DEATH SPA (1988)

DEATH SPA (1988)

Tagline: Strange things are a brewing at the local gym!

(Horror, Drama, Let’s Get Physical) [R]

My monies on the whacko in the computer room. 

In this one, we are taken to the computer-run Starbody Health Spa where you work out and your life gets better. Only recently a series of really crazy murders are starting to happen at the spa and the blame for them is being shifted to the owner Michael Evans's business partners. Michael has had some tragedy in his life and his wife ended up killing herself because she thought he was cheating on her. Her brother David believes it was Michael’s fault. Could it be David or Michael’s partners out for revenge, sabotaging his health spa, or is it a force far more sinister?

First off, this is one of those under-the-radar 80s horror flicks that features some really over-the-top cheesy 80s gore but still manages to not be so off-putting that it’s unwatchable. The storyline is super shaky and really doesn’t make any sense at all, but the lack of restricting itself to “natural” events, the film is able to stretch its legs by getting in some really bizarre over-the-top “haunting” type stuff. 

In the opening sequence, someone ends up in the hospital and you hear over the intercom someone saying “Dr. David, telephone please, Dr. David telephone please”. This is also used for Queensryche’s “I Remember Now” opening to their CD “Operation Mindcrime”. Whenever I spot stuff like that, I think it’s pretty cool. Nearly everything takes place at the Health Spa, but you can tell this thing was shot at a former nightclub or dance studio. I will say that the lighting is pretty effective and it’s extremely weird that they were able to pull a horror flick off in this setting. If you haven’t seen DEATH SPA, it’s likely to catch you off guard. I fully expected this to suck even for an 80’s film. 

Acting wise the only person I recognized right away was Chelsea Field. She is probably best known for playing Teela in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, but she was in several big movies in the late 80s and 90s. She was definitely underutilized in this and doesn’t play any of the main characters. Merritt Butrick plays a really interesting and weird character David in this and does a solid job. Butrick is best known for his role as David in STAR TREK II & III. Sadly this was Merritt’s last movie and he passed away at the age of 29. We also get a good performance from Ken Foree who plays Marvin in this. Foree is probably best known for DAWN OF THE DEAD but has been in a bunch of horror flicks over the years. William Bumiller (SPECIES) plays Michael and does a decent job here. As for the rest of the cast, I actually felt like, in spite of the cheese level, everyone was putting in a pretty good effort here. 

If there are a few misses, it’s the fact that they didn’t bother giving us a decent soundtrack or score. I kind of feel like all the money was spent on the cheesy gore elements. The killings are all really whacked out almost like they were going for an A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET feel.

DEATH SPA is definitely trash cinema you would find at Blockbuster in the horror section and probably avoid renting because the cover just looked really bad. If you did rent it though, you would find a pretty interesting and weird horror flick suitable for a Halloween horror movie marathon, even if you wanted to try and draw a few laughs out of it. If anything takes away from the horror, it’s the introduction of psychometry into the film when it probably wasn’t necessary. 

Overall this thing is out of the box enough to give a 4 out of 7. A far better story would have been required to bump this up to a 5. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF MALJACK PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.