I suppose it would have been too plain obvious if they would have titled this film From Dusk Till Dawn IV or a From Dusk Till Dawn remake. But the striking similarities between the 1996 Robert Rodriguez vampire splatterfest and Devil’s Den just can’t be ignored.
On their way back from Mexico, two young travelers stop at a remote strip-club to test whether or not the “Spanish fly” they scored actually works. “Quinn” (Devon Sawa of Idle Hands and Final Destination) buys one of the strippers a beer and spikes it with the legendary aphrodisiac. It seems to work, as she aggressively comes on to him and leads him outside under the pretense of sex. But as things get hot ‘n heavy she suddenly transforms into a flesh eating ghoul and attacks him.
Luckily, he is saved by a beautiful gun-slinging woman named "Caitlin" (Kelly Hu of The Scorpion King and X-Men 2). They return inside only to find that the entire club is infested with ghouls. With the help of a sword-wielding monster hunter named “Leonard” (Ken Foree of Dawn of the Dead and The Devil’s Rejects), they fight for their survival while trying to track down the master ghoul.
Again, the basic premise of the film (ie: being trapped inside a stip-club full of monsters) is virtually identical to From Dusk Till Dawn. However, director Jeff Burr (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings) lacks the style and finesse of Robert Rodriguez to make Devil’s Den a worthwhile watch.
Action sequences that were supposed to look cool came off clumsily, and dialogue that was meant to be funny came off insipidly. Then toward the end of the film, the movie to gets too serious for its own good with a long and drawn out scene where Caitlin reveals her true identity to Quinn.
With hokey dialogue and an uninspired screenplay, Devil’s Den quickly exceeds the boundaries of tongue-in-cheek horror and enters the realm of absurdity. It takes an exceptionally proficient director to effectively pull off a horror/comedy mix, but in the hands of a mediocre director such as Burr, the end result is a cheesy ball of fluff.
What saved this film from being a total loss was fairly good creature makeup effects and the competent acting performances by Sawa, Hu, and Foree. These seasoned actors are dynamic enough to maintain interest, and are able to make the best of bad dialogue.
So if you have some time to kill and you like cheesy horror/comedy movies, then perhaps this film is for you. But there are plenty of other films out there in this sub-genre I’d recommend before I’d recommend Devil’s Den.
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