So, what could I classify this movie as? Well, it's a mash-up movie. A mash-up of Amityville Horror (using a house that looks identical), Halloween (a child POV stabbing scene) and the Waltons. The story is, as kids, Lacy and Jake had a mom that was less than nurturing. Her boyfriend is trying to have sex with her and the kids are looking in through the window, apparently locked out. So they get punished. Makes sense. The boyfriend wears a stocking on his head, and then is stabbed by Jake, a-la Michael Myers.Fast forward to, uhm, the future. Jake is now a mute, who collects knives and has a pet tarantula. I'd definitely want a mute guy who killed as a child to collect knives. Probably great for therapy.Speaking of therapy, John Carradine shows up to half-act his way through another paycheck, as Lacy's psychiatrist. She has flashbacks of the murder and starts acting like a demon, to which Carradine responds, "Ok. You can wake up now." Unfazed. What a bad-ass.So at this point I was wondering, how did this become a Video Nasty? I've learned my lesson from listening to Lampyman101's Youtube reviews of the Video Nasties that most of the time, the DPP had no clue what they were doing when prosecuting movies. And for a little while, this seemed like the case. Then, all at once, chaos and mayhem.Lacy's husband takes her to the house the murder took place in, which is inhabited by an apple munching girl and her siblings, one of which being an obnoxious little brat who you prey, sickeningly, will somehow get killed. Lacy sees the mirror and starts having flashbacks, so she smashes it with a chair, and her husband inexplicably puts the pieces in a bag to put back together at home and hang on the wall like some sort of prize.This apparently unleashes the demon inside the mirror, who promptly rips the shirt off of one girl and forces her to stab herself, then slams the window on the neck of the obnoxious kid (mini-cheer!), then smacks the remaining girl in the head with the bathroom mirror. So we go from no violence to boobs and violence run amuck! Huh.So what we have is a killer mirror movie, a mirror which has a heartbeat similar to the demos of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." It tries to kill Jake using a pitchfork but fails miserably. Lacy's husband puts the mirror together but a piece gets stuck on his son's shoe, just as he and Lacy head to the lake to fish.So now what we have is a killer mirror shard movie. And some random disposable teens, one of which is wearing a "Triumph" tee shirt. Yeah 80's! He's unfortunately killed by a flying knife, which his girlfriend then french kisses. It has to be seen to be believed.So Lacy comes home and is almost raped by the demon mirror, as her kid wonders towards the over-sized well the family keeps in the back yard. To recover, she locks herself in a dark lit room. Seems logical to me. At this point, out of nowhere, John Carradine's character reappears, basically to say, "This script is ridiculous! I refuse to believe anything that's going on in it!" So a priest shows up, just as Lacy's family is being killed by pitchforks and garden hoses. The mirror gets a piece of itself lodged in Lacy's eye, and makes her talk like a demon. She hits the priest in the back, causing massive head bleeding (?), but eventually, the mirror is ripped off the wall and thrown into the well where it explodes.Oh yeah. And Jake, predictably, says a few words and is no longer mute. Wait...didn't he kill someone? What happened with that? Uhm...So this movie is a train wreck. I can only recommend it to "Nasty" fans or fans of weird, bizarre 80's horror. _________________________ For all of the Horror Banana's reviews, visit http://morozov924.hubpages.com/

Lacey and Willy are young siblings forced to endure life with an unpleasant mother and her mean lover (husband? boyfriend?). The man has a penchant for wearing a stocking over his face and tying Willy to his bed. One night, Lacey frees Willy from his bonds and he kills Pantyhose Man. Apparently, this doesn't matter much to anyone because we flash forward to a grown Lacey, living with her husband, young son, and Willy (who hasn't spoken since that fateful night). Lacey and Willy aren't without their issues (understandably!) and Lacey's husband thinks a trip to her childhood home will help. While in the bedroom where the murder occurred, she sees Pantyhose Man coming toward her, freaks out, and smashes the mirror. And now things start to roll, because it's the possessed mirror that's causing all the problems. According to an old belief, a mirror can store what it's "seen" and if it's broken, it can release its past. Or something. Pieces of the mirror glow and stuff goes down, and that's all you really need to know. Once I accepted that the slasher in this slasher movie wasn't a person but was instead a mirror, I could kind of go with it. It wasn't great, it certainly didn't deserve to be a "video nasty" because not much really happened, but it was an adequate time killer.Where it did succeed for me was in atmosphere. I was alive in the late 70s/early 80s and the way that the film was shot and the locations that were chose really did take me back in time.ff

I had been waiting a long time for this one. It had been told to me that it was one of the better horror films of the early 80's. Yeah...I don't think so.First thing you notice is the budget...or...the lack there of. This one wasn't even a "B" budget. Ah and those special effects. I mean no special effects. They musta paid the actors with coupons from the local Safeway. The sad part is that they blatantly rip off 2 good horror films and kinda rip off 1 excellent one. The opening credits eerily sound like a re-worked "Halloween" score. The farm house later in the film has a very similar look to the Amityville Horror one. Those 1/4 windows and all. Towards the end you see she kinda starts to act like the girl in The Exorcist.I guess the only good thing to come out of this was Suzanna Love. She did a pretty good job with what she had to work with.If this one is one your "to see" list and your on your death bed and this one is on your mind that you shoulda saw, trust me, you didn't miss a thing.

(Credit IMDb) A young girl witnesses her brother murder a man through a reflection in a mirror. Twenty years later the mirror is shattered, freeing his evil spirit, which seeks revenge for his death.Horror fans are often mixed on this movie. They either like it, dislike it or even go as far as to hate it. It moves slowly at times but like the movie it was so obviously influenced by, Halloween it builds up the suspense terrifically, even adding in some great death scenes in the process. The characters are better developed then one could expect for an Italian horror movie, nothing memorable but good enough to keep me caring. I liked the background story of the children too, especially the trauma in Willy's case. It also adds some Exorcist like elements too with the Priest and supernatural happenings. The musical score is chilling, and adds to the suspense. I enjoyed myself, and find it to be an underrated 80's Horror gem. Great effort by Ulli Lommel Performances Suzanna Love makes for an effective lead, at least by Italian acting standards anyway. John Carradine is a favorite of mine, but to say his performance is good here, would be lying. He gets a paycheck, but is wooden in doing so, entirely unconvincing. Ron James is wooden in his role as well. Nicholas Love was creepy as the Brother. Llewelyn Thomas is creepy as the Priest, and I'll always remember being creeped out by his shot with blood dripping down his forehead on the movie cover.Bottom line it's not perfect, but it's a prime example of why I love Italian Horror, suspenseful, well made, and even terrifying at times. You could do a lot worse then this part slasher, part possession film. Recommended if you can find it, sadly it's been banned as a Video Nasty in some areas. One thing's for sure, I won't look at Mirror's the same way again after Mirrors, and now this movie.7/10