Nightmare Sisters (1987) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Nightmare Sisters (1987) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Thursday, July 01, 2004 @ 08:38:20 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

When you have three legendary scream queens all in one film, and they all take a bubble bath together...how can the movie be bad? Well Nightmare Sisters found a way... No, I'm just kidding. Nightmare Sisters was in fact a fun movie with some really creative acting by its three beautiful co-stars as well as one other member of the cast named Michael Sonye whom you've probably never heard of, but his talents are very worthy of noting here.

The story in a nutshell goes like this: Melody (Linnea Quigley), Marci (Brinke Stevens) and Mickey (Michelle Bauer) are all members of a sorority. Unfortunately for them however, Melody is a tone deaf dorkette, Marci is a flea market obsessed nerd, and Mickey is an award winning home economics student who likes to eat a lot. Marci comes home with a carload of stuff she picked up at the flea market, and after she brings it in and she starts showing everything to Melody and Mickey, including a crystal ball she brought that used to belong to Omar the mystic medium (Michael Sonye) who had been killed earlier in the film during an opening sequence that was absolutely hilarious. When the girls discover that they have the house to themselves for the weekend, Melody comes up with the idea to have a party. She calls up a nerdy guy from another fraternity on campus that she had dated a month earlier and asks him to come to the party and to bring two friends. He agrees, and asks his two nerdy roommates to come along. When his roommates find out who their dates are going to be, they're none too thrilled, but agree to go along anyway.

Now comes the bad part. Our three nerds are having trouble with the three upperclassmen who run the frat, and after they get caught horsing around in their room, and are told that they're confined to their rooms and aren't allowed to leave to go to the party. Fortunately for them, they were able to sneak out and go anyway. It's only later that they're discovered and the upperclassmen show up at the sorority to cause mischief...but that comes later.

The three finally show up way later than scheduled, and after an evening of singing Row Row Row Your Boat off key fifteen times, a thrilling viewing of Marci's vacation photos, and a rousing game of Twister, Marci comes up with the idea to have a seance. During the seance, Omar's head appears in the crystal ball and tries to warn them about the evil that awaits them, but it seems that it was only a trick by the succubus to get the three girls to touch the crystal. Once they did, the succubus possessed them and suddenly in a cloud of smoke and some cheesy effects, they were standing there in front of their dates looking totally hot...and totally topless. Eventually the guys figure out what's going on, and while they're trying to help they girls, they get mugged and tied up by the upper class nazis from their frat, who then move in on the oversexed, succubus possessed girls. To tell you anymore would be to give away the ending, which I don't really want to do here, so I'll stop.

Nightmare Sisters has a lot going for it. Michelle, Brinke and Linnea all did an excellent job playing nerdy types, and Michael Sonye as Omar was just hilarious. The amount of T&A in the film was a bit overdone, but it wasn't bad except in the bath tub sequence, which seemed to run quite a bit longer than necessary for the telling of the story. Not that seeing three hot women crammed into a tiny bathtub soaping each other is a bad thing, but it just seemed like they kept doing the same stuff over and over again and it started to get a little boring. The rest of the time however, it was all just part of the show and was used as an accessory to whatever else was going on. The nice thing about Brinke Stevens is that she knows that she's sexy, and she knows how to BE sexy, which led to some very hot scenes of her doing things like eating a peach pie and pretending to be an innocent little girl with a big lollipop. The rest of the acting in the film was good and cheesy as well, with the exception of one person. The head of the boys frat couldn't act his way out of a wet nutsack. His line delivery was horrible, and my only suggestion to him would be that he should get a job delivering pizzas or something, because acting is not his forte.

The effects in the movie are pretty much like anything else you'd expect to see in 1987, and the confrontation with the succubus was actually pretty cool looking. The only other complaint I have about this film is the music they used in it. Not only was it horribly bad, it was horribly out of place. Most of the music in the film was like crappy rock 'n' roll (as opposed to good rock 'n' roll) and didn't do anything to set a proper mood in any of the scenes it was used in. There were only one or two places I can think of where proper movie type music was used to set the mood, but the obnoxious musical drivel used throughout the rest of the film just makes you want to beat your head against the wall to make the pain stop.

So, the final question comes down to, should you watch this movie? The answer is a definite yes. Despite the shortcomings of the music and the acting ability of one of the actors, the rest of the movie was a lot of fun and you can pick it up secure in the knowledge that if you like Ed Wood style cheeseball flicks, then you're definitely going to have fun with this one.