The Nightmare Never Ends (1980)

This is another of those irredeemably bad films that I just keep running into on streaming channels: The Nightmare Never Ends (1980).  The title is apt as the film seems to drag on interminably and the first time I watched it I ended up pleading with it to end.  I'm wiser now - if I run into it, I immediately switch channels.  It actually exists in a number of different edits under various titles, including Cataclysm and Satan's Supper.  There's even a version cut down to under thirty minutes which forms part of the anthology  film Night Train to Terror (1985) - this variant also includes 'improved' special effects.  But what is so terrible about The Nightmare Never Ends?  Well, for a start, it is barely coherent.  The plot, (if one can all it that - it feels more like a loosely connected series of events), concerns a wealthy playboy type who is apparently immortal, having been pictured at various evil events in the past.  He is recognised by an ancient Holocaust survivor as the Nazi officer who murdered his parents, although he seems not to have aged a day since the event.  He also appears - again, as a brutal Nazi - in the dreams of a heart surgeon whose husband has coincidentally written a book 'proving' that God is dead.  Who is this mystery man?  Has he sold his soul to the devil?  Is he the devil himself, (he seems to have a cloven hoof for a foot in one scene)?  We never really know as the film answers none of our questions, instead piling sub-plot upon sub-plot and never properly resolving any of them, instead killing off the various protagonists as it seems their sub-plot might be in danger of explaining something.

The old Jewish dude looks like he's going to be a significant character but, as it turns out, his only function is to introduce his buddy a police detective, (played by a bored-looking Cameron Mitchell, who puts the absolute minimum effort into his performance), who starts investigating after the old guy is mysteriously killed.  Then there's the surgeon and her dreams - she actually lasts the course until the end of the film, which is more than her husband does.as he falls victim to the Nazi/devil/playboy, although his wife barely seems to notice.  Oh, not to forget her nephew and his girlfriend, who also get involved.  Then, just when you think there can't be any more major characters to be introduced, up pops homeless priest Pupini who, it seems, has been hunting for the Nazi/devil/playboy.  Unfortunately, he is incredibly ineffective, before being abruptly killed off by the Nazi/devil/playboy's hitherto unknown (and never seen after) henchwoman, (who dresses as a nun, but is apparently a demon of some kind).  But hey, he'd served his purpose of padding out the running time a bit more.  Indeed, much of the film feels like padding to try and get it to feature length, with its proliferating characters and sub-plots.  Every time it flags, something else is thrown in: a disco scene, a hypnotist and a voodoo priest, to name but a few.  Unfortunately, while this all sounds like it should be fun, it isn't, as the whole thing is so badly put together.

The presence of three credited directors, (none of whom, one comes to suspect, had ever seen a movie, let alone made one, before), fuels the suspicion that this actually started out as a short, or was an incomplete project, for which additional footage was filmed until it was brought up to feature length.  The script is credited to Philip Yordan, once hailed as a talented script writer until it emerged that several of the most celebrated scripts for which he was credited had actually been written by black-listed writers for whom he had acted as a front.  Most of the scripts which can be fully accredited to Yordan are far less impressive and in the latter part of his career seemed mainly to be for low budget, low rent productions like The Nightmare Never Ends.  Despite the three directors, it has to be said that the film does have a consistent look and feel: it is truly horrible looking, with poor production values, murky photography and bad lighting.  The cast are as terrible as the script, reading their lines in a monotone, (except when they are shouting them).  Even low budget veterans like Cameron Mitchell and Marc Lawrence (who inexplicably plays two roles - the old man and Mitchell's police sidekick), can't make any headway with the material they are given.  The film almost redeems itself with a lunatic climax in an operating theatre, but by that time most viewers would have long lost patience with the whole thing.