After the week-long party that was Thanksgiving, my 10 year high school reunion and many smaller reunions of old friends, I decided to take a much deserved night off from the hooch. I also have to take a drug test for my new job tomorrow, and I thought that maybe showing up for it not smelling like a distillery would help make a good, albeit false impression for my new employer. I drank some cranberry juice, took some milk thistle and watched "Don't Panic", or "Dimensiones ocultas" as it is known in its native land. Its part of my "Crypt of Terror" Mexican horror box set.
This film was written and directed by Ruben Galindo Jr., making it what we film buffs call a "vehicle", a Ruben Galindo Jr. "Vehicle". I like to think this blog is educational and informative. Turns out that three of his other movies are included in my box set. Hooray. The film is also somewhat of a Jon Michael Bischof "vehicle", as he is the main star and he wrote and performed the film's ultra cheesy titular (I love that word) theme song. Jon Michael is deserved of praise, not only for his excellent name, his excellent curly mullet or the fact that he's supposed to be 17 years old and runs around in his dinosaur pajamas for most of this film, but for the fact that he apparently recorded the theme song on a Fisher Price tape recorder. There are backup singers, keyboards, all sorts of things going on in that song. It must have been hard to get all that together with no multi tracking and just that little plastic microphone.
Jon Michael plays a kid named Michael whose friends give him a Ouija board for his 17th B Day. The way his friends repeatedly say "Michael" when they talk to him reminds me of Stella (who I'm going to see live a week from Friday!!!) As in all 80s horror movies, the teenagers look like they are 30. Michael's love interest looks like Naomi Russell with a bad unibrow. Don't ask me how I know who she is, we bloggers are just very intuitive with all aspects of pop culture. And big ole butts.
At night, Michael starts having visions of bloody murders and when he opens his eyes, the pupils are huge. Turns out that these murders are really happening and his friend Tony is committing them, because he has been possessed by Virgil, who is actually the devil. So there are some bloody murders while Michael runs around in his dino jammies trying to stop them. The gore, violence and weird imagery isn't exactly mind-blowing, but there's enough of it to keep you awake. As Tony turns into more and more of a zombie, he looks like a zombie from "Thriller".
The ending is extremely downbeat, until they lash some dimestore spirituality on at the end to try and perk it up. The film is really not that great, nor is it too bad to not be bad/good. Its basically bad/good but won't blow you away. And furthermore, Cranberry juice is tasty, even without vodka in it.
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