aka Revenge: Blood Cult 2

• Written and directed by Christopher Lewis
• Starring
  • Patrick Wayne
  • John Carradine
  • Bennie Lee McGowan
  • Josef Hardt
  • Stephanie Knopke
• Produced by Linda Lewis
• Executive produced by Bill F. Blair

For his third Betacam feature for United Media’s groundbreaking direct-to-video distribution enterprise, director Christopher Lewis returned and made a sequel to that first-ever made-for-video flick, Blood Cult. I could tell you that the production skills of all involved had definitely improved between Blood Cult, The Ripper, and this movie, but that might give you the false impression that Revenge is in some way a good film. It’s not. Better than its predecessor by far, yes, but still nowhere near good.

This movie picks up almost immediately upon the end of Blood Cult (which means that this review of necessity will be one long spoiler for that movie). The sheriff’s daughter and her boyfriend Joel are both dead, and thus blissfully absent. The sheriff himself, in a state of shock over what he’s seen, is also off-screen somewhere, having been found by one of his deputies. Doc White (Josef Hardt) performs a cursory on-site examination of the bodies of the daughter and boyfriend before being cornered by Nosy Reporter Girl (Andrea Adams of The Ripper), who’s heard rumors of the blood cult from none other than the sheriff. Doc White is exactly the right person (or the wrong one) to ask about this, and demonstrates it by offering her a ride while pumping her for information on what exactly she knows. (As always, the question you never want to hear is, “Who else knows about this?” And the correct answer is never, “Nobody, I guess.”) Because Doc White is himself a major cultist, and after exchanging enough information to function as a quick recap of the premise for this viewers who may have wiped that information from their memories, he arranges for a cultist motorcycle cop to stop his car and rid them of the pesky annoyance. The cult is alive and well!

It the gore doesn’t get you, the subtext will. Ick.

A couple of months later on, then, nefarious things start happening again. Old Dr. Moore the vet (James Potts) and his wife whom we met briefly in the first movie (Bennie Lee McGowan) are being bothered again by strange nocturnal noises and lights in the woods, and they’re raising enough of a fuss about it that Dr. Moore receives a hatchet to the head in his own barn. Why? Well, apparently the cultists are intent on having the land that bears their “ceremonial site,” though no indication is ever given as to why they chose that particular tract of woodland in the first place.

Into all of this, our leading man enters: Michael Hogan (Patrick Wayne), brother to dead Joel, come to town to see his brother’s grave and visit his sister Liz (Stephanie Kropke). The Hogan family appears to have had an unlikely division of genes; whereas Joel had been as ugly as sin, Liz is cute, and Mike’s got all the features of a hero: Tall and well-featured, with a moderate tan and a good haircut. On the other hand, whereas Joel had had something of a personality, Mike and his sister collectively have the charisma of an empty cereal box. Not the brightly-colored exterior, either, but the drab pulpy inner surface. Their first conversation, at a cemetery over Joel’s headstone, made the eternal repose of the grave seem like a peppy alternative.

“The last role I played was Abraham Lincoln. At Walt Disney World. In the Hall of Presidents.”

Although Mike didn’t get along with Joel all that well, he declares his intentions of getting to the bottom of his brother’s desk. I guess somebody has to; the sheriff is institutionalized, and the acting deputy (David Stice) have been told by prominent members of the community to back off from any cult rumors. All Mike has to go on is a scribbled list of local names that the deputy volunteers from the sheriff’s papers, and aniggling suspicion that Dr. Moore’s death may have been connected.

A good thing that Mike finds a partner in Mrs. Moore, or this movie would have gone from “boring as wallpaper” to “boring as matte off-white paint.” Mrs. Moore, intent on staying on her land, is putting up with prank calls and a phantom motorcyclist who pulls donuts on her property. She is, of course, the very model of the crotchety old country biddy who won’t pay no nevermind to such shenanigans, but Mike’s presence comes as a welcome support as they… Well, mostly as they wait for things to happen.

“So, Mrs. Moore… is it true what they say about widows?”

As in The Ripper, the producers here called for some cult “star power,” this time in the form of venerable John Carradine as Sen. Bradford, who is actually the “Grand Canis” of the cult come to town to help Doc White, the local high priest, clean up and cover over the recent excesses and internal bickering. Unlike in the first movie, there are actually intimations here that the cult rituals bestow honet-to-goodness occult powers instead of just being a convenient structure to control the weak-willed for personal power. Nevertheless, conventional methods are resorted to most often, both in the removal of Dean Bayley (Fred Graves) who’s getting increasingly squeamish about the bloodshed (a massive cerebral hemorrhage caused by pharmaceuticals) and in the ongoing sacrifices for the cult’s blood rituals (some guy in a leather jacket with an unseen face who carves up random people with a butcher’s knife — mostly birdwatchers, and horny students in hottubs).

No sympathy here.

In fact, the ritual killings almost look like they were inserted as afterthoughts, as their occurrence or discovery has little bearing on Mike’s and Mrs. Moore’s efforts to find the ritual site in the woods and discover the identities of the cult’s ringleaders. It still all has to do with the evil god Caninus, who demands a sacrifice of disparate body parts frankensteined together. When Mrs. Moore has a flash of insight and proclaims, “This is beginning to make sense to me,” one almost wonders if her character has been driven dotty, because none of it makes sense by any standard definitions of the term. There’s only so much stumbling around in horror-struck awe one can watch, and although Mrs. Moore, Doc White, and Senator Bradford divide the gleeful overacting fairly well between them, the great sucking grayness that is Mike Hogan overcomes them easily.

And it all leads up to an ending which (a) exhausts in just five minutes the production’s entire foam latex budget, and (b) makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I’ve said it before, and it looks like I’ll have plenty of occasions to say it again: A plot “twist” shouldn’t be some drastic surprise that makes no sense when considered with what has come before. To change things around for “shock” value at the climax, in a manner which runs contrary to everything the audience has already sat through (especially in a movie of this calibre), is an insult to the viewer. It says, “The time you have invested has been wasted, because the story resolution we’re shoehorning in doesn’t build from what you’ve been forcing yourself to watch.”

“So are you going to cut my hair or what?”

Which may be why this was the last shot-on-video feature Christopher Lewis made for Bill Blair to distribute. Video renters may not be the most observant creatures in the universe, but getting burned three times by videos bearing the “United Entertainment Pictures” would make even the most undiscriminating renter wary.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 9
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 3
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0