Twice Dead (1988)

(In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) While I’m usually sympathetic to movies that attempt to blend various subgenres together, I still insist on a minimal level of competence in the execution of the result, and Twice Dead doesn’t even get there. At first glance, it tries to blend together three or four big horror tropes in one single mix: A haunted-house story, a ghost story, a reincarnated lover story and a home invasion story. It’s an ambitious intention, but the results are less substantial than you’d expect. A 1930s introduction in which a Hollywood actor hangs himself after heartbreak sets things up for a late-1980s haunted house story, as an ordinary nuclear family moves into a dilapidated Hollywood house with a squatter problem. Before long, the plucky teenage heroes discover the sordid past of the house, are attacked by a bunch of ne’er-do-wells and get some help from the house’s ghost eager to protect the apparent resurrection of his old flame. It’s hard to see how any screenwriter could mess up this mixture. But writer-director Bert L. Dragin didn’t have nearly as much talent, and the film simply lumbers from one thing to the other, missing obvious opportunities to create depth and far too often retreating in botched horror tropes. Even the 1930s subplot is limply handled, and the reincarnation stuff falls short of what could have been. By the time there’s a sex scene that climaxes with electrocution (featuring a cowgirl with the worst peripheral vision in history), the film is not ridiculous as much as it’s unredeemable. Clearly outmatched by the potential of its premise, Twice Dead can be worth a watch if you want to study a narrative engine that’s clearly more powerful than the people handling it — but otherwise, it’s just another disappointing cheap 1980s horror film.