Hard to Die (1990)
7/10
Second only to SHM II as the best B-movie of all time.
9 June 2008
Warning: Spoilers
You have got to admire a movie that sets and then surpasses its own goals. HtD gets right up in your face and asks you if you want to see a slasher movie with five luscious babes (each with a distinct personality, of course) dressed in lingerie (unless they're in Daisy Dukes or in the shower without any clothes at all) running around a building after-hours and firing automatic weapons. Of course you do! Well, HtD delivers. Throw in Orville Ketchum, some irrelevant filler material shot at a porn filming session, and a bizarre cameo by Forrest J. Ackerman, and you've got a most-excellent B-film!

Keep in mind that Jim Wyrnoski is not shy about using material from other films. In Sorority House Massacre II (which beats out HtD only marginally as the best B-movie, because it actually features a haunted house,) he used lengthy unrelated scenes from Slumber Party Massacre as back-story to SHM II. In HtD, he uses the events of SHM II, as well as the same footage from SPM, as a back-story. What makes this more than mildly amusing is that most of the actors/actresses, and many of the scripted characters, in HtD are the same as in SHM II. HtD acknowledges the events of SHM II with a wink at the fact that most of the characters in that movie died. You owe it to yourself to see SHM II prior to seeing HtD.

I won't spend a lot of time on the plot. Let me just say that, through a series of improbable and illogical events, the five female leads end up wearing virtually nothing as they are stalked through a closed office building one Saturday. Quite a few people die, though usually off-camera and unrealistically, and "Orville Ketchum" lives up to his reputation as one of the funnier and more-difficult-to-kill B-movie actors. (The scene where he staples a bandage to his abdomen is priceless.) One final observation...unlike many of the straight-to-video movies being churned out today, HtD actually has some decent production standards. Cheap, yes, but competent. The film has been correctly exposed and color-compensated. The audio levels and re-recording are quite acceptable. There are no artsy-fartsy camera angles or unnecessary CGI effects. It is simply a better-produced movie than most of the dreck out there today.

And it is a hoot! Either you get it, or you don't. Highly-recommended for nekkid-wimmen-in-slasher-films fans.
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