THE DARK POWER – Oh, this takes me back. Me and my mate used to derive hours of amusement from its endlessly quotable dialogue, most of it courtesy of Lash Larue, a whip-wielding local hero whose delivery was flat enough to worry a mortician. “Taste my whip, you son of a bitch.” “I understand you’re indestructible.” Maybe you need to hear it. He’s pretty formidable, but anyone looking into ‘The Dark Power’ will find that Lash Larue is but the tip of an iceberg of weirdly uplifting trash oddity. Some college kids move into a house; it once belonged to a shaman who knew of myth, the Toltecs and supernatural things; some of those ‘things’ arrive in the form of four badly made-up members of the demonic undead, who lay siege and juggle their axes; people run around and try to escape; cue Lash. Before the horror bit, a procession of matter-of-fact bizarreness toddles along, including an in-yer-face racist who spouts on for no reason other than to fill in as an obvious meanie (no explanation / exploration, then she just… vanishes? I may have lost track), then various expected leg warmer moments and eighties-specific awkwardnesses. Sometimes the boring bits are the best bits. This is a film that sneers at the very notion of tonal consistency, whirling from inept comedy to shades of nightmare with all the finesse of a fake tomahawk hurled by a plastic zombie hand… the house glows red… people do the same thing over and over… “take that, you demonic bastard.” Here’s to you Lash, wherever you are.
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