RETRIBUTION is a low budget and rather gruesome horror film of 1987, given a splendid DVD presentation by the team at Code Red. The story is nothing special and sees Dennis Lipscomb's mild-mannered protagonist being possessed by the spirit of a gangster which causes him to go on a supernatural killing spree. It's one of those films where you end up twiddling your thumbs in between the kill scenes, but the gory special effects are imaginatively used and there are some bizarre highlights here, which I won't go into. I did find Lipscomb to be a rather creepy character even before the supernatural stuff takes place and the budget isn't perhaps quite up to the job at times, but this is reasonable fare for horror fans.

Surprisingly good!A plain, somewhat overweight, nerdy-looking man stands on the edge of the roof of the Don Hotel (no "tiny bubbles" jokes in the movie, though). From the masks on the people below, we can tell it's Halloween. He jumps, and the monsters below look sad. We see the tunnel of light, but a burnt or mutated face appears as emergency responders try to revive him.In the hospital, he's rehabilitated, though he now walks with a cane and limp. The people in the Don Hotel, a somewhat strange bunch, are sympathetic, as is a neighborhood hooker he's friendly with. However, he has horrible vivid nightmares involving murder. Additionally, while he paints blood appears out of nowhere, and does at other times too and isn't just a hallucination it seems.In the nightmares, he visits people and brutally kills them with some sort of telepathic abilities while his eyes glow. In the morning, the deaths are in the paper. Though there aren't a lot of murders, the scenes are pretty strong. One begins with some particularly graphic (possibly real) shots of a slaughterhouse. The way a man dies there is quite memorable.While a Catholic priest works at the hospital, and the main character visits a church, the one attempt at exorcism is done by a "Dr. Rasta"! Perhaps more surprisingly, he's a friend of the hooker.

i watched this film years ago, and was pleasantly surprised how effectively scary it was because i'd never heard of it. i can remember the lead character with scary eyes at the end, and a sexy suzanne snyder as prostitute i think. i would love to watch this movie again, just to see if it has the same effect now as it did then. i doubt it though as most of these eighty's films usually age badly, it would be good to know if i can own this film on DVD. this film if i remember rightly does not deserve to to b washed up and never seen again like a lot of the mindless tosh being produced at the time. there was a few little gems that slipped through the net that are half decent additions to the genre. I'm sure this is one of them.

Manic depressive artist George Miller snaps one Halloween night, decides he wants to end it all and jumps from the top of the inner-city fleabag motel he calls home. Across town, small-time gangster Vito Minelli finds out the hard way, what happens when you don't pay off your gambling debts, as his vengeful cronies blow out his kneecaps, then douse him in gasoline and set him on fire.Somewhere between life and death, George's and Vito's lives intersect, and both will be changed forever. This is not a good thing for George, and even worse for Vito's assailants, as they will each discover to their horror and dismay...As low-budget supernatural thrillers go, RETRIBUTION manages to strike a nice balance between the yen of those horror fans who like character-driven stories, and the gorehounds who like to see "folks git blowed up real good." TV and movie vet Dennis Lipscomb, who very rarely gets to carry a picture, delivers a scary and sympathetic performance as the troubled George. He has the chameleonic ability to disappear into his character, which is both a blessing and a curse to the best character actors. They make it look so easy, most people don't even consider what they do to be "work," and that's the trouble.Another out-of-print, hard-as-hell-to-find but worthy entry into the B-movie hall of fame.