Being a lifelong avid collector/fan of obscure, oft-neglected 80s horror it is always a delight to document a hitherto neglected title that had slipped under the radar. Jack Dunlaps's quixotic 'Natas: The Reflection' is strongly jazzed with a sinfully strident synthesized score as our handsome, clean-cut Everyman reporter Steve (Randy Mulkey) lets his imagination and innate curiosity run wild with his fanciful hope of finally discovering the terrifying truth behind the ancient myth of the desert-obscured 'Natas Tower', and the fabled phantasmal spirits that lurk within its ensorcelled, demon-protected depths!
During sleek-limbed Steve's Stoic fact-finding exodus into the unforgiving heat, will-sapping dehydration of the ostensibly barren desert, his openly doubtful girlfriend and her no less incredulous TV crew very soon weirdly encounter a B-Movie smorgasbord of Shaman-forewarned frights and frightfulness; including terrifying tinned lizards, rancorous rotten gizzards, shambling Ghost Town ghouls, cadaverous cowboys, rotten-hearted lynch mobs and there's even time for hunky Jay (Craig Hensley) to take a risqué roll in the hay with his righteous-looking squeeze while the grisly green-faced fiends play!
Maverick 'one-time' horror film director Jack Dunlap certainly wasn't afraid to obliterate B-Movie moulds by putting wildly circuitous narrative kinks into his heroically hokey hallucinatory home-spun horror show, with its bravura mishmash of sensationalist Lo-fi shamanistic shock tactics, perfidious plethora of spectral snakes, grave-rotted gunslingers, mountain-trapped entities and ,finally, Old Nick himself grimly guarding the mystic madness of Natas Tower! On reflection, I can say with only little hyperbole that low budget schlock maestro Dunlap's beautifully bizarre, peyote-infused desert trip is one of the more blisteringly strange examples of gonzo independent horror that is so unrepentantly silly that it remains enormous fun to watch. Besides, any feature film with a specific credit for 'Ghost Town Zombies' cannot by definition be all bad!
During sleek-limbed Steve's Stoic fact-finding exodus into the unforgiving heat, will-sapping dehydration of the ostensibly barren desert, his openly doubtful girlfriend and her no less incredulous TV crew very soon weirdly encounter a B-Movie smorgasbord of Shaman-forewarned frights and frightfulness; including terrifying tinned lizards, rancorous rotten gizzards, shambling Ghost Town ghouls, cadaverous cowboys, rotten-hearted lynch mobs and there's even time for hunky Jay (Craig Hensley) to take a risqué roll in the hay with his righteous-looking squeeze while the grisly green-faced fiends play!
Maverick 'one-time' horror film director Jack Dunlap certainly wasn't afraid to obliterate B-Movie moulds by putting wildly circuitous narrative kinks into his heroically hokey hallucinatory home-spun horror show, with its bravura mishmash of sensationalist Lo-fi shamanistic shock tactics, perfidious plethora of spectral snakes, grave-rotted gunslingers, mountain-trapped entities and ,finally, Old Nick himself grimly guarding the mystic madness of Natas Tower! On reflection, I can say with only little hyperbole that low budget schlock maestro Dunlap's beautifully bizarre, peyote-infused desert trip is one of the more blisteringly strange examples of gonzo independent horror that is so unrepentantly silly that it remains enormous fun to watch. Besides, any feature film with a specific credit for 'Ghost Town Zombies' cannot by definition be all bad!