Barn of the Naked Dead: Cheesey Goodness!

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In BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD, three female singers become prisoners of an insane would-be circus ringleader named Andre (Andrew Prine) after their car breaks down en route to Las Vegas. Andre chains them up in his barn along with the other women he's captured and "trains" them with a whip and a rifle. He also keeps a cougar and a boa constrictor in his menagerie. Meanwhile, his homicidal mutant father stalks the desert killing whatever he can, including any girl who tries to escape his sonâ€™s demented clutches.

This low-budget exploitation flick was the second film from director Alan Rudolph (credited under the name Gerald Cormier), who would later go on to direct quirky critical favorites such as CHOOSE ME and TROUBLE IN MIND. While there is little evidence of his later work in this dark, perverse picture, it may satisfy those in a depraved frame of mind, though even they may be disappointed to learn that, despite the title, there is no nudity. Performances are generally good, however, particularly Prine's, and there's a nicely unnerving noise-rock score by Tommy Vig and even a theme song, "Evil Eyes," sung by Pamela Miller. Manuela Theiss, Sherry Alberoni, and Sheila Bromley play the three girls fighting to stay alive.

I went into this film hoping for a touch of horror; after all, Barn of the Naked Dead would seem to imply that there are going to be dead people (apparently naked) involved. Well, a handful of people do die, but we don't get to see any kind of gory details of the kills, and, strangely enough, there is no nudity whatsoever to be found here. Normally, that would not be a problem, but the film title promises us naked dead people and fails to deliver any skin whatsoever - that's just not right. There is a barn in the movie, though - I have to give them credit for coming through with that promise. The movie itself is pretty hard to watch. Almost against my better judgment, I'm rounding up and giving the movie two stars just because they did establish a plot and actually followed through on it. A bit of unnecessary silliness at the end did nothing to raise my opinion of the film, though.

What we have here are three young ladies traveling to Las Vegas in order to perform in a show. One of them knows a great shortcut through the desert - you know nothing good is going to come of that. Well, they end up stranded in the middle of the desert overnight; the next morning, though, help arrives in the form of a nice young man who offers to drive them to a phone, etc. But wouldn't you know it? The nice young man is actually a psycho who thinks himself the ring leader of a very special circus - a circus made up of female human "animals." He has quite a menagerie already, although he doesn't seem to be training them for much of anything. When they get out of line, he takes the whip to them, and when any one of them proves herself unwilling to be trained, he takes it upon himself to discipline her severely.

I have certainly seen worse exploitation films than this one, but that doesn't make Barn of the Naked Dead a good movie. While the acting of Andrew Prine as the insane ring master is actually quite good, a significant number of roles went to actors and actresses of less impressive quality. The print of this film is also very bad. The colors are the polar opposite of vibrant; this film could deteriorate horrendously in the coming years without anyone even being able to notice. I didn't care for the ending, as it introduced an element that robbed the film of the bit of effectiveness it had managed to generate, yet there is a story here that holds together and makes sense - and that keeps it from being a truly bad movie.

Source: Amazon.com