REALITY TERROR NIGHT (2013)

Studio:       Lightyear Entertainment
Director:    Jacov Bresler
Writer:       Rafy Rivera
Producer:  Al Bravo, Jacov Bresler
Stars:     Martin Kove, Katherine Norland, Liana Mendoza, Oliver Rayon, Vincent Rivera, Shana May Jackson, Maribel Montalvo, Lucy Treadway, Connie Chen, Joanna Zanella

Review Score:

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Summary:

The ghost of a demented doctor torments the cast of a reality TV show set in a haunted house.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

To reconstruct his dead wife, Dr. Othello Lazarus prepares to mutilate captive patient Nicole Jones for body parts. Mr. Jones arrives at the doctor’s residence looking for his wife. Lazarus kills Mr. Jones, but Nicole manages to stab Lazarus in the neck with a scalpel and kills him.

A real estate agent shows Sara Davis the old Lazarus home. Sara is the executive producer of “Ghosts and Babes,” a reality show that challenges models to survive 48 hours in a haunted house. Contestants Amy, Martha, Tina, Summer, and Roxy are selected for the premiere episode. Producer Matilda, Sara’s personal assistant Greg, and still photographer Jojo comprise the crew.

After she has several paranormal experiences in the house, Lazarus’ ghost possesses Sara while filming commences on the show. Everyone is eventually killed except Matilda, who is able to stab Sara in her stomach. However, Lazarus’ spirit transfers into Matilda’s body, turning her into his new host.

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Review:

Seeing as how the lead actor’s last name is “Kove,” it does not bode well when “Reality Terror Night” starts with a credit for Martin “Cove.”  If a movie cannot be bothered to spell its star’s name correctly on the very first title card, what chance is there that the rest of the film will be any less clumsy?

Maybe Martin Kove, remembered best as Cobra Kai sensei John Kreese in “The Karate Kid,” doesn’t care.  Carelessness is an infectious attitude all around this movie, after all.  It might simply be better to not have the movie show up under his real name on a Google search.  Besides, even with top billing, Kove is barely in the movie more than a few minutes for a starring role that was almost certainly shot in a single day.

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Martin Who?

Kove plays Dr. Othello Lazarus (groan).  Distraught over his wife’s death, Lazarus trades Hippocrates’ oath for Frankenstein’s, mutilating female patients under some twisted pretense of reanimating his paramour.  But a captive patient kills the doctor before the opening credits conclude, leaving his bloodthirsty ghost to haunt the premises.

Sara Davis is the executive producer of the reality television show “Babes and Ghosts” (second groan).  (I would make a comment questioning who would watch a show titled “Babes and Ghosts,” but the joke is on me for watching a movie called “Reality Terror Night.”)  Lazarus’ former home makes the perfect location for a melting pot quintet of models (who are not the women featured on the cover artwork, by the way) to prance in bikinis while screaming in night vision.  It is also the perfect opportunity for Lazarus’ ghost to possess Sara and to pick up where he left off by pressing cold scalpel to warm skin.

Giving credit where credit is due, body swapping is one way to explain why Kove/Cove disappears from the film after five minutes.  Also making an early exit is any enticement at all that would justify parting with the 90 minutes it takes to sit through the movie.

Cheap thrillseekers who just want “babes and ghosts” will find barely any of either.  “Reality Terror Night” manages to make bikini-clad women as boring as its disposable ghost story that features more wide-mouthed yawns than wide-eyed scares.

“Reality Terror Night” tries for trendy with a poppy vibe of flashy wipe transitions accompanied by sound effects of screeching halt record scratches.  Slow motion struts of the ladies playing catwalk for the camera come with autotune-accented pop music and phony hip-hop raps.  All of these are cinema styles that popular TV abandoned sometime in the late 1990’s, but these filmmakers still think is hip and appealing.

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Worst. Digital blood. Ever.

Hyperbole aside, “Reality Terror Night” features truly the worst digital blood spray effects ever put on film.  The spouting plasma animation takes place on a different two-dimensional plane than the action and with a completely separate depth of field.  It looks like the spray exists inside the camera instead of on the actors and it would not even pass as realistic in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

The script dances around the “split everyone up and kill each person one at a time” approach to slasher horror by giving every character an annoying habit of talking to him/herself.  When dialogue does take place with a second person involved, the audio levels are so low as to be barely audible.  And as soon as a conversation dips into whispers, understanding a single word is virtually impossible.

In the film’s defense, it is probably for the better.  Of the scenes that can be heard, none of what is said ever matters.  Which is par for the course with a movie that has even less worth seeing than it does worth hearing.  Poorly written and poorly produced, “Reality Terror Night” is guaranteed to be forgotten as soon as … what was I talking about?

Review Score:  20

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