Review of Netherworld (1992) by Jason D — 27 Dec 2008

Behold another Full Moon product that is Netherworld, a cajun down in the heart of the swamps of Louisiana where a young man inherits his estranged father's estate and must carry out his last wishes of working with a black magic witch at the local bar & brothel down the swamp to resurrect him. Also, any bad people that cross through that brothel meet their ultimate ends at the hands of a.....um....hand. But not just any hand, a hand with snakes and shit on it. You would think with top notch direction by David Schmoeller (Puppetmaster, Tourist Trap, and Crawlspace), this film would have been better, but in fact, it is one of THE dullest movies I've ever seen. There's a lot of talking and nothing happening that nearly made me fall asleep at several points in this so short but oh so long movie. Not even the subplot of people being turned into birds (or something of that nature), or the occasional titties popping out was enough to interest me.

Aside from the dull plot, most of the actors are dull and are not worth backing up. The witch comes off as a villain, but at the end of the movie, she's a good guy (??), or something. I'm not sure, that was never made clear to me. Also, there are NO recognizable faces in this film, save for the main character's dad who was the Dean in Re-Animator and Edgar Winter (gets the award for Most Unusual Cameo) as part of the band at the brothel. This is definitely one of Full Moon's weaker films, which is a shame because I thought it would have been better. It gets its two stars for the decent amount of titties, as well as a HILARIOUS ending involving a parrot, and a HILARIOUS after credits scene that should have been infused into the lackluster movie somewhere. Too bad.