Natas The Reflection

Since I was young, I've always enjoyed horror films. As a kid in the 80's I loved going to the old Mom & Pop video stores and just staring at the VHS covers in the horror section. My older brothers & sister would rent them and we'd spent weeknights watching all sorts of cheesy, rare and obscure titles. As an adult I've amassed a nice collection of old flicks on DVD. About a year ago I noticed that some of these flicks were being uploaded to YouTube. I've spent a few weekend nights watching some rare and obscure flicks I'd never heard of. The last one I watched was Natas The Reflection from 1983. It was right up my alley, featuring a silly story, bad acting and script, cool monsters and a decent amount of blood and good, funny kills.

The story is about a reporter who searches for the truth behind an old Indian legend about a spirit that guards the entranceway to heaven and hell. His co-workers and girlfriend think he's wasting his time, until he happens upon an elderly Indian man who points him in the direction of this place, located somewhere in the desert. He sets out on a solo hike to find it.

He stumbles onto an old ghost town full of talking ghosts and zombies. They capture him but he escapes and finds an odd mirror. When he gets back to town and tells his girl his wild tale and shows her the mirror, she suddenly believes him (despite her earlier insistence that the legend of Natas was all hogwash). So she and three of their friends load up their truck and head back out to that mysterious town, determined to prove once and for all that this place exists.

What follows is a series of predictable horror tropes. The friends (including one dude who looks like a 70's porn star with his mustache, cowboy hat and parading around shirtless) all eventually stumble upon some ghoul, zombie or booby trap that attack and slaughter them until only the main character and his girlfriend are left. The zombies look cheap but cool, the deaths are all fun and bloody (throat slash, decapition), and the actors all emote the expected delivery of stupidity and histrionics to make it laughable.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that Natas is Satan spelled backwards, and the reporter must duke it out with him in order to prevail and save the day. The devil reminded me of the creatures from the 1972 film Gargoyles, and the "big" climactic battle was so cheesy and bad, with cheap special effects. In other words, quite enjoyable if you're a lover of bad cinema. It kept me entertained, and I had several laughs throughout its runtime, so I enjoyed it. Check it out if you like bad b-movies.

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