THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: TWICE DEAD (1988) **

Siblings Tom (The Brain) Breznahan and Jill (Night of the Creeps) Whitlow move into a house where an actor murdered his girlfriend before hanging himself in the ‘30s.  For some reason, a biker gang likes to hang around the place and enjoys tormenting the family.  After a lot of back and forth between the warring factions, the bikers invade the home and hold the teens hostage.  It’s then when the ghost of the dead actor comes after the home invaders.

Twice Dead is a weird mishmash of The New Kids, April Fool’s Day, and an Amityville sequel.  It borrows from a lot of different subgenres, seemingly at random and none of them ever gel.  Most of the scenes of the punk hooligans harassing the teens are tedious, although I did like the part where our heroes throw a coffin out the back of a speeding hearse and into the grill of their pursuers’ car. 

The gore includes a decapitated head spinning around on a record player, and deaths by a dumb waiter and a possessed motorcycle.  I guess it already spoiled things by saying the flick borrows from April Fool’s Day, which means many of the deaths are just elaborate hoaxes.  However, unlike that film, the people all eventually wind up getting killed for real, hence the title.

I’ve liked the two leads in other movies, but they’re kind of bland and forgettable here.  Same goes for supporting players Brooke Bundy and Todd Bridges, who aren’t given much to do.  The only one who makes much of an impression is Skinamax siren Charlie Spradling who gets the best death of the movie in which she gets to come and go at the same time, if you catch my drift.  Other than that winning moment, Twice Dead is barely worth watching once.