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Roy (Larry Lamb), ex-bodyguard for the mob, is hired by his ex-boss
Motherskille (Steven Berkoff) to find Nicole (Nicola Cowper), Roy's
ex-girlfriend, who had been working as a prostitute lately - but it was said
that she was really good at it - & who was kidnapped by a gang of monsters The
Madam of the whorehouse Nicole was working at, Pepperdine (Ingrid Pitt) reacts
remarkably evasive to his questioning, but Roy finds out anyhow that she was
(ab)using some substance, which leads him directly to dubious professor Savory
(Denholm Elliott) ... who by the way seems to be producing monsters in his
secret lab. Nicole meanwhile wakes up amongst her kidnappers, the monsters,
& learns that they mean her no harm, but need her because they are addicted
to the same drug as she is (Savory's stuff), but while she stays remarkably
beautiful (in an 80's sort of way) & can use the drugs secret powers to
fulfill wishes (which makes her such a good whore), the monsters have turned
into ... well monsters, thanks to the drug. Nicole, nice gal that she is,
decides to help them, & soon sees herself as one of them. Meanwhile Roy
has, after much to-&-fro, found out the monsters' hideout, but is captured
& tied up by them (what did he think, that they'd be happy he has come),
while the monsters & Nicole conjure up a plan to steal a wagonload of drugs
from Savory. But Roy was duped: Motherskille wasn't interested into Nicole's
whereabouts at all, he just wanted to find where the monsters hide out to
destory them for good because of ... insert reason here. To cut a long story
short, at the end pretty much everybody ends up dead except for a few of the
monsters & of course Roy & Nicole, whose druginduced supernatural
powers have by now come to full swing. But when Roy offers her to take her with
him, she refuses, because (referring to the monsters' hideout somewhere in the
sewage systems) "This is my home now !" ... well I suppose it could
turn into something cozy with a lick of paint, but then I'm not an interior
designer. Clive Baker's short story which this film was based on did
have some interesting concepts - even if the idea of having monsters as the
mistreated good guys was an old cliché by the mid 80's -, the film however
leaves no room for any subtleties, instead drowning everything in a totally
flat & uninvolving directorial effort that seems to have taken more time in
arranging neon-lights (after all, this was the mid-80's) than creating anything
remotely resembling any atmosphere. Bad actors & incredibly stupid dialogue
do not make this film one bit better. By the way the first adaptation of a
Clive Barker story into a feature film. Director Pavlou would make another
Barker-adaptation, Rawhead Rex, the next year,
and even though that movie is the better film, it's not much better than Underworld.
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find Underworld at adultvideouniverse.com
