Nicholas Love Movies

Stressed out LA detective John Berlin gets too near the edge following the destruction of his marriage and decides to leave the violence an un-ending hub-bub of the big city and take a job in the supposedly quiet northern tow of Eureka. Unfortunately, he isn't there long before he finds himself obsessed with pursuing a serial killer with a thing for blind young women. The case isn't new and Berlin's old-time buddy, Freddy Ross and his boys have spent the last six months investigating a string of seven murders. They have dubbed the case "Jennifer 8" because Berlin is positive that he knows the identity of the next victim. She is beautiful blind student Helena Robertson, the roommate of the latest victim. As he steps up his investigation, Berlin finds himself falling for Helena. Meanwhile, he has become so obsessed with finding the killer that pal Ross begins worrying that Berlin is having a breakdown and so goes with him on a late night surveillance of Helena's school. A tragedy ensues leaving Berlin to not only go it alone, but also to clear his own name. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Enid only looks like she's sleeping. In fact, she's dead. Shortly after Enid caught her husband Harry (Judge Reinhold) in bed with her sister June (Elizabeth Perkins), a row ensued, whereupon June accidently killed Enid. June's problem now is to hide the truth from the authorities--including her police-officer husband Floyd (Jeffrey Jones). Then she decides to reveal Enid's demise, albeit rearranging the damning evidence to make the whole thing look like the accident it really was. Widely praised when it was sneak-previewed for critics, the darkly hilarious Enid is Sleeping was timorously re-edited by its distributor for its general release. Lovingly and laboriously, star Elizabeth Perkins and director Maurice Phillips reassembled the film into its original form. That version currently exists on videotape under the title Over Her Dead Body. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Dead Pool is the fifth and (thus far) the last of Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry movies. A sports pool is placing bets on which famous person will die next. Suddenly a serial killer who preys upon celebrities enters the scene, radically (and perhaps deliberately) changing the odds in the pool. As a celebrity of sorts, maverick cop Dirty Harry Callahan becomes a target of the killer, as does high-profile TV journalist Patricia Clarkson. Surprises are at a minimum in The Dead Pool; the film gets down to business quickly, moves logically if violently towards its climax (with a spectacular car-chase sequence thrown in for good measure), and delivers exactly what its fans expect. One major difference between this film and the earlier Dirty Harry epics is that the murders are committed in so outrageous a fashion that the picture seems at times to be a Freddie Krueger vehicle. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

As a sequel to the first Boogey Man, the horror of Boogey Man II lies in the script itself which adapts so much of the footage from its predecessor that this is really a half a movie in one. A fragment of the "possessed" mirror that caused the damage in the Boogey Man is brought to Los Angeles by the heroine Lacey (Suzanna Love) and takes over a hapless butler. He goes on a rampage, but then other appliances get into the spirit of the thing, as animated garden hoses, corkscrews, electric toothbrushes, and hedge trimmers wreak havoc with the "house appliance" horror genre. In-between the madness, Mickey Lombard (Ulli Lommel -- the director playing a director) lambasts Hollywood for pandering to commercialism -- a case of someone biting the hand that is not feeding him. For the record, the term "boogeymen" comes from the Bugi men of Indonesia, feared pirates of the high seas. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Fassbinder protegee Ulli Lommel directed this moody, atmospheric but ultimately derivative horror film about a dark family secret and the broken mirror which releases that secret's malignant spirit. The film's prologue opens in the 1960s, when a young boy conspires with his sister to murder their mother's cruel and abusive lover. Flash forward to the present, with both siblings scarred by the emotional demons of their past: the boy has remained mute since that fateful day, and his sister (Suzanna Love, aka Mrs. Lommel) is tormented by nightmares. If that weren't enough, a literal demon is released when the old mirror which paid witness to their deed is shattered, releasing their victim's enraged spirit to seek bloody revenge... and he's not too particular about who he takes it out on. Released on the coattails of Halloween, this film retains many elements of John Carpenter's seminal work (brooding piano/synthesizer score; 20-years-later supernatural revenge motif) and borrows heavily from The Exorcist for its demonic-possession climax, but retains none of those films' well-crafted suspense, choosing instead to rely on shock effects and shots of sharp objects plunging into throats, eyes, mouths and abdomens. Lommel's use of rich colors and inventive camera angles lends a suitably creepy mood, but a better script might have elevated this one to true cult-classic status. Followed by a tired sequel constructed mainly of reused scenes from its predecessor. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi