Cataclysm (1980)

the audience applauded

Such a frustrating disappointment

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

Devout Catholic (Clift) is thrust into a good vs evil battle of biblical proportions when her husband (Moll) publishes a controversial tome denying the existence of God, resulting in the Devil incarnate (Bristol) seizing the moment to rise against mankind. I've seen this film re-worked into the "Night Train to Terror" anthology, and that preview-style showcase is more than sufficient to convey the gist; in fact, seeing the entire movie adds virtually nothing at all new.Poorly constructed, each scene just seems to happen, without the connective tissue explaining its context, often just a random event without proper explanation (continuity is also dubious). Mitchell, Lawrence (who play detectives) and Moll provide some familiar comfort, but their presence can't redeem this farce from its own fiery pit of hell. Epic screen-writer Philip Yordan's wife Faith Clift is a total non-actress, her delivery of the dialogue so stunted and unnatural, it almost seems incredulous she could have appeared in other films (though on closer inspection, most attribute husband Yordan a producer credit).I won't label it awful (some of the set design and make-up effects are okay, and there's a neat little twist at the end), but it's painfully close to being an unwatchable turkey.

This is a lost jewel with a good storyline, but suffers from low production costs. Mitchell provided decent acting. The climax scene although it's bad editing, has a great ending. The actor's scream is great and haunting. Some interesting visuals, great effects one can could with "technocolor" process or flood lights. This film is definitely could inspiring for independent horror genre filmmakers and fanatics.ISpoilers: hand coming out of closet is classic, a cheap trick, but works! It becomes silly and reveal of foot as a goat's hoof, great stuff. This could be reworked into an interesting art house film. Fans of this genre should appreciate the visual antics and ending

This film has only one thing going for it and that is Faith Clift. I have not seen any of her other movies but she has entered my Pantheon of all time deliriously awful actors on the strength of this 'performance' alone. I have never before seen an actor get EVERY line of a movie wrong before. OK the script she has to deliver is pretty dire but every single word she utters is so misread it is brilliant. Almost expressionless she just points her piggy little nose in the general direction of someone else in the scene and delivers her lines as if she were reading them off idiot boards two words at a time. She's so gloriously inept she's worth the price of the admission alone. Incidentally, the old lady who says something unintelligible in the bookshop is also called Clift. Faith's mother doing a cameo? I would love to know the story behind the making of this film. Any movie that can get through (at least) three Directors and two Directors of Photography has more potential interest going on behind the camera than in front of it.The editing was atrocious, some scenes were cut off mid word (the version I watched was called The Nightmare Never Ends in the Nightmare Worlds boxset - this movie has, apparently, been re-edited several times).Some of the Music was pretty good, but as it was library tracks of Gustaf Holst's Planet Suite that's hardly surprising.