Sadly Over-hyped

Best movie ever!

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Real-life husband and wife Richard Benjamin (Catch-22 and the original Westworld) and Paula Prentiss (The Stepford Wives) play John and Mary, who have inherited his uncle's house in Eerie, PA. If that line made you laugh, then Saturday the 14th is for you.Along with their kids Debbie and Billie, they try and fix the house up. But they're opposed by Waldemar (Jeffrey Tambor, Arrested Development) and Yolanda, two vampires who want the book of evil within the house. Billy finds the book and with each turn of the page, he unleashes monster after monster into the house.Soon, the TV can only get The Twilight Zone, sandwiches, dishes and nosy neighbors all disappear and eyeballs show up in John's coffee cup. It's nothing out of the ordinary to our heroes, who seem blind to the supernatural going on all around them.Waldemar gets into the house as a bat, so they hire an exterminator (Severn Darden, Kolp from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) who turns out to be Van Helsing.After a housewarming party where the monsters kill every guest, we learn that the vampires are the good guys and Van Helsing just wants the book so he can rule the world. The good guys - now who include the vamps - win and Jon and Mary get an upscale home while Waldemar and Yolanda settle into the cursed home.Director Howard R. Cohen also wrote The Unholy Rollers, Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen before choosing this as his first film. He also directed Space Raiders, Time Trackers and Saturday the 14th Strikes Back.Some trivia - every time you see Prentiss, look closely. She's hiding the cast on her arm, as she broke it before filming began.Also, this is Benjamin's last feature film as an actor, as he started directing with 1982's My Favorite Year.While sold as a parody of slasher films, this movie more accurately makes light of monster movies as a whole. If you're looking for other funnier horror films of a similar bent, I'd recommend Wacko, Pandemonium, Student Bodies or Class Reunion.I remember this movie running on HBO quite often in my youth. It's a pleasant enough diversion, almost an Airplane! version of horror or a Mad Magazine come to life. The monsters are way better than you'd think they'd be, too!

Okay, so on the 12th day of this month which was a Thursday, I watched Pandemonium which was originally supposed to be called Thursday the 12th. Yesterday on the 13th day which was a Friday, I watched Friday the Thirteenth (no, not the slasher pic from 1980). So today, I just saw Saturday the 14th. I remember previously seeing this on HBO back in the day and not thinking it funny at all. This time, I was amused by the first time Richard Benjamin's character was oblivious to a monster behind his back and the time his actual wife Paula Prentiss tried to bite him as a vampire. Other than those scenes, I still found the whole thing lame. Oh, and the only remotely scary scene was when those bats were attacking Ms. Prentiss. While watching, when a character named Van Helsing was introduced, I suddenly remembered that Benjamin had played a character with that name in the much better horror spoof, Love at First Bite, which he made a couple of years before. Part of me was wishing I was watching that again as lame scene after lame scene kept coming on in this boring and confusing movie. So not only were the leads wasted but also great character actor Jeffrey Tambor as the vampire. Good thing teen Kari Michaelsen had "Gimme a Break" to return to after finishing this. So on that note, I can't recommend Saturday the 14th.

Can not really rate this one a score as I have not seen this movie in ages. From the score here it appears that while I may have enjoyed the movie as a kid, it may have been more for the simple fact there was monsters in it than it was for the fact it was a good movie. I recall basic plot points of it such as a book that I think causes all the problems to there being some vampires that were there to try and help stop the monsters from taking over or whatever they were trying to do. I saw this movie a lot as a kid and I would rather watch it again so I can see if it is as bad as most people claim it is here. Other things I remember is a scene where the creature from the black lagoon comes out of a bathtub. The plot other than the fact the book caused stuff is mostly a blur. Which may be the reason the score here is so low, it may be that the plot is incoherent and terrible. I would wait to review this movie till I saw it again, but chances are I will not ever be able to find it again.

A family inherits a creepy old house in which there exists an ancient evil book. When son Billy (Kevin Brando) opens the dusty tome, he unwittingly frees the nasty creatures imprisoned within its pages.I revisited this dreadful spoof horror after over 25 years for one reason only: to see if actress Kari Michaelson, who played the teenage daughter of Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss, was as hot as I seemed to recall.The good news is that my memory hasn't failed me: Michaelson is very yummy, particularly in her bath scene, which proves to be the highlight of the film, not only because it gives viewers the opportunity to have a letch, but also because it actually displays some level of invention (I'm convinced that it must have been the influence for a very similar scene in A Nightmare On Elm Street).Everything else about the film is as bad as I remembered: the script is utter garbage; the comedy is very hit and miss, with the emphasis on miss; the acting is dreadful; and the special effects are extremely amateurish. Admittedly, the approach taken by writer/director Howard R. Cohen and his cast is 'knowingly bad', but that doesn't make proceedings any more fun for the audience: groaning at a crap joke just ain't the same as laughing at a good one!