BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Red-Barracuda The Nightmare Never Ends is another horror film which riffed off the success of the major blockbuster The Omen (1976). Rather than have an evil child, in this one Satan is an ageless, rather smug looking young man who has taken on various guises throughout the ages in which he has exerted his evil onto mankind. In a recent period of his life he was a sadistic Nazi camp commandant. An elderly man who escaped his clutches during the war recognises him and alerts the police who then tie this character in with a series of unexplained murders.The first time I encountered this one was when I saw the rather ropey anthology horror film Night Train to Terror (1985). That movie had three segments which contained material from unreleased or barely released past movies. The Nightmare Never Ends constituted the latter category as it does seem to have been distributed as it was definitely available in the UK on home video under the title Cataclysm in the early 80's. It has a couple of old hands starring as a pair of grizzled detectives, namely Cameron Mitchell and Marc Lawrence. By this point in their careers these guys were well and truly b-movie regulars, with Mitchell in particular a familiar face to anyone at all well versed in low budget genre films from this period. The film itself is certainly no classic but it succeeded in entertaining me anyway. Its combination of Satanism, Nazis and b-movie cheese was a combination which essentially delivered enough fun, for me at any rate.

Sam Panico Have you ever seen Night Train to Terror and wondered — what would one of that film's portmanteau sequences be like if they were expanded to an entire movie? Good news! Well, maybe. Your wishes have come true.The final story of Night Train, "The Case of Claire Hansen", was really a film called The Nightmare Never Ends (alternatively known as Cataclysm and Satan's Supper). It boasts three directors. Amazingly, it was written by Philip Yordan, who not only won the Academy Award for Broken Lance in 1954, but also provided a front for blacklisted Hollywood writers (he was Bernard Gordon's front for The Day of the Triffids)!This is my favorite of all kinds of movies — a film I discover at 5 AM when the rest of the world is asleep and wonder if it can really be true and if I am not still asleep. To say that this is a batshit insane film is to do a disservice to the phrase batshit insane. I feel ill-prepared to share it's wonder with you, but I'm sure going to try.There are two stories going on here:Nobel Prize-winning author James Hansen (Richard Moll of TV's Night Court and House) and his devoutly Catholic wife Claire (who is a surgeon, which totally comes into play later) decide to go to Vegas to both celebrate James' new book and to get away from Claire's nightmares. Wondering what James won the Nobel Prize for? He wrote a book that proved that God is dead. Now, he's planning a TV special to tell the whole story to the whole world (he's preaching the bad news!). Well, alright. And that Claire — seems that she's been dreaming about volcanoes. They decide to go see a magician, who puts Claire into a trance in seconds.That's when we learn the real secret of what has been bothering Claire — Nazis! She dreams of a handsome young officer who kills a room of other officers and an all-female string orchestra. After the show, Claire invites him to dinner after he tells her that a demon is after her. He never makes it — he is killed and a 666 tattoo is left on his scalp.Remember when I said there was a second story?Mr. Weiss is super old and out of it, but totally recognizes a Nazi when he sees one. Pretty and rich Olivier is being interviewed during the intermission of the New York Ballet and he looks exactly like the Nazi officer who killed Weiss' parents at Auschwitz (and he's also the Nazi from Claire's dream). Weiss is a Nazi hunter, believe it or not, and he calls in his neighbor Lieutenant Stern (Cameron Mitchell, who has been in more movies than there have been movies, but let's call out Blood and Black Lace as one of the best of his films). They go to the ballet and follow Olivier to his extravagant mansion, all the while Stern tries to convince the old man that this cannot be the man who tormented his childhood. Weiss grabs his Luger and goes to kill Olivier, but an unseen demon kills him and leaves a 666 on his body.Read more at http://bit.ly/2yHqE9E

Vafthrudnir Ah, Cataclysm, The Nightmare Never Ends... a turkey by any other name, Romeo, would gobble just as loudly. And this one's a Thanksgiving feast of epic proportions. It suffers from production values so low you have to go digging in the dirt to find them, from the sound (awful) to picture quality (atrocious) to the acting (Faith Clift saves the rest of the cast; by giving the single worst performance I have ever seen on screen, she almost makes the rest look merely mediocre by comparison). Entire scenes are washed out in a black muddle by some truly godforsaken camera-work, the dialogue is laughable... and so on, runneth the litany of complaints. But, I kinda liked it, and part of the reason I criticize so harshly is to prevent accusations of bad taste. That said, the most startling thing about this movie is that the committed horror fan (you know who you are) will find some truly unsettling moments, some real, honest-to-God creeps. They're few and far between, but they are there, and make the rest of the movie -- let's not say "good", that's a little overboard, but at least *fun*. It's quirky and surreal enough at times to see where a little talent and a vastly reworked script might have resulted in a rare gem. It had the potential to be more Session 9 than Plan 9, and if it failed, it will at least make you nostalgic for the good old days when terrible horror movies had miniscule budgets, rather than unforgivably large ones. (Anyone here see Ghost Ship? My condolences.) Part train wreck and part cubic zirconia in the rough, bad enough to hurt but not without its occasional spark, this is one that every fan of obscure horror needs to hunt down for that late-night viewing with a bag of chips and a six-pack.

bross-1 I have read other people's reviews of The Nightmare Never Ends, finding the general consensus to be negative. It's true that the acting, directing and editing are below average, even for a horror film (a genre not primarily concerned with reaping cinematic accolades). Despite these deficiencies, there is an engrossing story being told here, one with originality, intelligence and believe it or not, plausibility. The movie concerns the ever popular debate of God's existence (and, conversely, the Devil's). There are characters who have the deepest faith imaginable (ranging from war survivors and little old ladies in bookstores to catholic surgeons and self-indulgent cultists), and those who dismiss divinity as an antiquated notion in light of all that science, police work and human cruelty has shown us. Two men are at the center of this philosophical battle, a sensationalist author out to ruffle America's right-wing feathers and a mysterious, spoiled rich kid who is of interest to cops, young girls and historians alike.Although this may seem to retread familiar ground, and was churned out at the same time all the other religious thrillers were vying for a spot on the marquee, The Nightmare Never Ends possesses excellent dialogue (if one can look past the poor deliveries by most of the players!), a well-paced script, and plot intricacies that are research supported. Barring some garish disco-era music, clothing and decor, this is a movie that ages well, perhaps even getting better and more relevant as time passes, due to the emphasis on media-assisted hype in the film (television, newspapers, and books are integral, not incidental, to drawing the characters tightly together). Although The Nightmare Never Ends is a supernatural tale, there is a great deal of pertinent social commentary. It proudly, almost haughtily, provides its own stance on the God/Devil debate in a scene of breathtaking glamour and triumph. It makes us as viewers consider where we are headed in this western world, this modern world of excess, indulgence and brutality, where we need a God more than ever. One final note to Internet Movie Database readers: I must take the time to make a few comments about Robert Bristol, who plays Olivier. I was awe-struck by his sensual beauty and magnetism in his performance. Not only did his acting ability transcend that of his co-stars, his screen presence was sublime. He has the grace of an angel, and that face was like something out of a dream. Why this movie didn't catapult him to stardom or at least pin-up status evades me.Submitted by Penny Dreadful, Halifax, Nova Scotia.