150 Movies You Should See Before You Die (65 page)

The German-market DVD edition of this film identified it not as a horror movie but as a comedy, invoking the name of Edward D. Wood Jr. in the sell-copy on the cover.

Trivia Quiz

Which of the behind-the-camera people who worked on
Skeleton Man
is an accomplished stuntman and stunt coordinator, having worked on over 150 movies and television series (including
Killer Klowns From Outer Space
)?

A: Johnny Martin

B: Trevor Short

C: Danny Dimbort

D: Kristen Evenson

Answer: A. And he makes one helluva stuntman.

PRODUCERS
Charles Band (executive producer), Paul Salamoff, Dana Scanlon, and Gary Schmoeller (producers)

WRITER
Uncredited

DIRECTOR
Ted Nicolaou

STARS
Tim Baldini (
Videorapher/Film Student
), Madison Charap (
Psychic
), Paul James Palmer (
Team Leader
), Troy Taylor (
Ghost Historian
), and Ryan Larson (
History Student
)

A psychic and three college students agree to spend the night in a reputedly haunted house in order to prove the existence of the supernatural.

Why It Sucks

The tagline for this film was “Everything You've Heard Is True.”If you've heard that
The St. Francisville Experiment
is a steaming pile of crap, then … well … this is one of an endless stream of films that have attempted to recapture the success of
The Blair Witch Project
. I doubt I will ever see another movie that fails so spectacularly at doing what it set out to do.

The movie starts pretending to be a documentary, but the filmmakers quickly abandon that conceit, thus undercutting the whole premise of the movie. If all their “evidence” of supernatural hauntings were true, it would have been all over CNN.

Thumbs Down Rating:

The Crappies

The Worst Picture Award goes to …
Everyone involved in the production and post-produciton of this film. How could they have screwed up a “reality-based” film as badly as this?

And the Worst Animation Award goes to …
John R. Ellis for some of the worst fake poltergeist activity ever captured on film, not to mention some of the most out-of-place CGI ever. (It might not be his fault … the producers might have thought they needed to “sex up” this deadly dull movie, and they may have decided that everything is better with computer-animated ghosties!)

They Really Said It!

Tim
: It was me. I farted.

Betcha Didn't Know

Troy Taylor is an author of nonfiction works about and an organizer of tours of haunted places. He reportedly did not know he was taking part in a project of pure fiction.

Director Ted Nicolaou has worked with Charles Band in many capacities since the 1980s, serving as editor and/or director on many of his productions, including Leapin' Leprechauns. (Maybe this film would have been better with leprechauns instead of ghosts.)

Trivia Quiz

What monster movie franchise did writer/director Ted Nicolaou helm, making the series uniquely his own in the process?

A:
Mandroid

B:
Puppet Master

C:
Subspecies

D:
Trancers

Answer: C. During the 1990s, Nicolaou wrote and directed four entries in the
Subspecies
series, plus the loosely affiliated spinoff
The Vampire Diaries.

PRODUCERS
Frank J. Desiderio (executive producer) and Ralph T. Desiderio (producer)

WRITERS
William Finger and Charles Sinclair

DIRECTOR
Dick Ashe

STARS
Chase Cordell (
Paul Carlson
), Donna Leigh Drake (
Kathy Nolan
), and Gregorio Sala (
Professor Johnny “Longbow” Salinas
)

When a meteor crashes near where archaeologist Paul Carlson (Cordell) is stargazing with his free-lovin' honey, Kathy (Drake), a tiny space-rock fragment is lodged in his brain. Now, whenever the moon is in the sky, he transforms into a hideous, reptilian creature. To make matters worse, his body is becoming “molecularly unstable”! Will his American-Indian colleague, Johnny “Longbow” Salinas (Sala) be able to use science and Ancient Native Wisdom to save or slay Paul before he blows up?

Why It Sucks

The acting is universally wooden, the dialogue atrociously written, and the camerawork and other production values are barely competent. In some cases they aren't even that, such as during the painfully bad time-lapse photography sequence of Paul transforming into the Moon Beast. Or maybe when one changes from a human to a giant, humanoid reptile, an extra set of eyes and a second nose appear and disappear as part of the process.

Thumbs Down Rating:

The Crappies

The Worst Cinematography Award goes to …
R. Kent Evans (hiding behind the pseudonym E. Scott Wood) for stop-motion photography so bad that even grade schoolers would have been embarrassed to show their efforts in public.

And the Worst Writing Award goes to …
Bill Finger. Why, Bill, why? You wrote so many great comic book scripts!

They Really Said It!

Johnny Longbow
: My guess is that there is some unusual element in this fragment that synchronizes with that larger mass over there and it produces some kind of energy reaction!

Betcha Didn't Know

Although completed in 1972, this film wasn't released until 1976 due to problems finding a distributor willing to take it on.

This was the last (or only) film project for Richard Ashe, Bill Finger, R. Kent Evans, Charles Sinclair, and Gregorio Sala. It's not hard to see why.