THE DISEMBODIED

CONTAINS SPOILERS AND STUPIDITY

Despite the 2015 copyright date on the end credits, this is actually a 2011 film, retitled and given new artwork to disguise the fact that it's actually a meta-sequel to a miserable-looking piece of giant alien eyeball nonsense from 1999 that David DeCouteau directed under a pseudonym. I haven't seen The Killer Eye as a standalone film, but I've seen enough of it shamelessly playing on a TV set in this semi-followup to confidently state that I'll be ploughing through the entire box sets of Crossroads, Bargain Hunt and that fantastically stupid ITV penny arcade game show before I ever - EVER - sling the DVD of The Killer Eye into the player.

Charles Band's The Disembodied (originally released to an uninterested world as Killer Eye: Hollywood Haunt) is so remorselessly terrible that you'd expect it to make DeCouteau's The Killer Eye look good by comparison, in the way that someone would theoretically appear less of a monumental arsehole if they're standing next to Piers Morgan. Paradoxically, that doesn't happen. Here we have five imbecilic young women, ostensibly getting together to decorate the house for Halloween, but eventually deciding not to bother and to sit and watch The Killer Eye instead. But an evil spirit contained within Mom's crystal ball telepathically brings a promotional eyeball prop to life, which promptly goes on the rampage, taking over the girls' minds and making them take their clothes off, talk drivel and experiment with lesbianism....

There are no less than 113 "special executive producers" listed in the end credits. and it's painfully clear that "special executive producer" is a technical Hollywood term for anyone who'll toss Charles Band a dollar. It's cheap, it's incredibly tedious (even at 69 minutes with very slow credit sequences), it's so lousy it's impossible to tell if it was supposed to be a comedy, it boasts a cast hired solely for their willingness to jiggle around in various states of undress, and the script shows every sign of being written by a ten-year-old. Why? It's not as if Charles Band hasn't made proper films in the past - possessed car thriller Crash!, kinky monster erotica Meridian (aka Phantoms), cult favourite Trancers (and let's not forget Empire Pictures giving us Re-Animator, From Beyond and Prison) - but at some point he appears to have given up and is now just churning out Evil Bong and Gingerdead Man sequels. Come back Fred Olen Ray, all is forgiven.

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