Curse of the Blue Lights (1988)

Time to dive into another zombie movie that really isn’t totally a zombie movie. I mean there is a part at the end with a lot of zombies, but there are mostly just ghouls… You know I’m just going to put this into the zombie movie marathon!

Sorry no trailer just the poster

Things kick off with a farmer getting killed by a scarecrow. Later we find out that this was done by some ghouls so that they could use his body to feed their long dead God whom they are trying to resurrect. The God was buried in the ground and while they find the body the amulet needed for the ritual is missing. We know this because earlier some “teenagers” who were making out found it and took it away with them. So now the ghouls are after them.

We also have a helpful witch that tries to lead our heroes into battle with the ghouls, a police officer that causes them some headaches, and some jerk rich boy that eventually helps out tossed in for fun. Oh yeah did I mention that most of the action takes place at a Cemetery? The blue lights are a local legend that kids use to scare each other, only this time it is real. That is also how we get zombies because they are summoned and crawl out of the grave to protect the ghouls and their God. So big shoot out with cops vs. zombies is why Curse of the Blue Lights ends up in my zombie movie marathon.

I’ve watched a lot of low budget eighties horror, but this is the first time that I’ve seen Curse of the Blue Lights. The movie has some issues but overall is decent. Some of the night shots are very dark and the lighting overall isn’t great. The story is goofy and has a couple slow spots before picking up in the last half hour. I also get the fact that our main characters are supposed to be young, but this is another example of casting actors well into their twenties to play much younger characters. Not a deal breaker but annoying.

I love the latex monsters!

There are also spots where the movie excels way beyond its budget. The makeup is very good. The ghouls look great and the filmmakers don’t shy away from closeups because of it. The actors are able to actually create characters give a performance from underneath the latex. That is where so many eighties low budget movies fail, here it works perfectly. They double down with some decent looking zombies in the big finale and even give us a cool looking God (monster suit!) strolling around. Additionally, there is a melting corpse that stood out for me as well. I do like practical effects and Curse of the Blue Lights is filled with them.

While the movie has flaws I did like it. Looking at my notes I noticed that I wrote down ‘amusingly weird’. That describes Curse of the Blue Lights perfectly. It was a fun bit of cheese from the decade of direct to home video flicks. You can find the movie on the internet to watch for free. I think that it is worth your time. I recommend it.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer