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Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: October 25th 2016.
Director: David De Coteau
Cast: Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer, Brinke Stevens, Dukey Flyswatter
Year: 1988
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The Movie:
Shot over four days, Nightmare Sisters introduces us to a trio of nerdy sorority sisters - the off key singing Melody (Linnea Quigley sporting some hokey buck teeth), the insatiably hungry Mickey (Michelle Bauer in a fat suit credited as Michelle McClellen) and dorky antique collector Marci (Brinke Stevens in some big goofy glasses). But before we get to them, we open with a scene where a medium named Omar (Dukey Flyswatter) uses his crystal ball to try and con a widow out of her money and jewelry. It doesn't end well for Omar and years later, said crystal ball winds up in the possession of Marci, who finds it at a flea market and brings it back to the Tri Eta Pi house.
The girls are alone in the house and bored so Melody calls up her pal Kevin (Richard Gabai), an equally dorky new pledge at the frat house down the street, and asks him to bring two friends over. He agrees, but before he and his pals Freddy (Marcus Vaughter) and Duane (William Dristas) can split they've got to contend with the jocks in the fraternity accusing them of gay shenanigans. They sneak out the window and make it to the house and soon enough, the girls pull out that crystal ball. When Omar's face emerges and encourages the girls to touch the ball, they 'break the circle' and unwittingly allow themselves to be possessed! At this point, all bets (and most of the girls' clothes) are off!
The three sexy succubi have an insatiable lust and they need these guys to satisfy them - but those jocks want in on the action, even if they'll learn the hard way that there is more to these ladies than meets the eye. But Kevin and the others, they want the girls back the way they were, so, being concerned for their wellbeing, they call a disgruntled exorcist (Jim Culver) who takes American Express for help…
Shot almost entirely in producer John Schouweiler's bungalow (and backyard), this was clearly made fast and cheap, but Nightmare Sisters definitely has its own stupid charm. Very much a product of its time and not in the least bit concerned with political correctness, the movie takes a little while to get going and spends too much time showing us how nerdy the three female leads are before getting down to business. It's amusing, but it hurts the pacing. Once they make contact with Omar and the possession occurs, however, the pacing picks up considerably. The movie never gets particularly bloody, DeCoteau probably didn't have the budget for much in the way of gore effects, but it's got plenty of skin and a few pretty amusing set pieces - the three girls taking on one of the jocks with their BDSM gear, Linnea's musical number to Bauer in her jungle outfit.
Most of these amusing set pieces involve breasts. This movie has six unique breasts in total and they get a lot of screen time. These breasts are pretty great. Sometimes breasts are smothered in pie in a kitchen, other times breasts are washed in a bathtub. Breasts are on display in this movie a lot, actually, so yeah, if you like breasts there's an excellent chance that you'll dig Nightmare Sisters. The humor is… bad, but intentionally so. The script goes for the lowest common denominator, tossing around gay jokes and racial humor without any sort of afterthought. Hey, it was the eighties, it was a different time - and while it might be in bad taste to laugh at Dukey Flyswatter doing the absolute worst Indian accent you've ever heard, it's hard not to laugh at it (and his character is a bastard anyway, so it's not like the movie is really glorifying this). There are a lot of references to other horror movies thrown in here too, such as the exorcist character complaining about not getting any royalties from that movie to a Creepozoids poster proudly displayed in the boys' room to a nod towards an earlier Bauer vehicle, The Tomb.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Nightmare Sisters arrives on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer taken from a new 2k scan of the original 35mm negative framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. Detail looks really great and texture is strong too. Skin tones, ever important in a movie such as this, look perfect and black levels are nice and deep. For a movie shot over four days for peanuts, it's impressive how slick looking the image quality is here. Colors pop with all that eighties garishness really standing out and the image is virtually pristine, showing very little actual print damage, just a nice and natural looking amount of film grain. This is a very solid transfer.
The English language LPCM Mono track sounds just fine, offering up clear dialogue without any noticeable background hiss or noise and the incredibly eighties sounding score has pretty impressive range. The levels are well balanced, the score sounds good and there are no problems here to complain about. The film's opening theme song sounds great here, it's sure to get your foot tapping! There are no alternate language options although English subtitles are provided.
Extras start off with a commentary track from director David DeCoteau and actress Linnea Quigley (the two commentary tracks from the Retromedia special edition DVD have not been carried over to this release unfortunately). They share quite a few fun memories from the shoot and talk about how this remains a popular cult film with a pretty large fan base. DeCoteau talks about how he used to get invited to a lot of horror convention when he was still making films like this, but also how those invites have stopped coming since he changed his style and started making more male-centric pictures. Linnea talks about recording and performing the 'Santa Monica Boulevard Boy' song featured in the film and they also talk about the location, bringing this all in on a low budget, what DeCoteau learned from fellow low budget iflmmakers like David Sloane and Fred Olen Ray and quite a bit more. DeCoteau also provides an optional introduction to the feature where he talks about the movie for two minutes and notes that it was shot on short ends leftover from Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama!
Also included here is the alternate feature length TV version. As you'd guess, the nudity is cut out of this version but the film replaces those shots with some interesting alternate footage. When the girls first appear in the kitchen nude in the regular cut, they're wearing lingerie in this version. The infamous 'three women in a tub' scene is now the girls, clothed, jumping up and down on a bed instead. There are lot of different alternate angles and shots in this eighty-one minute tape sourced alternate cut, which makes it interesting to see, even if it won't likely ever replace the uncut version as anyone's 'go to' cut of the movie. It also omits all the curse words, so there's that too.
The disc also includes a new interview with writer/associate producer Kenneth J. Hall, who speaks for twelve minutes about being approached by DeCoteau to write the movie based on the basic premise of possessed sorority girls. He also talks about having to handle some of the effects and makeup on the shoot. Eight minutes of bloopers and outtakes related material is also included here, some of which is fairly amusing.
As this is a combo pack release, a DVD version of the movie including identical supplements is also included inside the clear Blu-ray keepcase.
The Final Word:
Nightmare Sisters is gleefully base, but it doesn't aim to be more than that. This is hokey, sexy entertainment with stronger slant towards humor than to horror, but it's a pretty fun watch. Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray/DVD combo pack blows the old release out of the water in terms of presentation quality and it includes some great extras as well.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
