Tower Of Blood is one of those completely pointless low-budget horror films that you put on knowing that it most likely will suck. But you have this hope that it will be a bit of fun as well, and have a few interesting shots or at least a few laughs, with some jabs at its very genre. Tower Of Blood fails to do even that much.
It begins with a nurse in a mental hospital entering the room of one of the patients. "Why are the lights out?" she asks, then demands, "Timmy!" And then she's killed. After that, we get this insanely long sequence of the killers legs as he walks through Los Angeles. It seems to go on for like fifteen minutes, but is probably like three minutes - which is still way too long. I found myself wondering why the credits weren't playing over this sequence.
Anyway, he ends up at one building, and then my question about the credits is answered. The filmmakers decided to come up with what i'm sure to them felt like an original and cool idea for the credit sequence. An elevator door opens, and we see the name of one of the actors. Then it closes. When it opens again, we see the name of another actor. Okay. But it does this through the entire opening credit sequence, not just for the cast. I didn't count how many times that fucking elevator door opened and closed, but it took the length of two songs.
After the opening credits, we see a janitor cleaning an abandoned building. Why? Who knows? But he's listening to the radio, and on the radio is (of course) a report of the murders in the mental hospital. What's amazing is that it says "the police have no leads." Really? No leads? Do you think it might be the one mental patient who is no longer there? The one in whose room was found the corpse of the nurse? Could that be a clue? Hello?
At that moment, i realized the filmmakers were complete morons. But it gets worse. The killer appears and holds a machete up in front of the janitor. Instead of turning around and running, or even backing up, he just stands there and screams. For like thirty seconds. He just lets the guy kill him. This, it turns out, is par for the course. Not a single victim runs from the killer. Every time he is going to kill someone, the victim stands there and screams, which of course is not a very sound strategy. And if i were the killer, i'd be bored.
Anyway, three couples decide to have a party on the roof of an abandoned highrise. The same one the killer has made his new home, of course. In addition to the three couples, a guy named Jack comes along. Now all of these people appear to be in their late twenties. But when we're introduced to Jack, he's in bed, masturbating, and his little sister walks in. (Not to be mean to the child, but holy shit, that girl couldn't act to save her life - she was absolutely horrible.) And then he has to buy beer for the party, and is forced to doing what Toad did in American Graffiti - stand outside the liquor store, asking people to buy for him. And another character, Kirk, is told by his father to be home by one a.m. How old are these guys supposed to be?
One good thing: the party is at 8 p.m., and Kirk tells Maggie that he'll pick her up at 6:30 p.m. So this film actually took L.A. traffic into account.
Well, of course the group starts splitting off into couples so that they can be killed. And Jack starts wandering around. He gets very excited, as he comes upon two of his friends making out. This apparently is the most thrilling thing for him. He spies through a hole in the wall, and says stuff like, "Wow." From his perspective, what he sees is his fully clothed male friend's back. But then the killer steps into the room. Instead of shouting out a warning to them, he just watches as they're killed. Not a very nice guy.
There are a few amusing moments. Maggie asks Kirk where Sean is, and Kirk says, "He's probably looking for Randi or smoking a joint somewhere." The next shot is Sean lighting a joint. It was timed well. However, he then takes like two hits and tosses the joint on the floor and snuffs it out with his shoe as if it were a cigarette. No one on the planet would do that. No one. Finish that joint, asshole!
Randi ends up in a garage that has several cars, which makes no sense, as the building is abandoned, and the couples all parked their cars around the corner from the building. Whose cars are these?
Well, the three women are not unattractive, and they all have rather large breasts. Two of them take off their shirts, so there's that. But really, there isn't much else going on in this film.
One other thing. The DVD says the film is 81 minutes. Those 81 minutes include a closing credit sequence that is more than nine and a half minutes. Seriously. And that elevator opening credit sequence had to be at least five minutes. So really this is a 66-minute movie. And i still got bored.
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