n a dark and stormy night in Garden City, California, with an ominous full moon, a continuous horror movie marathon plays at the small El Diablo theater. In the projection room, a gang of rebellious youths gambles on a game of poker, which sees Leonard “Spike” Johnson (Pat O’Bryan) lose his motorcycle’s pink slip to Marcus’ (J.J. Cohen) aces-over-kings full house. Meanwhile, nerdy, wimpy high schooler Hoax Arthur Wilmoth (Stephen Geoffreys), Spike’s cousin, tries to look at some brief nudity in a National Geographic magazine, much to the chagrin of his perpetually disapproving, overly religious Aunt Lucy (Sandy Dennis). And since they live next door to one another, Spike sneaks over to Lucy’s house on occasion to steal some cash. “There’s still time to repent!”

When the wayward Spike sees a flyer in a magazine for a “horrorscope,” he dials 976-EVIL, which curiously leads to a light raining … of fish. The next morning, private investigator Marty Palmer (Jim Metzler), posing as a writer from Modern Miracle Magazine, stops by to interview Lucy over the otherworldly incident. As it so happens, it’s merely the first of numerous occult occurrences – many of which lead to gruesome fatalities.

Though it requires dialing a number for a random fright (perhaps like summoning Candyman), with unexpected consequences (perhaps like the the djinn from “Wishmaster” skewing his requests into bizarre horrors), the premise isn’t too dissimilar from standard slashers of the ’80s, in which terrorization of horny adolescents comes from supernatural sources. Unfortunately, though the sets are adequate (yet limited) and the acting is acceptable, there’s a slowness to the setup that greatly stalls the eventual scares. Even the arrival of satanic activities as prompted by the horrorscope poet dictating fates to his callers doesn’t come with any expeditiousness.

“This is Satan’s work!” With direction by Robert Englund (of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” fame), there’s a certain anticipated potential with this type of project. But the deaths and the chills are too few and too spread out; so much of this picture is filler, crawling along until the first genuinely violent moment, which arrives nearly an hour in. And even then, it isn’t immediately backed up with much else.

At least the subject matter is approached with a discernible sincerity; the mood remains somber, with virtually no comic relief. But most of the characters are blandly designed and thoroughly unsympathetic, making it difficult to care if anyone survives the slaughters or finds a solution to the devilish possessions and werewolf-ish transformations (semi-protagonist Spike is absent for a considerable stretch of time, most likely concerning himself with missing girlfriend Suzanne Walker [Lezlie Deane], despite there being minimal investigations into her wellbeing). Eventually, gnarly special effects and makeup do appear, showing off some nasty visual shocks (and some wilder sequences of nightmarish thrills, like in “Poltergeist” or “Hellraiser”), but even during these gory moments, the pervasive slowness is evident. It’s all something of a revenge fantasy in the vein of “Carrie,” as if adolescence is a literally hellish experience, with brutally manifested episodes of lashing out, but the timidity with which the horror is embraced prevents it from being genuinely scary. By the end, it’s a tremendously forgettable cinematic journey into an uninspired underworld.

– Mike Massie