Review – 13th Child

“Legend of the Jersey Devil Volume One”? Don’t count on a sequel to this outing. It wasn’t that good. However, it was at least somewhat better than I expected. I’m a big Jersey Devil fan, so I’m picky about how the subject is handled. Just another slasher movie with the Devil grafted onto it isn’t likely to impress me much. However, this one had a few things going for it. Sure, it’s a low budget production with the usual shortcomings that entails. And Cliff Robertson, Lesley-Anne Down and Robert Guillaume serve to lend the show a certain circus-of-the-out-of-work-actors quality. But Robertson’s got co-writing credit, so maybe he wasn’t just a hired gun. Shortfalls aside, however, the story was moderately engaging and at least a little anti-hunting (a sure way to get onto my good side). The monster was cheap, and Gieger should probably sue over its teeth. But throughout almost the entire picture it’s handled in a sufficiently subtle way to avoid working it beyond the limitations of the effect. As cheap horror movies go, I’ve seen a lot worse. Indeed, the only thing I could have genuinely done without was the exploitation of Native American culture, a plot element that should have been completely unnecessary given the number of Jersey Devil origin stories that don’t have anything to do with indigenous people. Mildly amusing