Horror Movie Review: The Strangeness (1985)

Strangeness in name, strangeness in nature. The Strangeness is one of those obscure 80’s horror movies that you think you probably saw a very long time ago. Then you re-watch it and realise, you would have remembered this film.

Directed by Melanie Anne Phillips (who is credited as David Michael Hillman), she co-wrote the script with Chris Huntley. It stars Dan Lunham, Terri Berland and Rolf Theison. A veritable cast of nobodies who went on to do next to nothing.

The plot, the very basic plot, sees a group hired to look for gold in a cave/mine. Gold that is said to be buried deep inside, at least that’s what Morgan (Keith Hurt) believes. Of course, this cave houses something deadly and the hunt for gold will become a fight for survival.

It takes an age to get going and even when it does, it feels slow. However, it’s not such a problem as the cast of characters are so odd that it’s hard not to be entertained. We have a wide array of people acting silly and saying even sillier things.

…and then we get the creature that becomes the main threat for our cavers.

Imaginative looking, with a better budget, it probably would have looked great. However, there is no budget here so what we end up with is a ‘stop-motion’ one-eyed worm-looking thing. It’s not great but it is funny to look at.

Of course, gore is at a minimum here with most deaths occurring either off screen or the actor in question getting covered in some sort of slimy goo. It hardly matters, as seeing what is going on is easily the biggest problem the movie faces.

Being set in caves/mines, lighting is not great and so much of this movie is obscured in darkness. In a way, that helps hide some of the cheapness but mostly, it’s just annoying. Although, as stated at the start, there’s no denying the entertainment value of such trash.