The Supernaturals

Plot synopsis:
One hundred years ago, deep in the sullen backwoods of the Southern United States, a Confederate town is held captive, the soldiers forced to walk through a piece of woodland laced with mines. Because he is found wearing a Confederate States Army outfit, Jeremy (Chad Sheets), a young boy is also forced to make the crossing. If they make it across the minefield the Union Army 44th will set them free. Only Jeremy and his mother (Melanie) - who runs to save him - survive, despite the fact that the mother has stepped on a mine. Jeremy exhibits unearthly powers. Jump to circa 1985 and a platoon of soldiers are out on manouevres in the same backwoods. They too are the 44th, descendants of the Union platoon of years before, those who committed the atrocities. The main character here is Pvt. Ray Ellis (Maxwell Caulfield), the only soldier to catch glimpses of the beautiful and mysterious Melanie; Ellis also has a romantic interest in Pvt. Angela Lejune (Talia Balsam). The platoon decide to camp inside a circle of yellow grass seemingly caused by brush fire, a spot from which the wind only blows outward. Pvt. Ellis is reluctant to camp there, but Sgt. Hawkins does not like having her authority undermined. Whilst the platoon are setting up camp, Melanie reappears - this time witnessed by all in the platoon - and takes a strong interest in Pvt. Ellis who bears an uncanny resemblance to her husband, Evan.
Trouble for Sgt. Leona Hawkins (Nichelle Nichols) and her platoon begins with the soldiers' drunken and childish antics; however, events take a sinister turn when Pvt. Cort (Bobby Di Cicco) is found shot in the head. They inexplicably lose radio contact and the nearest town is over twenty miles away. Hawkins and her platoon go in search of - and arrest - Melanie, who lives in an old wooden shack with what looks to be her father or grandfather, a withered old man. In the cabin they discover the relics of muskets and an old diary, written by Evan. They take Melanie back to camp, but leave the old man at the cabin; he is too old and frail to go anywhere. During the night, an eerie fog rolls in, encompassing the 44th, and the Confederate Dead close in on their camp. Most of the 44th are subsequently killed - one-by-one - whilst Pvt. Ellis heads off into the woods in search of the old man who, it turns out, is Jeremy (he has used his powers to keep his mother the same age). Along the way he is forced to do battle with the Confederate zombies and also runs into Melanie, who shows him a locket. Inside is a picture of Evan, and Ellis immediately recognizes the resemblance. He snatches the locket from around her neck and runs in the direction of the cabin. Once there he persuades Jeremy to end the evil spell and send Melanie and the zombies back to wherever it is the dead are supposed go. Exhausted, Jeremy dies and Ellis returns to the camp where Lejune and Hawkins are waiting, the only survivors. Ellis embraces Lejune and the locket falls from his hand to the woodland floor, where it is lost amongst the leaves.

Tags: suspenseful, murder

Review:
Scottish-born Maxwell Caulfield and Star Treks Nichelle Nichols go down to the woods and get a big surprise.
A force that has brought back the dead confederate soldiers to wreak revenge on some recruits.
The only few merits it has, are the neat ghost story concept (Return of the Civil War Zombies) and some commendable attempts at creating atmosphere (mainly with the use of lighting and fog).
It's like it wants to, but can't, really.The zombies appear to have cool make-up effects, but it's hard to tell because you hardly get a good look at them.
It sort of plays out like a supernatural slasher movie in the woods.
Either way, they all still act like teenage boy-scouts.
THE SUPERNATURALS might still be worth a watch if you fancy this type of typical 80's stuff, but make sure to lower your expectations.I really wanted to like this film a bit more, this second time around.
I've read some pretty extreme (both positive and negative) reviews for this movie, but it's really a very middle-of-the-road affair.
It's directed competently enough to keep you from feeling that you totally wasted your time with it, but it's also so derivative that it can even be called a ripoff (especially of Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Two Thousand Maniacs"; it has practically the same plot).
I am a huge fan of zombie movies, so, when I found this one, I jumped to the chance of renting it.
And then I knew I made a bad choice.The movie is about a group of army recruits being led into the backwoods by their head sergeant, Uhura from Star Trek.
And that wasn't a good sign.Eventually, some "supernatural" stuff starts to happen, relating back to some flashback of a kid walking through a minefield with all these Confederate soldiers, only to have all of them blown away, except for him.
She's just with them now.I was starting to fall asleep until finally some guy got killed by two zombies in an underground bunker.
Then there's that, "We've found a body, now let's find the killer" scheme until finally, that night, there is...yes...a shoot-out between zombies--which we barely ever see--and the recruits, who are getting killed left and right.
We saw an equivalent of ten zombies in the whole movie, uninteresting deaths, and basically no horror.
So why then do I like this movie?
It's because The Supernaturals is one of those movies from my childhood.
There is a lack of gore, however, the zombies look cool, when visible.
'The Supernaturals' is one of the most sinister horror films to come out of the 1980's.
The woods serve as an appropriate setting for this creepy horror movie, and there is - despite previous reviews - enough gore to keep the average horror fan entertained.
However, what makes this film stand out from other zombie films, is the tight plot and the faultless directing.
The use of the mist-shrouded woods, the 'seemingly' disused underground bunkers and the ancient stone cottage - now a haven for the long-dead - create an eerie atmosphere.
From the film-maker of "He Knows You're Alone" (1980) "and "Distortions" (1987); Director Armand Mastroianni's generic survival zombie feature "The Supernaturals" has a good concept (army recruits on a training mission in the woods of the Deep South encounter dead confederate soldiers), which isn't entirely realised.
The performances are decent enough (Nichelle Nichols, a pinning Maxwell Caulfield and Talia Balsam) and look out for a cameo by one of the Bee Gees; Maurice Gibb as a Union soldier.
Although the dialogue is bad, numerous technical mistakes are made (especially the entire nature of military training exercises), and the climax is somewhat confusing, the film maintains an unsettling atmosphere, which is surprising given that the best parts of the film take place in broad daylight.
Anyone who likes a ghost story or "living dead" films (this could conceivably fit into either category) should enjoy it.6/10.
Nichelle Nichols stars as a drill sergeant who takes some young army cadets to an isolated forest to do some training, but they run afoul of several ghosts / zombies from the Civil War. Some are good, but most of them are seeking revenge for having to walk on fields with land mines at gunpoint.
A good cast is wasted in this slow moving, dull flick with poor zombie effects.Rated R; Violence, Profanity, and a Mild Sexual Situation..
While on tactical manoeuvres, an army division (led by Lt. Uhura and including Geordi La Forge) is attacked by the reanimated corpses of civil war Confederate soldiers who, in 1865, were forced to walk across a minefield by a cruel Yankee officer.Incredibly, director Armand Mastroianni takes this blinder of a premise - Southern Comfort meets Night of the Living Dead meets 2000 Maniacs- and makes one hell of a dull horror out of it.
Too much of the film focuses on the soldiers as they trek through the woods and set up camp, and when the zombies eventually make an appearance there is a distinct lack of juicy gore, Mastroianni clearly aiming for eeriness and atmosphere, back-lighting his zombies and shrouding them in fog.
Unfortunately, all he really achieves is boredom.The really silly ending sees Private Ray Ellis (Maxwell Caulfield) convincing Jeremy, the only survivor of the minefield massacre and now a very old man, to end the horror by sending his vengeful mother, an immortal witch, to the afterlife.
There were some kills with decent special effects near the end but nothing particularly memorable..
Supernaturals (1986) is a terrible film.
This film is so bad that if your t.v. is stuck on one channel and this movie comes on I have one word of advice for you.
Not even bad movie lovers would want to waste their time on this rubbish.
A group of brain dead soldiers go out playing "army men" on some sacred battleground and learn the hard way that "The south shall rise again!"  What happens next?
Please avoid this movie like the plague.
The plot is good, it's quite interesting but cheesy special effects, and bad acting make this a bad movie.
The zombies are laughable, and the ending is...
NOT a horror movie.
However, it is "horror-ble" The acting sucks, the script must have been written by a wookie, and the special effects are below cheesy, they're worse them some of the stuff full moon studios produces.
To anyone interested in renting or watching this film, let me make this abundently clear to you: There are only 5 minutes worth of zombies in this film which really have nothing to do with the story or plot, or lack there of.
If you're looking for zombies, I suggest moving on to a real movie like Day of the Dead.
There was the potential for this to be something quite good, except the script and acting got in the way.
The backwoods locales are, for the most part, effective and promising but with Nichelle Nichols as the Sargeant you know your in trouble.
Maybe if she just tried to act a little bit instead of sleepwalking through her role another dimension could have been added to this yawner but seeing as how she's not getting much help from her supporting actors(including Star Trek:The Next Generation's LeVar Burton)or limp script, who can really blame her?
In the midst of the regular lulls in the action there actually are a few inspired scenes of zombie Confederate troops lumbering across mist enshrouded fields and a scare or two in a well conceived and spooky underground bunker but before anything much happens the movie is over.
That the production team does deliver a few rather cool effects and scenes is a credit to their frugality as this was a very cheap film indeed!
I remember seeing "The Supernaturals" on cable TV during my childhood.The film left some memories,so it was the highest time to check it out after so many years.The prologue starts in 1865.A group of confederate soldiers is captured by the Yankees and forced to walk across a minefield.All of them die with an exception of a young boy.The year is 1986.A group of young soldiers led by Nichelle Nichols is camping in the woods.When the night begins the confederate zombies appear and start killing recruits one by one.It's up to Maxwell Caufield to save his platoon."The Supernaturals" is competently made and well-acted zombie flick.The film is relatively goreless as all the killings are off-screen.Still if you liked Tony Malanowski's "The Curse of the Screaming Dead" you may give this one a try.7 Civil War zombies out of 10..
Sighdespite my many years of training in horror cinema and countless of previous bad experiences, I still get suckered into watching lousy movies because of their appealing and juicy looking VHS cover artwork!
I knew absolutely nothing about "The Supernaturals", but purely based on that drawing of a toothless skull wearing a civil army soldier's hat, I simply had to see it!
Way to go, Mr. Horror expert Oh well, at least it isn't the worst genre movie of the 80's, that's for sure.
"The Supernaturals" is a mediocre horror outing with a relatively original concept and setting and a handful of memorably worthwhile sequences, but ultimately it lacks the necessary suspense and panache in order to rank among the better achievements of the 80's decade.
As stated already in numerous other reviews and user comments, the film effectively borrows the settings and characters of Walter Hill's "Southern Comfort" and H.G. Lewis' "Two Thousand Maniacs".
What remains is a nonetheless interesting movie about a platoon of soldiers out on a training excursion in a Southern forest area and suddenly having to battle against seemingly spontaneously resurrected zombie soldiers from the Civil War. Ironically enough, the supernatural elements in "The Supernaturals" are the only ones that don't work.
The promising flashback at the beginning hinted that a kid soldier saved his mother thanks to a sudden outburst of supernatural powers on this exact same location during the year 1865, and now he  Jeremy - as well as his mother and the long-dead members of the platoon he was part of still guard over the place.
The middle section is plain dull and I simply cannot comprehend why Armand Mastroianni decided it would be a good idea to make an 80's zombie movie with only a minimum of gore..
I had seen "The Supernaturals" the year it was released as part of a triple feature at a Times Square grind house and thought for a top billing movie it was pretty bad.I've been pointedly watching a lot of eighties movies that I missed and ones that I saw and decided to watch again.
For the most part, I had been pleasantly surprised to discover many of the awful eighties movies I'd re-watched were better than I had recalled them.
"The Supernaturals" is not one of these.Avoid this turkey and save your time with something else.
This movie is just badly done and not at all in a "so bad, it's good" way.
Not that it was badly shot, it was all done in a proper way but it takes too long before the zombies arrive.
The zombies themselves looks really okay and the effects used as they are dismembered are also really well done.
It's even a bit funny with a hacked off hand keeping attacking ones throat and one soldier being killed by the remains of a slashed arm of a zombie.
A group of Army recruits (led by STAR TREK's Nichelle Nichols) head into the Kentucky woods for a weekend of training.
What they don't expect to run into are some zombie Confederate soldiers led by the ghost of a lady who just happened to be married to Pvt. Ray Ellis (Maxwell Caulfield) in an earlier life.
While the set up of Confederate zombies seems great, don't get your hopes up as director Armand Mastroianni decides not to go all out.
Probably the most interesting thing about the film is seeing Nichols alongside future STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION star LeVar Burton.
There was this sad, short period after the first Good Trek films came out and before we got saturated with bad Star Trek TV shows that the actors of Star Trek tried to cash in on their names in cheap films.This was one of them.Nichelle Nichols plays an Army Sergeant bringing a small group of troops out to the middle of the woods.
They immediately encounter the zombies of Confederate Soldiers who proceed to pick them off like nice plot device monsters.And that's kind of it.Nichols is the only thing anyone can remember in this movie, and the word we are looking for is "miscast"..
This opens with a scene from the civil war as a unit forces an enemy unit through a minefield where most of them die.
These horny dope smoking fools are lead by Sgt Hawkins (Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols) and are really just a bunch of misfits in uniform.
After a long period of time, the dead regiment is stirred awake as zombies/ghosts and begin their revenge on the group of army fools.
The slow going plot and idiot characters make the first part of this movie challenging to stay with.
Special effects artist Mark Shostrom does provide some cool looking zombie/ghosts and there is some gore to speak of.
There are some touches of atmosphere and a few creepy moments but they come way too late to save this mediocre horror film.
The intrepid Phil Hardy nails "The Supernaturals" (1986) when he calls it a "bland zombie movie" ("Encyclopedia of Horror Film" 410).
The plot is simple (much like 1964's "Two-Thousand Maniacs!"): a group of Yankee soldiers force some captured Confederates to walk through a minefield.
Again we have Hardy's accurate summary: "Sadly (director) Mastroianni makes little of the Southern setting, the rising body-count or the 19th-century zombies." Nichelle Nichols of "Star Trek" fame plays an unbelievably annoying drill sergeant.
I didn't like this movie although the premise is really good.
These post-war zombie movies are very popular and this one is very decent.
The cinematography is really good and plays a key part in the most important scenes, for example, the ending.The f/x are really are cheesy but work for the movie's purpose.
in fact, it's a boring movie with a lot of wasted potential.Watch it only if you get it for free.
I catched it on late cable many years ago and I can't say that I regret about it, but I wouldn't watch it again!Try "Stryker's War" for a more entertaining movie in the likes of this one..
1865: A sadistic Union army commander forces several Confederate soldiers to walk across a minefield, brutally slaughtering the whole luckless lot of 'em in the process.
The kid's beautiful, still alive mother (the strikingly comely Margaret Shendal) falls for nice guy GI Ray (hunky Maxwell Caulfield of "Grease 2" and "The Boys Next Door" fame) while the other less lucky squad members get stiffed by the shambling undead Civil War ghouls.Although the seemingly can't miss premise -- a genuinely inspired fright film amalgam of "2000 Maniacs," "Southern Comfort" and "Night of the Living Dead" -- promises a good, spooky "high concept" horror movie outing, "The Supernaturals" alas qualifies as a humongous letdown due largely to a terribly dry and rudimentary execution.
Caulfield, Nichelle Nichols ("Star Trek" 's Lt. Uhura), Levar Burton, Bobby Di Cicco, Talia Balsam, and "Bad Ronald" 's Scott Jacoby all contribute excellent, creditable performances, but not even their considerable acting skills can inject any much-needed vitality into this lifeless, lethargic loser.
The nifty, scarcely seen zombie make-up by Mark Shostrom, a typically nice, moody score by the great, grossly under-appreciated B-movie composer Robert O.
Here, he combines a cast of people who will make you say, "Hey isn't that..." and puts them up against an army of undead Confederate soldiers.During the Civil War, a Confederate town is taken over and all of the soldiers are ordered to walk a minefield, including young Jeremy, who is forced to do so because he has on the uniform.
Only he and his mother survive.Fast forward to 1986, where the Army's 44th division - the same one that screwed over the southern soldiers in the past - are conducting war games under the command of Sgt. Leona Hawkins (yes, that's Nichelle Nichols from Star Trek).
There's also Pvt. Ellis (Maxwell Caulfield, Rex Manning himself from Empire Records), Pvt. Lejune (Talia Balsam, Crawlspace and the first wife of George Clooney, as well as the daughter of Psycho's Martin Balsam), Pvt. Osgood (Levar Burton, uniting the original and TNG Star Trek casts), Pvt. Cort (Bobby Di Cicco, The Philadelphia Experiment), Pvt. Mendez (Scott Jacoby from Bad Ronald) and Maurice Gibb in a cameo as a Union soldier (he also wrote a soundtrack that wasn't used).Of course, someone screws around in the woods and the undead rise to claim the living.
Everything feels rather low rent, which is fine, because the actual zombies look rather good and the reveal of who is behind the actual return of the dead is rather interesting.This is way better than it should be and in the hands of a better director would have been pretty interesting.
boring and dull flick  has lots of bad dialog some headache inducing scenes and most of all it's just boring nothing particularly interesting happens until the neat finale the acting is terrible Maxwell Caufield does okay here but was kinda wimpy for my tastes Nichelle Nichols was the only good actress here she gives a good show with her tough performance Talia Balsam is so so here and is not given much to do all the rest of the actors suck!
there isn't much left to say here i just wasn't paying all that much attention to it because it was so dull i was doing other things at the same time NOT WORTH IT!