One of just a couple of outings in the directors chair for regular stuntman Thomas Dewier (perhaps his genius was spent?), Death by Dialogue is quite an experience, that is, if you happen to groove to off the wall and frequently imbecilic late 80's horror cheese. It operates vaguely on a supernatural slasher template, but mostly it's an excuse to wallow in the clichés of the era, given carte blanche by a plot (evil screenplay) that allows for literally anything. For a while, things are just about perfect here. The obligatory opening slaying is amusing, wondrously atrocious cheese-tunage over the credits, then its just a hop, skip and jump into a totally rocking "teens capering around" montage. Volleyball! Running around! All set to upbeat synths, its heavenly stuff. Then we got musings on death before the mayhem kicks in, and it sure is a hoot. Budget and lack of imagination mean that events keep to pretty regular template, but that still means boobs, bikers, and a guy with a big sword wigging out Kurgan style among other things... It could have been truly swell, but direction tends to stutter, with captivating oddities separated by stretches of banality, there's little rhyme or reason to anything and acting is enthusiastic at best, cruddy at worst. Speaking of acting, for star power we have Ken Sagoes, of A Nightmare On Elm Street parts 4 and 5 fame, and his character is called Lenny. This amused me for some reason, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps he should have been called Carl? Anyways, he does as well as you might expect, while a little more talent is provided by delightful stunner Laura Albert, who also gives us nudity. Theodore Lehman puts on a likable expository show as Uncle I've, whilst varying degrees of non ability are provided by the likes of Lenny Delducca and Jude Gerard (nope, me neither) while inept sound recording does more damage than the acting by rendering bits and bobs of conversation inaudible. Music works nicely though, tailored to fit each scene there are the aforementioned synths, eerie tones, a gnarly metal tune and a splash of ominous drums. The film takes a nicely wild approach and is often interesting but peters out in the final twenty minutes with lack of budget and talent dooming the ambitious goings on and a fairly weak climax. At least it isn't too bad and by this point the film has built up a fair amount of goodwill with its crazy shenanigans. I would have liked more gore (don't worry, there is a little) and consistency here, but broadly this is a good fun piece of trash, 6/10 from me.

I'm writing this min-review just to counteract the one I saw at the top of the list, which wasn't accurate or helpful. Death By Dialogue is best described as being in a group of films like The Pit, The Carrier and Hard Rock Zombies that are all badly made, badly scripted, badly acted... and absolutely AWESOME!!!! Because they are either so unintentionally bad or intentionally surreally unique that no description is necessary. Is this a bad movie? Hell, ya. Are there moments in this movie where I wondered what bleep was happening and laughed my butt off... yes. If you like those kind of movies this one has something for you.

Death By Dialogue. What a title. What an amazingly rubbish title. I am stunned that there are no alternative names that this film went out under. But, then again, this film is something else.Synopsis: This film is about an evil film script. Its horrific contents come to life and terrorise a group of teenagers.I have seen some rubbish in my time but this movie possesses moments of such stunningly memorable idiocy that I was somewhat taken aback. The very idea of a film script that is possessed by an evil spirit is hilariously silly. The script was for a film called 'Victims' and it was clearly written by a thirteen year old boy. The horrors that are unleashed by the script include a killer poodle-permed rock band, a seven-foot tall sword-wielding madman and two motor-cycle morons. I don't know about 'Victims', I would have thought that a better name would've been 'Eighties Cheese'.This is one of those bad movies that contains moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity but also is hindered by atrocious pacing. Some scenes just go on and on and we do have to wait for the funny bits. But when those funny bits appear they are pretty much top-drawer, i.e. I challenge anyone not to laugh when the hair metal band pitches up in the woods. Too funny. At another time the protagonists decide that the best way to defeat the evil in the script would be to simply re-write it with happy stuff. Seems reasonable? Incredibly they mess up this very straightforward task by rewriting the script with one of the daftest non-escape plans ever conceived. In yet another random event – this film is a series of random events – we have a dream sequence involving a woman in a gown kneeling by a pool who meets an idiot in a racing car by a tree. Go figure.It's all senseless and very haphazardly put together. But it's worth one viewing, if only to be stunned by it's monumental daftness. It does have moments of anti-genius. It's like a cross between The Evil Dead, The Edge of Hell and an episode of Scooby Doo. Although, much worse than all of those. Venture at your peril.

A friend of mine told me about Death by Dialogue about a year ago. I would have sworn he was trying to screw with me given his description of the film, however a few days later, he and I went to our local video store and there, resting proudly on the shelf, was Death by Dialogue. If I were to get technical, this is an awful movie, easily one of the worst ever made, however, I won't get technical. Despite it's movie-making flaws [which are blatently obvious to even the untrained eye] this is a film full of some of the cheesiest humour and corniest dialogue of all time. If you like bad horror movies, then Death by Dialogue is a must see.