Friday, October 10, 2014

FIEND / Don Dohler Productions - 1980

It's Halloween Countdown Friday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. We gots another flick from the Baltimore area by writer/producer/director Don Dohler, who also brought us the super low budget movies like THE ALIEN FACTOR, NIGHTBEAST, HARVESTERS, ALIEN FACTOR II, CRAWLER and more. Unbelievably, the budget for this one was just $6,000, something the Dungeon movie crew knows all about!

Eegah!! sent over a great little sound clip from this flick for our earjoyment, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button over by our own Atomic Meanster, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here's a taste of... FIEND!

The story starts with an evil spirit entering into a gravesite and reanimating a moldy corpse into the form of Mr. Longfellow. To stay alive, it needs to absorb the life energy from a victim by Longfellow wrapping his hands around their throat!

Don Leifert is Mr. Longfellow, he was also in five other Dohler productions. Sadly, Don died in 2010 at age 59 from a heart condition.

Longfellow, a music instructor, is ready to snatch this girl's life force but is interrupted before he can seal the deal. By the way, this girl is the worst student in the history of music and actually deserves to die after hearing her play!

George Stover, who has a total of 73 movie credits (6 now either filming or in post!) and appeared in many Dohler projects, plays Mr. Longfellow's assistant. Here, they're having a tense conversation concerning music books!

This guy hears a girl screaming and goes to her aid, only to succumb to Longfellow's choke hold. There are always plenty of characters with goofy hair styles in Dohler flicks.

Gary, a nosey neighbor, decides to check out the spirit world for an explanation to the mysterious deaths occurring in the neighborhood.

Gary goes to a graveyard for clues where he meets a weirdo grounds keeper who sneaks up behind a tombstone and slaps him on the shoulder, and, for some strange reason has a newspaper clipping in his pocket of the dead dude that was reanimated into Longfellow!.. Seriously... WTF, Man?!!

In the meantime, Longfellow has tricked Gary's wife into coming over to his house. She goes in and down some stairs into the basement where she's attacked by the Fiend!

Here's a close up of the makeup job for... The FIEND!!

Gary finds his dead wife and has to go a round with Longfellow. Don Dohler's son, playing Scotty, grabs a sword from the wall and jabs it deep into Longfellow's back.

He looses the life force and drops dead on the floor, bringing an end to the insanity. The evil life force then heads back into outer space, from which it came!.. Do I hear an echo?

Tomorrow is another Halloween Countdown Saturday with Eegah!!

5 comments:

  1. Fangoria magazine talked a bit about this film when it came out... other than that , we knew almost "nothing" about this movie....

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  2. Thanks Doc T, glad we could be of service!

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  3. There are a Lot of "obscure" films that we have only been able too find "anything" about , except for the postings at your Great Blog....

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  4. And, we gots lots more - Thanks again for your thoughts..

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  5. Knew Don Dohler very well,and was supposed to build a set for him for FIEND...I wouldn't do it on his (extremely micro-budget) terms, so he withdrew the request and kept it a horror film instead of a sci-fi like he wanted.

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