Hollow Gate (1988)

A boy abused by an alcoholic father grows up to have murderous urges beyond his control. After the death of his parents, his wealthy Grandmother takes him in and gives him all the medical treatment he needs. Things eventually appear to be evening out, her Grandson is exhibiting all the signs of complete rehabilitation, but he is anything but rehabilitated, as his murderous impulses resurface on Halloween night. A group of young adults find themselves making a delivery, as a favor to a Halloween Costume shop owner, to Hollow Gate. The young adults have no idea that once they step foot onto the lavish Hollow Gate estate, they will endure a night of hell that they will never live to tell about.

I first saw this film back in middle school. A local neighborhood kid, knowing that I LOVED horror films, brought by his copy and we watched it. It is an extremely low budget film, shot on video, with atrocious acting, and on a shoe-string budget. Having not seen this film in over 15 years, I decided recently to give it another viewing, and boy was it worse than I remember. When it first started, it was tolerable, but after a while the characters really started to get on my nerves. They whine constantly, and the character Allen is like a lamer/geekier version of Louis from the film Nerds, making his screen time quite agonizing.

The soundtrack is the best part of this film, it is very creepy and would normally set the atmosphere to a film, but even the soundtrack couldn’t save this film from itself. Given, I have seen worse films, but not much worse. Heck, I even starred in a film that was worse than this one, back in 1999, but we won’t talk about painful memories. ;)

The kill scenes are okay, a young couple are burned alive in a car, a girl is shredded by some sort of farm equipment, and there are dog mauling, knife-stabbing, axe-in-head, scenes. We also get to see old Grandma stabbed in the eye with scissors (it’s off screen of course, but you later get to see the outcome).

If you like really bad films with loads of cheese and back acting, then you might want to give this a view. However, keep your expectations turned completely off. It isn’t available on DVD, except a region 2 import in German, but you can watch it on you tube HERE, or order a used copy on VHS.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 stars!

2 comments:

  1. This sounds like a classic!

    Killing, slashing, past traumatic experiences, my kind of film.

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  2. I'll add it to my "Watch this if every other film you have ever wanted to see ever has finally been watched. Ever." =D

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