I was so pleased to find a copy of this film in the bargain bin at Walmart last weekend. I'd been watching my old VHS copy I'd purchased from my local movie rental place in the early 1990s for the last couple of decades. This film was underrated in my opinion. It makes me wonder if it was just never properly marketed in a way that it could find it's audience? Everyone that I've ever shown it to has loved it. The film is the perfect amount of voodoo mysticism, great gore effects, and an entertaining plot all in a beautiful but eerie setting. It contains an extremely talented cast and director. The plot line is very well written. I always hope there is really a place like Tonk's out there and I'll stumble upon it someday.

Hunky Michael Bendetti plays Corey Thornton, a young man who receives an inheritance from his late father Noah (Robert Sampson, a.k.a. Dean Halsey in "Re-Animator"). He travels to the family estate in Louisiana, where he gets caught up in local mumbo jumbo involving plans to resurrect the dead and a connection between humans and birds.It's commendable that writer / director David Schmoeller would go to so much trouble to create something different than the usual run of Full Moon product. This is by turns erotic and romantic, with an appealing soft jazz soundtrack by Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan (and on screen appearances by Bryan and Edgar Winter). He injects this with as much flavourful New Orleans atmosphere as he can, and that helps, but the movie is still fairly dull.There's just not that much here to engage the viewer. It moves along at a snails' pace, and none of the characters are all that interesting. The ladies are quite lovely; the plotting involves a nearby brothel named Tonks' where the ladies either look like deceased celebrities, or just might *be* deceased celebrities. There's one that resembles Marilyn Monroe (Holly Butler), and another who claims to be Mary Magdalene (Alex Datcher, 'John Carpenters' Body Bags').Bendetti is somewhat blank in the lead, but the supporting cast - including veterans Sampson, Anjanette Comer ("The Baby"), and Robert Burr ("Ghost Story"), the likable Holly Floria, and the extremely enticing Denise Gentile - comes off reasonably well.Director Schmoeller cameos as the bartender, making use of his talent for spinning a bottle on his finger.Five out of 10.

Handsome young Corey Thornton (a solid performance by Michael Bendetti) inherits his father's opulent mansion in Louisiana. Corey discovers a sinister secret cult that uses winged creatures to resurrect the dead in order to do their bidding. Writer/director David Schmoeller offers a tasty evocation of the flavorsome bayou setting and makes good use of the palatial mansion main location, but the sluggish pacing, talky script, and uneventful meandering narrative make this film a rather tedious chore to watch. Moreover, this film crucially lacks the essential tension and spooky atmosphere it needs to cook the way that it should. The rushed ending likewise fails to satisfy. Fortunately, there's just enough gore, nudity, and sizzling sex to keep the picture watchable. Moreover, the cast do their best with the so-so material, with especially sound contributions from Denise Gentile as alluring witch Delores, Anjanette Comer as the melancholy and protective Mrs. Palmer, Holly Floria as enticing jail bait Diane Palmer, Robert Sampson as Corey's father, Robert Burr as distinguished lawyer Beauregard Yates, and George Kelly as menacing loon Bijou. Adolfo Bartoli's slick cinematography provides a pleasing lush look. A merely passable time-waster.

NETHERWORLD, a Full Moon picture set in the Louisiana swamps, successfully delivers a Gothic atmosphere filled with lush vegetation, isolated manor homes, and brothels operated by voodoo sorceresses. However, thanks to a hopelessly cheesy script, the film never transcends its early-90s low-budget roots.The plot concerns a Corey Thornton, a dashing young man who has just inherited a vast estate from the father he never knew in life. While combing through the deceased's papers, he discovers that his father's last wish was to be brought back from the dead. Corey becomes obsessed with this task and seeks help from those around him: Bijou (the slobbering neighborhood idiot-savant), Diane (Southern-fried "jailbait" who actually looks to be about 25 years old), his father's lawyer (who has mysteriously deformed hands), and of course Delores (a prostitute with big hair and mystical powers).The action alternates between Corey's manor house and Tonk's, the brothel-next-door, where all the girls are named after dead celebrities...or have Marilyn Monroe and Mary Magdalene really been resurrected?! The band plays smooth jazz as passions rise and Delores casts sultry glances at everyone. Then things get weird. A hand flies out of the wall and starts killing people, whose souls become trapped inside the bodies of birds. A bird which is clearly a hand puppet screams "NEVERRRRRR!" We finally descend to the Netherworld, where the forces of evil fight for control of Corey's mind in a scene that will leave you wondering, "Oh...that was the climax?" All in all, Netherworld is a good bit of entertainment which never gets boring; however, one can't shake the feeling that if slightly more money and effort had been put into it, it could have been good instead of just adequate.