Clichéd, wooden, but still worth watching

Rating: 6/10 (22 April 2018)

What better place to start with my first review than this classic 80's cult horror. I remember in my very early teens, all the hype surrounding this movie and scrambling around a friend's house to watch a grainy VHS copy totally against my parents' wishes, especially after the uproar that it had cause with the notoriously pompous British Censors which only added to the movies' allure.
I recently decided to go through my old DVD collection so that I could give a rating to movies I had not seen in a long time and therefore had not rated. My attention was drawn to this movie very early in my task - I was not disappointed. Don't get me wrong. It is a pretty poor movie by today's standards and a complete cliché, but in a way, that's what makes it good! It's like a journey through a carnival house of horrors as an adult. The effects are shocking, you know what's coming yet it still makes you jump! The acting is outdated and almost wooden at times. The effects of the puss squirting from the arm and eyes is almost laughable but still you can't stop watching it. It still manages to create an atmosphere that draws you in and engrosses you so that you do not want to switch it off no matter how bad you tell yourself it is. But it isn't bad at all, it really is quite good. Take yourself back to the 80's and this movie truly was a masterpiece filmed on a budget but drawing the attention some of the so-called blockbusters of the time could only envy.
I have seen this movie several times now and each time I come back with the same opinion - that it is definitely worth watching. If you are viewing for the first time, do so with an open mind and put yourself back in the early eighties to give yourself a fair go... you won't be disappointed. I can only give this movie a 7/10 which in my rating system is a movie worth watching and that is exactly what it is what it is nothing more, nothing less, but still a masterpiece of its time which if judged back then would have surely scored a straight 10