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Jack-O
[Retromedia]
1994; color
Directed by Steve Latshaw
Starring: Linnea Quigley, Rebecca Wicks, Gary Doles, Ryan Latshaw, Catherine Walash, Brinke Stevens, Cameron Mitchell & John Carradine
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Jack-O, (titled Jack-O Lantern during the credit roll), is kind of like Pumpkinhead in suburbia; only with a Troma-esque sensibility and about a hundredth of the budget. Arguably the most notable factoid about the movie is that it features not only the final screen appearance by perennial BMB fave Cameron Mitchell (who died shortly after it was made, and before it's release) but a cameo John Carradine a full six years after his death(!), courtesy of some unused yet strangely appropriate existing footage. (Carradine's voiceover track even makes sense in the storyline, so I've gotta give director Steve Latshaw some props for that alone.) Aside from their appearances, a shower scene with Linnea Quigley for the film's lingering moment of nudity, and the prerequisite scene with Brinke Stevens (then-paramour of exec. producer Fred Olen Ray; again, via existing unused footage from some never completed project), there's actually still a movie to be watched here - albeit a bad one. The story centers around an ancient curse placed on the town nearly a hundred years ago by an evil wizard named Walter Machen (Carradine). Condemned to death by the townspeople, he summons a demon up from hell to slaughter the family of his chief tormentors and anyone else who gets in the way. The demon, Mr. Jack, is a looming scarecrow-type figure with a giant jack-o-lantern for a head, and an oversized scythe as his weapon of choice. Back in 1915 a member of the Kelly family stopped the demon and buried him, but didn't actually manage to kill him. And, wouldn'tcha know it, descendants of the Kelly family still live in the suburb in the present. Their young son, Sean, has haunting dreams of Mr. Jack tormenting him. (This is where we get the Carradine footage.) When a mysterious woman named Vivian shows up in town claiming to be researching the history of her family and their connection with the Kellys, she reveals Machen was a distant relative of hers. On Halloween night, Mr. Jack is inadvertently resurrected by some teens (in a very FT13-like way) and begins to slowly mow down almost everyone who crosses his path. I say slowly because he's more than a bit lumbering, and at least two or three people manage to flee on foot and avoid his scythe. As his presence becomes a bit known in the neighborhood and panic begins to ensue, Vivian reveals to the Kellys that Mr. Jack's main target is Sean because only their son has the power to kill him once and for all and send him back to hell. After much snail's pace chasing and the inevitable showdown… well, you can probably guess what happens because not only was there no sequel, this flick follows pretty much all of the basic '80s horror cliches, right down to the movie ending as the sun rises on a new day. I don't know if can really recommend Jack-O to anyone except fans of Quigley, Carradine and Mitchell, as the rest of the cast are among the most wooden actors I've ever seen. The plot itself and the Mr. Jack character aren't that bad, it's just everything that surrounds them falls woefully short.
—the Kommandant
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