Mausoleum

For anybody reading who doesn't know the names Roger Corman and Charles Band, they are two legendary names in the horror community, due to their prolific contributions to the B-level (and sub-B-level) tier of movies. Band is the man behind Full Moon Productions, which was formed with the intent of making low-budget genre movies while trying to capture a big-time feel. Their late 80's and early 90's movies are the stuff of straight-to-video legend, with a production value that barely creeps over whatever the lowest threshold of "professional" is, and stories that have no ambition to be anything but boilerplate. Corman, meanwhile, was the king of exploitation and cost-consciousness. His movies were filled with unnecessary nudity, went for the lowest common denominator in plot and acting, and often featured recycled footage from other movies to keep down costs. Mausoleum, in spirit, feels like the convergence of these two philosophies; Corman's cheapness and trashy exploitation, and Band's meat-and-potatoes content mill. This is not a good thing. I'm not sure if Mausoleum's script even rises to the level of a first draft. It might just be the outline. A girl named Susan is possessed by a demon right after her mother's funeral. The demon is the same one that killed her mother, and is a curse on the first-born women of the Nemod family (get it? Nemod? Demon?). That's the first ten minutes. Jump to adulthood, and now it's like an hour of Susan killing people at random with her powers, in what can only be described at The Exorcist meets Carrie, but never retaining any memory of it. How will she conquer the demon? This is not the kind of movie one goes to for character depth or rich thematic exploration, so I won't dock it for that. But I can and will dock it for not doing anything with what it has besides "she finds someone and kills them because reasons". The special effects by John Carl Buechler (director of Friday The 13th Part VII) are awesome, visceral and sticky and wonderfully gory, but they're for the same story cycle told again and again and again. Until the third act kicks in, the movie feels like a series of scenes someone thought of all starting with "wouldn't it be cool if". There is no logical through-line, no cause-and-effect, no build. Even the most rote slasher of the era at least had the pretense of the killer winnowing down the cast until the primary target was all alone. Mausoleum can't even say that. It makes Halloween's indiscriminate violence look as tightly orchestrated as an Ocean's Eleven heist. Speaking of Susan, we need to discuss her actor, Bobbie Bresee. The 80's was the era of the scream queen. Jamie Lee Curtis, Linnea Quigley, Barbara Crampton, and so many more women became staples of horror movies at the time. Every one of them had an extra quality to them that helped make them recurring players. JLC had an every-girl charm to her, Linnea had a coquettish, pixie-like air about her, and Barbara had a strength and resolve. Bobbie Bresee has breasts. Mausoleum will not let you forget that, because it works overtime finding reasons to show you her breasts. Yes, Linnea and Barbara and tons of other scream queens were frequently nude in their movies, but they could also, you know, PERFORM. Bresee is in Mausoleum to be nude. That's it. Removing clothing is the extent of her skill set, and Mausoleum cannot and will not stop finding the flimsiest of pretenses to get her in that state, because it sure as hell doesn't want her to act. She emotes like a wombat performs dental surgery. And it's not even entertainingly bad acting like Birdemic or The Room. It's flat and featureless like Nebraskan farm land. To top it all off, the movie doesn't embrace its nature like it should. A movie like Chopping Mall knows its cheap and stupid and runs with it at full speed, equal parts Terminator, Rambo, and teen slasher movie. Or there's Alley Cat, which is equally exploitative, but also constantly pivoting genres and throwing new things into the mix. Mausoleum never leans into it. The performances aren't crazy, the set pieces aren't over the top, there's no escalation to Susan's violence ... but it also never tries to present itself seriously, which leaves the horror without any bite. This leaves Mausoleum in a tough spot. It's too trashy to be taken seriously, not serious enough to be taken credibly, and not trashy enough to campy. The acting struggles to get to mediocre, the constant nudity is a distraction, the direction is lifeless, and the horror just isn't there. It can't even end properly, as it has to do the curative act twice, and then adds in a twist element that makes no sense. Literally the only redeeming factor is the gore. Everything else about Mausoleum is a testament to why this movie has been forgotten to time.