Memorable, crazy movie

Fresh and Exciting

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Low budget low rent film from the Philippines produced by and starring John Ashley. Nonsensical mess of a film it has something to do with a doctor battling a witch, I've gotten that from several reviews I've read of the film, but I'm not sure thats right since I wasn't sure what was going on or what I was watching. Mostly I was wondering why I was watching the film, which for a bad movie lover is a bad sign. The film is filled with what appears to be randomly taken location footage inserted with some dialog scenes filled with bad actors and actresses. It doesn't help that the dubbing of the film is poor and doesn't really match the scenes. Its clear that no one really cared about this film at any point, so there is no reason you should either. I would take a pass and maybe stare at a wall for 80 minutes instead.

The Philippines is known for a lot of things; great horror film production not being one of them. Black Mamba is a cheaply made and tediously put together horror that fails to capitalise on its promising premise and delivers only headache inducing boredom. The plot focuses on witchcraft and in particular a doctor who falls in love with a pretty young woman, and ends up trying to stop the local witch from terrorising her. Everything about the film is completely amateur and dull. The acting is flat and the delivery of lines is extremely wooden. The film also offers nothing in the cinematography departments and the story doesn't flow well either; all a major turnoff. Of course, there are many people out there that enjoy these poorly made bad movies - but even they are likely to find this one lacking because for all the bad things about it, nothing is actually comically bad and since the film runs at snail pace; it's never very entertaining. It really only took about fifteen minutes for me to completely lose interest in the film and the next seventy five were utter torture. I really would struggle to find even a single good thing to say about Black Mamba and obviously I don't recommend it.

An evil witch (the alluring Marlene Clark of "The Beast Must Die") terrorizes a small peaceful village. The witch specifically singles out sweet young widow Elena (the fetching Pilar Pilapil) as the main target of her lethal wrath. It's up to earnest Dr. Paul Morgan (woodenly played by John Ashley) to stop her. George Rowe's flat, pedestrian direction crucially fails to bring any energy or momentum to the solid story. Instead Rowe has the picture plod along at an exceedingly sluggish and hence pretty tedious crawl. Moreover, despite the occasional effectively creepy moment (the sporadic appearances of a ghostly grim reaper figure and several nicely misty'n'spooky nighttime cemetery sequences are both quite nifty), the constant draggy pace and unfortunate surplus of drab dialogue bog this film down to the point where it's a dreary chore to slog through. The complete dearth of graphic gore (with the notable exception of some truly gross real life autopsy footage) and gratuitous nudity doesn't help matters any as well. That said, Justo Paulino's solid cinematography offers a few striking images, Lamberto H. Avellana Jr.'s eerie score makes good use of a groovy guitar and tinkling piano, and there are neat supporting performances by Eddie Garcia as Elena's brother, Alfonso Cavajal as a stressed-out elderly shopkeeper, and Andres Centenera as a fierce priest who performs a brutal exorcism on Elena. But overall this movie is way too tame and tepid to be anything more than a mildly diverting timewaster.