Since I watched Croaked: Frog Monster From Hell the other day, an entire new world of film has been opened up to me. It seems like Troma films has a ton of their stuff available on Amazon Prime... and while I'm pretty hit or miss on a lot of the films produced directly by Troma (they sometimes feel a little *too* intentionally cheesy to me), I'm pretty happy to have found a lot of the older independent films that they've distributed at one time or another.
And for me, Nightmare Weekend was a wonderful find. Objectively speaking, it's a bad, bad film. But it's just plain weird enough, incompetent enough, and filled with enough WTF moments that I had a great time with it.
You know you're in for a ride (of some sort) right off the bat, where you get some sort of mysterious burglary scene that is so poorly-lit that you really can't tell what's going on. (For badly-lit reference, that title shot is supposed to have *something* in the background. I can't tell you what it is.) Once that is thwarted by a puppet using a computer (?), you are treated to a cheesy song called "Nightmare Fantasy" over the credits... and you kind of know you're in for something special.
The main gist of the things? A brilliant scientist named Edward Brake has invented... something? I can't tell you for sure what it's supposed to do, but it's a little magical silver ball that flies into a subject's mouth and completely changes their personalities. It has managed to turn an angry dog into something much more passive, but Brake is reluctant to test the magical ball on any humans. His evil assistant Julie (I think), however, has no such qualms. She has secretly invited three college girls over for a "Nightmare Weekend" of sorts. And somehow, she will profit off of this.
Meanwhile, Brake's daughter Jessica is in town for the weekend as well. She is just up for a little relaxing and hanging out with the weirdo little robot/puppet her dad has created for her. But one day, she's out rollerskating in her favorite bar and instantly falls in love with some guy there. The feelings are mutual, but there's just one problem - he's Julie's henchman! Jessica knows Julie is up to no good, but can't convince her father of it. Eventually, the magic balls do their thing and turn people into crazy zombie-ish things. Will Jessica and her father make it out alive? Will true love conquer over all? Tune in to find out!
The most important thing about the film is George, the strange little robot/puppet thing that lives in Jessica's room. Check him out, having an intimate moment with Jessica:
He's very obviously a hand puppet, but is supposed to be a robot, I think. In charming mid-80's fashion, he controls a supercomputer that basically runs Brake's compound, but he does it manually. So instead of just programming the computer to do things, Brake has programmed George to push buttons and twist knobs. It's pretty awesome - I wish that was the way computers actually evolved, and we all had little puppets with robot voices on our desktops.
Anyways, George provides the film with may of its most bizarre moments. The craziest being a scene where Jessica is being attacked (and presumably going to be raped). Somehow, George has a constant monitor on Jessica, and knows when she's in trouble. So while she's being attacked in a field somewhere, the action will cut to George shaking around, saying generic robot things like "Danger! Alert!" or whatever. When I was writing about Frankenstein '80 I mentioned that goofiness and rape cannot go together in the same film - Nightmare Weekend tries to make it work in the same scene. It's just plain surreal.
And while nothing else in the film really reaches those "highs," there's plenty of stuff here to enjoy. The little metal balls that magically fly around the house and shoot into people's mouths with a cheesy sound effect. Or the cheap gore and bad acting. Or the oh-so-80s style and crazy dance scenes.
Horror-wise? I mean, there's some blood and "scary" stuff going on, but nothing happens that actually generates any legitimate tension or anything like that. Non-horror fans could probably check this out and not have to worry about any nightmares. There are some parts that might be a little gross, but nothing (nudity aside) that wouldn't pass on basic cable nowadays.
It's hard because I don't want to oversell it - I think good-bad movies are a matter of personal taste, but Nightmare Weekend worked like gangbusters for me. It's certainly a bad movie, but it's fun. If you're into bad mid-80s films, there's a *lot* to like here. Under those rather specific circumstances:
I would recommend this film.
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