When in doubt, cast Donald Pleasance. It is what most filmmakers should have lived by when crafting horror movies in the nineteen eighties for more often than not, he would end up being the best thing about them. Suffice it to say, Specters, or Spectre, was not all that great when released in 1987.

Directed and written in part by Marcello Avallone, the man starts things out slowly until he decides to do that for the bulk of the film, or at least until the final act. One has to give him a little credit though, he did make things quite atmospheric at times with the discovery of an underground series of tunnels and such while the characters in the picture looked for the tomb of a creature named Domitian. As events proceed, the audience will notice in short order that the film could have not only used a better script, but it would have been good to have it make sense as well. Things are all over the place and to make matters worse, whenever something ‘evil’ is about to happen, the wind picks up and there is a fair amount of smoke and viewers are left wondering when things are going to get better. One can immediately guess that Avallone must have had a bit of a thin budget as almost anything of note would take place off-screen and it definitely hurt more than it helped.

The best thing about it all was Pleasance and he was not in it for all that long. The rest of the cast including John R. Pepper, Trine Michelsen, Riccardo De Torrebruna and Massimo De Rossi are forgettable, to say the least, and even with a little bit of nudity, it all failed to illicit any sort of interest. For those that managed to stay until the end of the picture, there was a monster that would finally make an appearance and it would end up doing just a wee bit of killing, but it was hardly enough to stop one from falling asleep after waiting so long for something to happen. The creature effects were okay and it was not the worst monster to ever appear in a movie but it would have been nice to see the creature a bit sooner, to see what was behind all that wind that would assault the cast and learn what the hullabaloo was all about.

Even with the negatives, there were some positives to be found such as the previously mentioned atmosphere that would be featured throughout. It definitely set the mood and the sets were also a step in the right direction in setting the stage for things to come. While it all might not have been that scary, it at least let the audience know that something was coming, that something would be happening and it would not be all that good. That aside, the payoff should have been stronger than it was and Avallone should have noticed that. With a bit of suspense and a little spookiness to be found, Specters was not a complete waste of time but it is not a movie that anybody would ever want to watch twice.

2 out of 5