Cataclysm (1980)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Thanks for the memories!

Purely Joyful Movie!

Brilliant and touching

The Nightmare Never Ends is another horror film which riffed off the success of the major blockbuster The Omen (1976). Rather than have an evil child, in this one Satan is an ageless, rather smug looking young man who has taken on various guises throughout the ages in which he has exerted his evil onto mankind. In a recent period of his life he was a sadistic Nazi camp commandant. An elderly man who escaped his clutches during the war recognises him and alerts the police who then tie this character in with a series of unexplained murders.The first time I encountered this one was when I saw the rather ropey anthology horror film Night Train to Terror (1985). That movie had three segments which contained material from unreleased or barely released past movies. The Nightmare Never Ends constituted the latter category as it does seem to have been distributed as it was definitely available in the UK on home video under the title Cataclysm in the early 80's. It has a couple of old hands starring as a pair of grizzled detectives, namely Cameron Mitchell and Marc Lawrence. By this point in their careers these guys were well and truly b-movie regulars, with Mitchell in particular a familiar face to anyone at all well versed in low budget genre films from this period. The film itself is certainly no classic but it succeeded in entertaining me anyway. Its combination of Satanism, Nazis and b-movie cheese was a combination which essentially delivered enough fun, for me at any rate.

This film has good intentions. There is something lacking, but I't hard to put one's finger on it. This tells the tale of a Satanic figure who passes through time by recreating himself. An Nobel author, played by Richard Moll, Bull from "Night Court" of all people, has written a kind of Scientology book about God being dead. It has received much attention and he becomes of interest to the Satanic figure. The movie starts out with a Nazi hunter engaging the police to help him capture the man who was responsible for the deaths of his family members during the Holocaust. The thing that is always in the way is that if Satan is so powerful, why does he need to do much of anything. If there are people who threaten him (which they obviously can't), why doesn't he just kill them outright. I know he is searching for souls and all that, but his invulnerability makes him relatively uninteresting in this film. He does some things that don't make much sense in the world of the film. The ending is kind of fun, I guess.

Nobel prize winning novelist James Hanson (Richard Moll as Charles Moll) & his wife Claire (Faith Clift) who is a Doctor and has been suffering from nightmares lately, both set off for a holiday in Las Vegas. While watching some in house entertainment at a casino Claire is hypnotised by an English clairvoyant named Cecil Howard. Claire suffers a vivid hallucination about a sadistic SS officer named Olivier (Robert Bristol) in a Nazi concentration camp. After the show Claire talks with Howard and invites him to supper. Soon after she leaves Howard is killed by what appears to be a red light (don't ask). Meanwhile a old Jewish man named Abraham Weiss (Marc Lawrence) who is a Nazi hunter spots Olivier on a T.V. programme and recognises him as the man he has been after for years. Weiss immediately tells his story to bitter, overworked police officer Lieutenant Sterne (Cameron Mitchell) who lives just across the hall from him. Sterne agrees to look into Weiss's claims but eventually admits there is nothing he can do, especially after Weiss gives him some newspaper cuttings from 1944 which appear to show Olivier but since the paper is over 30 years old and Olivier would now be in his 60' or 70's and the guy on T.V. is still in his 20's & therefore Weiss's story is psychically impossible. That night Weiss is found dead in a parking lot. Lt. Sterne decides to take a personal interest and investigate even further. Claire is starting to lose her mind. Her husband James is about to publish a book called 'God is dead' in which James claims God does not and never has existed. Claire as a stout Catholic is deeply against the book and tries to convince James not to publish it. Olivier, who runs a cult of Satan worshippers, feels James would be a good person to have on board and attempts to convince James to join him and his organisation. A guy with a beard named Papini (Maurice Grandmaison) tries to warn James about Olivier, Satan and his book denouncing God. Various people die including Claire's nephew Jim (Klint Stevenson), Claire decides that she alone must put an end to Olivier and Satan himself. Claire and Jim's girlfriend Ann (Christie Wagner) conduct a bizarre plan that Claire believes will destroy Olivier for good, but will it succeed?According to the IMDb's credit list Cataclysm was directed by three separate people, Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan & Gregg C. Tallas as Greg Tallas. I am not sure if this information is correct but I don't think I've ever heard of a film directed by three different people and maybe that's why it turned out to be a bit of a jumbled up mess. The script by Philip Yordan tries something different and for that it should get at least an extra point. Even though at the end of the day it's still a mess with the story all over the place. Things just happen for little reason, characters aren't that likable and the dialogue in certain scenes isn't up to much. The story becomes occasionally confusing and unfocused. The script comes across as heavy handed at times with it's religious overtones and story arc. Almost as if Yordan wanted to make a thought provoking horror film with a message, obviously it fails, badly. Cataclysm starts out very interesting and draws the viewer in by not revealing too much, too soon. Unfortunately this decision to try and make the plot more mysterious back fires during the middle third as it gets somewhat boring waiting for something to happen but then things explode into a gore drenched finale. The acting is OK for this type of low budget nonsense, except Cift who seems to speak her lines really slowly compared to everyone else. And it's always nice to see genre veteran Cameron Mitchell. Some characters appear dubbed throughout. There is very little, in fact none, blood or gore in the film until the last 10 minutes or so when the red stuff is splashed everywhere. In this sequence there is some real surgery footage in a blood soaked over the top climax to round the film off. I think the film itself was shot on location rather than studio's and has a generally good feel throughout, the production values were much better than I expected. While not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination the photography, editing, special effects, continuity and music are all reasonable enough and I've sat through a lot worse. I'm sure a lot of people will automatically call this film crap as it's an easy target but for those of us who like this sort of off-beat grade-z low budget horror film from days gone by than this one may interest you and is probably worth tracking down. Just because it dares to try something a little different if for no other reason, it doesn't always succeed but at least those involved tried. Overall I'm glad I watched it, certainly not the best film in the world but then did anyone really expect it to be?

BAD BAD BAD flick is low grade all the way it has terrible acting wretched dialog although Cameron Mitchell usually a GREAT character actor is wasted here it's not his fault though because he has to deal with a LOUSY script still i had some moderate fun with this i enjoyed the campy performance by Richard Moll and it was fairly watchable but this is just too low budget and amaeturishly made to work it does have a couple of impressive and creepy scenes though where Moll and Robert Bristol meet but the effects are terrible and it does have a few gory moments and a cool finale but killing Cameron Mitchell was a mistake he was the only amiable character here others were non amiable and a weak lead actress who screams too much and has to mutter weak dialog so overall NOT WORTH IT! * out of 5 i rented this under Satan's Supper