This cheap home-made offering is sub-par in every respect imaginable, and while it's not all that surprising that director Patrick Regan scraped together enough money to get this amateurish effort off the ground, it's downright inexplicable why this film was preserved for posterity on a DVD transfer.
To be fair, the idea itself is pretty nifty. In the right hands, a film about children with eerie psychic powers using their ability to resurrect their murdered father and set him out on a course of revenge could be very cool. The problem with Kiss Daddy Goodbye is that every aspect of this scenario is handled with such utter disdain for entertainment that the film almost dares the viewer to make it through the heavily padded 90-minute running time.
Few children are great actors, but director Regan's two moppets display such indifference to the camera that we're left wondering if they even wanted to be in a movie. No effort is made by either of them to put on any sort of performance, and since they are essentially the focal point of the film, it gets pretty uncomfortable watching them labor their way through this mess. It's neat that a father wanted to put his kids on film to create a time capsule of their childhood, but that's what home movies are for.
I want to be clear that I love awful movies, and I'm certainly not trying to take Kiss Daddy Goodbye more seriously than it calls for. However, in this case, the simplistic plot is stretched so thin that the so-bad-it's-good charm wears off very quickly, and the movie is far too ponderous and boring to provide any sort of comedic amusement. This seems like a wasted opportunity, since the silliest parts reach new heights of inept absurdity. Observe for instance the "savage" murder of the father by the gang of bikers, which plays out in the most clumsily staged action sequence I've ever seen on film. And the sight of Daddy after our undead hero is brought back from the grave offers great comedic fodder, since the symbols the children inexplicably paint on his face after his murder make him look like the drummer of the world's lowest budget KISS cover band.
Elsewhere, nearly every aspect of film-making completely escapes Regan, and the paper-thin budget is on display in every frame. All of the dialogue is muddled by the hissing of cheap microphones, and some of it isn't audible at all. Additionally, alternate angles in key scenes are filmed at different times of the day, which leads to wide shots bathed in high noon sunlight that then cut to murky close-ups obviously shot at dusk.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to be classified as a zombie film, but if so, Regan's addendums to the mythos are the undead's abilities to drive automobiles and to completely bury themselves in sand at the beach to spring up at amorous, unsuspecting bikers. On that note, like the tableau of Daddy being killed at the hands of the bikers, the revenge scene on the beach is so ridiculously staged that any chance of this film being included in the horror genre pretty much dissipates on the spot.
The only point of interest here is the appearance of Marilyn Burns, who spends most of the film embroiled in a meaningless subplot that follows the budding romance between her and the inherently dull Deputy Fabian. Beyond the chance to see a beloved Texas Chainsaw Massacre heroine admirably wallow through an impressively crappy film, the two stars in my rating are reserved for the surprisingly chilling opening and closing titles. As for the tedious and unwatchable drivel in between those titles: Kiss 90 Minutes Goodbye.
To be fair, the idea itself is pretty nifty. In the right hands, a film about children with eerie psychic powers using their ability to resurrect their murdered father and set him out on a course of revenge could be very cool. The problem with Kiss Daddy Goodbye is that every aspect of this scenario is handled with such utter disdain for entertainment that the film almost dares the viewer to make it through the heavily padded 90-minute running time.
Few children are great actors, but director Regan's two moppets display such indifference to the camera that we're left wondering if they even wanted to be in a movie. No effort is made by either of them to put on any sort of performance, and since they are essentially the focal point of the film, it gets pretty uncomfortable watching them labor their way through this mess. It's neat that a father wanted to put his kids on film to create a time capsule of their childhood, but that's what home movies are for.
I want to be clear that I love awful movies, and I'm certainly not trying to take Kiss Daddy Goodbye more seriously than it calls for. However, in this case, the simplistic plot is stretched so thin that the so-bad-it's-good charm wears off very quickly, and the movie is far too ponderous and boring to provide any sort of comedic amusement. This seems like a wasted opportunity, since the silliest parts reach new heights of inept absurdity. Observe for instance the "savage" murder of the father by the gang of bikers, which plays out in the most clumsily staged action sequence I've ever seen on film. And the sight of Daddy after our undead hero is brought back from the grave offers great comedic fodder, since the symbols the children inexplicably paint on his face after his murder make him look like the drummer of the world's lowest budget KISS cover band.
Elsewhere, nearly every aspect of film-making completely escapes Regan, and the paper-thin budget is on display in every frame. All of the dialogue is muddled by the hissing of cheap microphones, and some of it isn't audible at all. Additionally, alternate angles in key scenes are filmed at different times of the day, which leads to wide shots bathed in high noon sunlight that then cut to murky close-ups obviously shot at dusk.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to be classified as a zombie film, but if so, Regan's addendums to the mythos are the undead's abilities to drive automobiles and to completely bury themselves in sand at the beach to spring up at amorous, unsuspecting bikers. On that note, like the tableau of Daddy being killed at the hands of the bikers, the revenge scene on the beach is so ridiculously staged that any chance of this film being included in the horror genre pretty much dissipates on the spot.
The only point of interest here is the appearance of Marilyn Burns, who spends most of the film embroiled in a meaningless subplot that follows the budding romance between her and the inherently dull Deputy Fabian. Beyond the chance to see a beloved Texas Chainsaw Massacre heroine admirably wallow through an impressively crappy film, the two stars in my rating are reserved for the surprisingly chilling opening and closing titles. As for the tedious and unwatchable drivel in between those titles: Kiss 90 Minutes Goodbye.