Stormswept (1995) -½

     You know, I have absolutely no idea why I watched this movie. None. All I can give you by way of explanation is that old standby, the slightly lame “it seemed like a good idea at the time.” Looking back, there was nothing engaging about the box art or the jacket copy, it was clearly a direct-to-video release with a copyright date placing it squarely in the middle of what must be the most inauspicious time period in horror movie history, the title is stupid, and I certainly never had Stormswept recommended to me by anyone-- in fact, I’m fairly certain I know nobody else who’s ever seen it. And the more I think about it, the more obvious it seems from the very first frame that the smartest thing to do would have been to leave it on the shelf where I found it.

     There’s this old plantation house, see, and something evil happened there... I don’t know... last month, maybe, from the way the characters who know about it talk. And two of the people who were involved in that evil have been living in a hidden room in its basement ever since. Now, a real estate agent for some terrible actress (both the actress and the agent being the unmistakable direct-to-video big-breasted bimbo type) has been sent to arrange for its purchase. The actress, the director of her current project, a couple of direct-to-video cardboard studs, and a couple more direct-to-video big-breasted bimbos arrive at the house, and a big storm moves in to trap them all there. I should probably point out that the real estate agent had some sort of psychic premonition when she first entered the house; we got to see some choppy, split-second clips of the aforementioned evil deeds, and then she fled the house, hopped into her car (which can’t decide whether it’s an early-90’s Ford Escort or a superficially similar Japanese econobox), and drove away as fast as she could. Imagine how happy she is now, trapped by the storm in the evil house with her insufferable client and her insufferable friends.

     And imagine how happy I was, sitting in front of the TV set, trapped by the fact that I spent a whole dollar and four cents on this insufferable movie. Pretty much the whole damned thing consists of the cast sitting around in the dark, making lame double entendres, while anyone foolish enough to watch waits in agony for one of the former evildoers in the basement to come upstairs and start cutting off limbs. Well, let me spare you the suspense-- it doesn’t really happen. Instead, we get some lame bunch of shit about how the mansion is possessed by some nymphomaniacal demon whose life’s work is to force anyone who spends more than a few minutes in the house to have dangerously kinky sex. It turns out that the direct-to-video bimbo in the basement knows one of the direct-to-video bimbos upstairs, and that they had both been at the mansion one night when they and a bunch of their friends got possessed and S&Med each other to death. I don’t remember why they survived-- shit, it probably wasn’t all that important anyway-- but they know what’s up when the kinky sex starts up again, and are in a position to save the day. In the end, some people die, it turns out that the guy from the basement was the one who did most of the killing the last time around (the bimbo thought she had done it, you see-- that’s why she’s been hiding in the basement), the guy from the basement is killed, and all the survivors go home.

     Don’t waste your time, folks. Don’t waste your time. Some of the very worst acting in this movie is kind of fun for a couple of seconds, and the direct-to-video bimbos do take their tops off a lot, but nothing happens in this movie that makes it worth watching. I can think of any number of better movies that feature topless direct-to-video bimbos and entertainingly bad acting. Just say no.

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