Directed by Richard Governor

Starring Franc Luz, Catherine Hickland and Jimmie F. Skaggs

On the search for a missing woman, a police officer is whisked away by a sandstorm to a ghost town inhabited by the folk who lived there over a hundred years ago where he searches for the woman while upholding the law from a gang of undead cowboys.  

The Good.  The Bad.  The Satanic.

The film opens with a woman getting caught in a freak sandstorm only to be pulled away from an unseen force.  The storm destroys her car which is found hours later by a couple of police officers.  One of them, Deputy Langley, gets caught in another storm and finds sanctuary in a nearby abandoned town.  When the storm subsides, he finds himself surrounded by the ghosts of the townsfolk that used to live there a century ago, their souls cursed to stay there because of an undead baddie by the name of Devlin whose gang seems to run things even in the afterlife.  Langley, seemingly unaffected that he’s surrounded and getting shot at by dead people, not only tries to look for the missing woman but takes it upon himself to uphold the law from Devlin and his gang after seeing a flashback where the sheriff is killed by the gang.

You may kill me now, but you have to be in the rest of the movie.

First off, if this was supposed to be “scary” even in the least, it wasn’t.  Maybe the scariest aspect of the film is the poster art because that skeleton cowboy sold the movie to me and countless others.  There is nothing that even builds up any tension in the movie, it’s very dull.  If it weren’t for the few bits of blood and brief moments to show off some decent gore effects, this comes off more like a TV movie and a boring one at that.  The initial premise is well and good but the film is pretty by the numbers and won’t feature any surprises you won’t see coming.  There’s nothing worth watching here for a first timer and there’s even less to enjoy if you’re coming back to see this re-release years after you may have originally seen it.  Just avoid this one, even though the poster art is cool.

Boo! Did I get ya?

TL;DR

Story: 5 – A cop looking for a missing woman gets swept through to another dimension bringing an abandoned ghost town to life, as it were, with all the ghosts of the townsfolk still there while a demonic gang of cowboys make trouble.

Blood: 4 – Gunshots are fairly bloody and there’s a few decent close up shots of more gory stuff.

Nudity: 0 – Nope.

Overall: 2 – Incredibly dull and put me and my buddy to sleep while we were watching it.  It wasn’t that great when I first watched it almost twenty years ago, it hasn’t gotten much better.  Bleh.

Trivia

-Constant changes to the script caused director Richard Governor to walk off the set two weeks before principal photography was completed, which forced cinematographer Mac Ahlberg to take over as director.  This would be Governor’s only directorial credit.

-The final released version of the film is actually a workprint version of the film and not a complete version of the film.