Saturday the 14th Strikes Back (1988)

Eddie and his family have just inherited a frightening house that was built over the doorway to Hell. And then Eddie finds out that he has another inheritance: the title of the evil master of the world. What would you do if you finally had all the power you ever craved?

A sequel in name, if not story, to Saturday the 14th, the Baxter family is the focus here. You have the dad, Frank (Avery Schreiber, who was in a ton of Doritos commercials, but he was also Russian coach Markov in The Concorde…Airport ’79, one of my all-time favorite horrible movies), mom Kate (Patty McCormack…do I have to tell you that she was in The Bad Seed?), sister Julie (Julianne McNamara, who before she started acting won the U.S. women’s first individual event gold medal in Olympic history for the uneven bars) and the aforementioned Eddie (Jason Presson, The Lady in White). Oh yeah! I forgot that grandpa lives there and he’s played by Ray Walston.

The Evil One wants Eddie to embrace his power and introduces him to an entire family of monsters, including Michael Berryman as a mummy! Oh yeah, I almost forgot! Grandpa’s pal Leonard is played by Phil Leads, the character actor who played Doctor Shand in Rosemary’s Baby.

The end of the movie is a cavalcade of past Corman productions, including the guitar and part of the body of Joey Ramone. This is a mess, a movie that was cobbled together to cash in on the video store success of the original. Yet I find parts of it charming and perhaps I was in the right mood to enjoy it when I did.

If you want to see it for yourself, you can get the DVD for a decent price on Amazon.

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