Al Adamson Double Feature: Five Bloody Graves/Nurse Sherri

While the late Al Adamson was murdered back in 1995 under some rather bizarre circumstances, his equally bizarre filmography lives on thanks to the magic of home video. Shock-O-Rama cashes in on the ‘grindhouse’ trend that’s been popular in genre circles since the Tarantino/Rodriguez film of the same name with a double shot of Adamson films – a western called Five Bloody Graves and a possession film called Nurse Sherri.

FIVE BLOODY GRAVES

Ben Thompson (Robert Dix) is a rogue gunfighter who wanders from town to town until he finds out that an Indian named Setago (John Bud Carlos) has been slaughtering innocent folk trying to farm the lands. When Ben discovers this he does his best to warn an ex-girlfriend of his named Nora (Vicki Volante) and her family but he winds up having to take matters into his own hands. When a group of burlesque dancers and an elderly man of the cloth (John Carradine) need to be escorted through a valley Ben is brought on board to make sure they make it there alive, but of course, once Setago finds out about the caravan he and his men attack...

Five Bloody Graves is a bad film even by Al Adamson standards. Not much really happens for the first hour or so of the film and it isn’t really until Ben has to escort the ladies through the valley that things pick up. By that point, you probably won’t care what happens to Ben or his new friends, you’ll instead be reaching for the remote so that you can put something better on. The effects are bad, the costumes unimpressive (most of the native Indians are obviously played by white dudes in bad make up) and the finale is far from grand. The result? The film is boring. It had potential and Robert Dix and John Carradine are fun in their respective roles but so little actually happens in this film that it’s just flat out dull and rather difficult to pay attention to.

The only redeeming quality that Five Bloody Graves has going for it is some truly wonky narration courtesy of Gene Raymond, speaking as if he were death incarnate, and going on and on about how Setago and Ben are acting as his messengers on the Earthly plain. It’s not that the narration is particularly good, it’s just that it’s so flat out strange that it almost makes the movie entertaining. Almost, but not quite.

NURSE SHERRI

Thankfully the second feature on the disc is a little more fun. A cult leader named Reanhauer (William Roy) drops from a heart attack while trying to resurrect an evil corpse and he dies at the hospital later that night. Reanhauer isn’t going to go down without a fight though, so once his body passes on he sort of transplants his evil spirit into the nubile frame of Nurse Sherri (Jill Jacobson). Once he’s got his evil mojo working in its new home he uses Sherri’s body to kill of the doctors who let him die on the operating room table. Once that’s over with, the possessed Sherri is driven to other odd behavior which earns her the attention of some of her co-workers, like Nurse Tara (Marilyn Joi), who ultimately decide that something must be wrong with her and that she obviously needs their help.

A strange blend of Corman’s sexy nurse films like Candy Stripe Nurses and supernatural movies like Carrie, Nurse Sherri is as poorly made as you’d expect from one of Adamson’s knock off films but it’s not without its low budget charm. The sets are really limited and almost everyone over acts to a pretty severe degree but the movie is a fun and trashy little picture that is at least fairly entertaining despite some pacing problems in the first half. Jacobson and Joi have both got an interesting and appealing screen presence that gives the film a bit more oomph than it would have otherwise had while Roy makes for an unusually goofy villain resulting in some unintentionally funny moments involving his character.