least six times when it was painfully visible, all in wide shots. Other than that Twice Dead is generally well made with decent production values. The acting was OK as well. Twice Dead was a bit of a pleasant surprise as I didn't think I would but I liked it. If your a fan of these types of low budget horror films then you could do a hell of a lot worse than this, personally I think it's well worth checking out if you lay your hands on a copy.

I had the chance to get to sit down to watch the 1988 movie "Twice Dead" for the very first time here in 2021, just 33 years after the movie was released. I hadn't heard about it prior to watching it, so I didn't know what I was in for here, aside from it being a late 1980s horror movie. And boy was it a late 1980s horror movie in every meaning of that phrase. This movie was so stereotypical for a horror movie from the end of the 1980s in every way. But hey, if you enjoy the movies back then, then you should feel right at home when you sit down to watch "Twice Dead" from writers Bert L. Dragin and Robert McDonnell. The storyline told in "Twice Dead" was pretty straight forward, sort of thing "Return of the Living Dead", except you exchange the zombies with a vengeful ghost, and replace the cemetery and factory with an old, run-down mansion. Then you have a delinquent band of miscreants hellbent on wrecking havoc upon the new youngsters that just moved into town. Visually then the movie was definitely a late 1980s product, and the passing of time has not been overly kind to the effects in the movie. I am sure that back in 1988s then the effects here were adequate, but today, well, not so much. The acting in "Twice Dead" was adequate. My rating of this stereotypical late 1980s horror movie settles on a mediocre five out of ten stars, as the movie doesn't really bring anything to the horror genre that hadn't been done already back in the day, and more often than not, done better even.

One of the better examples of the 80's on how to mix the horror and comedy genres successfully. This film is about a family moving into a house that is haunted by the ghost of a once great actor. A few neighborhood punks cause trouble though and eventually try to take the house over and kill the family, but the ghost helps them out and dispatches of the punks in violent and creative ways. Very low budgeted, but fast paced thriller with only average to poor performances and ok direction. It is extremely entertaining though with some very good f/x and an especially exciting finale. Rated R; Graphic Violence, Nudity, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.

i remember when i saw this in the theater with a few of my friends. we were just kids so i pretty much liked this better then than i do today, but having just recently revisited it after a while, i still like it. it's no Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, but Twice Dead is at least competent while some horror flicks of that time (and most of them today) fell flat. Bert Dragin's haunted house/ghost story may not hold together as a whole, but it gives us a solid setup, better performances than most from its genre, a strong visual mood, and a few very bloody, very satisfying death scenes, delivering everything a horror film needs. an extended prologue shows us 1930s actor Tyler Walker hanging himself in the attic of his home just as he's about to be evicted, but the main story takes place in 1988, with the Cates family, good people who've had their share of bad luck. there's mom and dad, older brother Scott (Tom Bresnahan) and his stunning sister, Robyn (Jill Whitlow), trying to get back on their feet after a bankruptcy. bad luck gets worse when they're forced to move into the Walker home, which they've acquired through an inheritance. they find the place to be a dump in a bad neighborhood with even worse company. right as they walk up to the front door, they have to shake off Silk (Christopher Burgard) and his gang of nasty punk sh!theels who've taken to squatting in the Walker house as a hangout. now add in the outstanding factor that Walker's ghost still haunts the grounds...Yeah, these poor bastards already have more than their share to worry about. as they attempt to settle in, Scott researches Walker's history, learning he was a tortured and broken soul. Robyn has a more difficult time adjusting, as she has becomes the object of desire for the switchblade-wielding Crip (Jonathan Chapin), a very mysterious and arguably the most disturbed of Silk's gang. after enduring fistfights, the slaughter of the family cat, and a creepy attempted rape, Scott and Robyn just want to be left alone and even turn to defensive measures (an altogether ludicrous sequence that would be stupid if it weren't so clever and fun). but Silk, all nasty and vengeful, stirs up his sh!t blizzard of harassment and terror, eventually turning things homicidal. that's where Walker's ghost comes into play. to say anymore would ruin the satisfying rampage in the film's last act when Silk briefly gains the upper hand. the body count is actually kept to a minimum, but needless to say, a few cringing deaths are in order and a few (one involving a motorcycle and another involving an electric blanket) definitely get points for creativity, while two other deaths are enough to make you jump. one death even involves the obligatory (and very gratuitous) horror flick nudity from the gorgeous Charlie Spradlin, the slinky sexpot of Silk's gang. the movie relies a lot on its two leads. Whitlow is so damn pretty, we lecherous scum won't be able to think about anything else and Bresnahan is good as her likable brother. Todd Bridges is okay as the only well-meaning character the Cates come across. It's Burgard and Chapin who take the show, the former eating all his scenes while the latter plays it down. all in all, this is a solid movie. there are some loose ends left hanging and some scenes are perfunctory while others just don't belong, but anyone expecting Citizen Kane with this is overshooting. i won't deny that i have some sentimentality on this one, but there are plenty of flicks i hated when i revisited them and this certainly wasn't that. this won't change the world for anyone, but it's entertaining, quick, and not a massive waste of time. worth a look.

Obscure haunted house film I had never heard of, until I saw it paired on DVD with another film I was interested in seeing("The Evil") Only way Shout Factory could get anyone to buy it I suppose! Film itself is shoddy, with a derivative, unappealing story about a vengeful ghost and a biker gang, and characters(except the lovely Jill Whitlow, wasted here) and is directed without distinction, and looks amateurish. Dull and uninteresting film is a complete bust, with a lousy and unoriginal ending. Forget it, unless you just have to watch a film you're forced to buy, because you want the other feature!

The Cates family from Colorado moves into broken down Beverly Hills mansion.They discover not only does a gang of malicious punks hang out there,but so does the angry spirit of a deceased actor Tyler Walker who is not pleased some rebellious teens have taken over his property."Twice Dead" begins with lovingly surreal sequence in which an actor from silent era is dancing with a mannequin.It mixes light-hearted humour with gore and supernatural stuff.All characters in "Twice Dead" are stereotypes and the dialogue is often hilarious.As with most films in this genre there are a lot of plot holes and lack of logic or consistency,but the death scenes are quite cool.Even motorcycle is used as a murder weapon.8 out of 10 for cheesy "Twice Dead".