It's commonly known that Oliver Stone served in Vietnam and that his most acclaimed masterpieces, most notably "Platoon", are based on his own traumatic experiences and the agonizing real-life horror situations that he witnessed over there. Perhaps his Vietnam luggage turned him into one of the greatest directors of all times, but it also must have caused a bit of permanent brain damage, if you ask me! How else would you explain the madness of "Seizure"; his long-feature debut released not that long after he returned from his tour of duty? This is a truly bonkers horror movie, half brilliant and half unendurable, but fascinating and hypnotizing enough to keep you glued to the screen. Jonathan "Barnabas Collins" Frid stars as Edmund Blackstone, a writer suffering from recurring nightmares featuring the villains of the horror story that he's trying to finish. Nothing but a bad case of writer's block, you'd say, but when Edmund and his wife are hosting a party during the weekend and welcome several guests in their lakeside house, the trio of villains literally pops up at the dining room window! They are: the ravishing but deadly Queen of Evil, the black and heavily mutilated giant referred to as Jackal, and the viciously cruel dwarf named Spider. They start killing off the guests, which isn't a bad thing since they are truly horrible people, but poor Edmund can't seem to figure out if they are real or hallucinatory. Debuting director Stone generates a reasonably tense and mysterious atmosphere, and "Seizure" certainly contains a few strong sequences, but the film is overall too dull and far too talkative. Especially Edmund's "reflective" moments, guided by a voiceover, are immensely long and meaningless, but the Queen of Evil also jibbers too much and even the dwarf would have been far more petrifying if he shut his mouth a little more! As mentioned already, the supportive characters are downright nasty. You often see in horror movies that an alleged group of friends doesn't get along, but these people here are the most arrogant, selfish, treacherous and despicable trolls I've ever seen! There's not a lot of gore, obviously, but nevertheless a few efficient shock-moments and solid performances from Jonathan Frid, Joseph Sirola and the breathtaking Martine Beswick! The eviler she gets, the sexier she becomes! The finale is logical and effectively abrupt, but not exactly original. There's a certain horror milestone from 1962 that ended with a similar twist already.
