Right! Okay. Well, ... um... To be honest, I have no idea where to begin with this one.

Maybe I'll start with some positive notes! "Nightmare Weekend" contains several adorably gooey, cheap-looking, and trashy gore effects that put a smile on my face. It also features lots of pointless soft-core sex and gratuitous nudity provided by naturally beautiful 80s girls, of which one of them later even became a CNN news anchor! That's right, the film stars Andrea Thompson and she has a steaming sex sequence that I bet she doesn't like to be reminded of nowadays. Her bio says she debuted in a small role in "Wall Street". Ha, not!

The rest of "Nightmare Weekend" is utterly insane and unfathomable nonsense! Trying to summarize the crazy plot makes me want to scratch my head, but I'll try anyways. On the countryside lives a genius scientist who developed a method to alter the aggressive behavior of animals. For example, by forcing it to swallow a silver pinball (don't ask...) a vicious Doberman turns into a cute and gentle puppy! Okay, so Dr. Brake is a brilliant scientist, but then again, he also hooked up a super-computer to an irritatingly babbling green woolen socket-puppet named George, and his teenage daughter uses it to play Turbo! The good Dr. Has an evil female assistant, and she wants to test the effect of the behavioral pinballs on humans, so she lures three beautiful but empty-headed girls to the mansion. The girls sneak horny blokes from the nearby bar into the house, and thus the evil assistant has even more guinea pigs. Meanwhile, in the dullest and most redundant sub plot in the history of cinema, the scientist's daughter falls deeply in love with the evil assistant's toy boy, and she seeks romantic advice from the green-haired puppet.

It's mind-boggling when you read it on paper, and I assure you it's even more mind-boggling when you see it on the screen. You have not experienced 80s amateur-madness until you see a sock-puppet yell "Danger! Danger!" or watch how a timid young housemaid turns into a sphere-possessed killing machine. And what is up with that end shot? I'm telling you "Nightmare Weekend" is either totally awful or, like a friend of mine righteously stated, so brilliant that ordinary mortal souls like us simply fail to comprehend it.

I must have seen the VHS box for this a million times in a million different video stores and always passed it up. It wasn't until this last week when I got an email from a friend describing this as an absolutely mind blowing WTF-fest that I finally decided to check this out. And how glad I am - this is the dopey kind of misguided flick that I live for.

Let's see if I can make this plot make sense - scientist Edward Brake (Wellington Meffert) has developed a behavior modification computer system called APACHE which takes a personal item of the subject, turns it into a silver ball and then shoots that ball into their mouth. Somehow that makes people change and is a scientific breakthrough. What Brake doesn't count on is his assistant Julie (Debbie Laster) conducting experiments on three college girls for a mysterious backer. And what Julie does count on is Brake's daughter Jessica (Debra Hunter) falling in love with Julie's assistant Ken (Dale Midkiff). Or Jessica having a super high-tech computer named "George" (which has an accessory of a talking puppet!?!) that can prevent Jessica from being harmed.

From beginning to end, this is one oddball flick. It has everything 80s (aerobics, walkmen, roller skates, leg warmers, Coke, pinball) and more. Feast your eyes up the scene where a biker makes out with his chick in front of a bar while playing pinball. Or the couple who make out in the back of a limo as the driver changes the tire and some random dude in the woods bops to music on his walkman. Or the chauffeur who disguises his drinking by placing his mini-bottles between two slices of bread. Or a guy being attacked by some silk panties! And that mystery man shown through out the flick? We never find out who he is!

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear this was an 80s Italian flick shot in Florida - weird dubbing, odd delivery, everything so slightly off balance and with hint of not knowing how Americans really act. But the credits betray me and it looks like real Americans made it. The end credits list it as a co-production between England, France and the US. The director is credited on screen as H. Sala and the IMDb says he is one Henry Sala. Either that is a pseudonym or he bowed out after his masterpiece. The producer is listed as one Bachoo Sen (gesundheit!). I have to know more about who made this.

Another amazing aspect of this movie is the cast. Low budget flicks often feature a future star here and there, but this one features three future mainstream stars - Dale Midkiff, Andrea Thompson (NYPD BLUE) and Robert John Burke. WHAT!?! Was this flick some kind of Faustian porthole? Everyone else in the cast and crew were one and done.