Featured Lousy Director: Worth keeter III

At his "best", Keeter is an uniterfering professional who, if landed with the right people, can make decent entertainment. Judging from the films I saw, he has a severe problem with creating pace, which at his best is solved by working within a genre that prefers atmosphere to speed. Perhaps he turned to Saban’s series to deal with that. He seems to be learning as he goes along, but after 18 years and 11 films, one can justly ask for a quicker learning from him. In retrospect, most of his films are rather slow (and as a result, often boring), sometimes uneasy formula entries, that are usually not worth the video store fare.

THE FILMS - average rating 1.36 stars (seven films viewed)

WOLFMAN (1978)

cast: Earl Owensby, Kristina Reynolds, Sid Rancer
critique: Boring, old fashioned mess with no scares, atmosphere or gore, never departing its formulaic plot. Some unintentional laughs.

LIVING LEGEND (1980)

cast: Earl Owensby, Ginger Alden, William T. Hicks
critique: Obnoxious version of Elvis Presley’s life, devoid of any cinematic merit (not even the songs, by Roy Orbison !!!)

LADY GREY (1980)
 
cast: Ginger Alden, David Allan Coe, Paul Ott
critique: straightforward, generally interesting if totally familiar rags to riches yarn, with some passable performances (mainly among the supporters). Sincere, but too "clean" for its own good.

DOGS OF HELL / ROTTWEILER (1982)

cast: Earl Owensby, Jerry Rushing
critique: Very bad 3D opus that has Owensby graduating into showing some human blood and some dog gore, but no pace, scares or shock value. Some ok acting, stupid script.

UNMASKING THE IDOL (1986)
cast: Ian Hunter, William T. Hicks, Charles K. Bibby

ORDER OF THE BLACK EAGLE (1988)
 
cast: Ian Hunter, William T. Hicks, Charles K. Bibby
critique: Script, characters and sets are hilariously (and intentionally?) of the so bad it’s good variety, but lack of pace and "so bad it’s awful" action ruin it. The tackiest cardboard walls since BRIDE OF THE MONSTER.

TRAPPER COUNTY WAR (1989)
cast: Rob Estes, Betsy Russell, Bo Hopkins, Don Swayze, R. G. Armstrong, Ernie Hudson

L . A. BOUNTY (1989)
cast: Sybil Danning, Wings Hauser, Henry Darrow, Robert Quarry

ILLICIT BEHAVIOUR / CRIMINAL INTENT (1992)
  
cast: Robert Davi, Joan Severance, Jack Scalia, James Russo, Kent McCord, Janilee Harrison critique: Ok cast, story, atmosphere, direction in quite formula thriller. Good use of music. A final, cynical, final twist at the end sorely missed.

SNAPDRAGON (1993)
 
cast: Pamela Anderson, Steven Bauer, Chelsea Field, Matt McCoy, Larry Manetti, Rance Howard, Drew Snyder, Irene Tsu
critique: Anderson’s innocent routine surprisingly convincing, and the sex is good, but that can hold your interest just up to a point. After that point, you’re left with a really unexceptional thriller.

POWER RANGERS (1993)

MASKED RIDER (1995)

LAST LIVES (1997)
cast: C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Rubin, Billy Wirth, Judge Reinhold,
note: the plot seems like an SF version of 3D spag. Western COMIN’ AT YA. It should be very interesting to know how far does the resemblance go.