Waste of time

Just so...so bad

Absolutely Fantastic

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Normally, cable TV movies are lousy and too predictable. I will be honest, I originally watched this solely because Billy Drago is in my Top Five list of absolute favorite actors. I love him! In this movie, a busload of college students on the way home from a sports event and a debate match is suddenly on a dirt road and leads into a ghost town from the Wild West. They at first believe it is one of these life-size museums that teaches tourists and field trip kids about how people lived then OR one of these haunted-house theme parks. However, they soon realize it is not either of these places and find that there are ghosts of five outlaws (four men and one woman) who had killed the entire population back in the Wild West era. Now they return every thirteen years to kill anyone who gets trapped. The more they kill people, the stronger they become. The students die off, one-by-one, until the last few figure out what to do and are able to break the curse. As the last three leave the town, one of the totems that broke the curse burns away. This may be insinuating a sequel, but this has not happened.I found this a good movie, especially for those who scare easily since this is not a "super-scary" one. It is moderately scary, but it's one that I can watch right before going to sleep with no nightmares. I recorded it on my DVD recorder and watch it at times and always on Halloween. (I have several movies for Halloween watching).I do wish SyFy would put this on DVD. They did with that awful Sharknado movie, but not this much-better than that movie.The actors were mixed; some were good actors and some were awful actors. The special effects were quite good. Despite a few plot holes, it can be enjoyable. It is a good Saturday night "there-is-nothing-on-TV-to-watch" movie. Or it can be a good one to watch on Halloween or on a night you want a little chill in your spine.Even if this were a lousy and bad movie, Billy Drago makes anything watchable.

Others have mentioned the crap acting, the pitiful collapse of the plot and low budget. One thing that I have not seen mentioned is the horribly obvious screw up by the property master. Now these scenes at the first while started out as a fairly decent cheap rent action "oater" showed some horrible lack of either knowledge or concern to period correctness. The female outlaw is toting a Thompson's Contender pistol...the original model. Problem? This gun came out in the late 1960's...about 100 years after the time in the opening scene. The leader whips out of his double holsters (at least they got 2 of the same gun for him), what looks like a matched set of Smith and Wesson model 69 .44magnum revolvers....May be the slightly smaller .357 but I don't think it is. Think "Dirty Harry" same gun except Harry's had about a 3 inch longer barrel. Problem? Once again the gun wasn't in existence until a hundred years after the time of the movie. As a gun hobbyist, these royal screw ups, really chafe my cookies. Pretty much made me lose interest....some alright action scenes but those lousy pistol mistakes kept bugging me every time an outlaw ghost shows up

I happened to catch a portion of this movie on the Sy-Fy channel about a year ago and since it looked pretty good at the time I decided to procure a copy recently. Having now seen this movie in its entirety I can honestly say that it wasn't too bad. Essentially, "Reb Halland" (Billy Drago) is the leader of an outlaw gang back in the days of the old west who has made a deal with the Devil for immortality. "Preacher McCready" (Gil Gerard) is a mystic who comes to the town of Hope Springs to protect it from Reb Halland's gang by erecting 5 Wiccan totems in various places. His plan works to perfection until a man comes along and pulls one out of the ground. When that happens all hell breaks loose as Reb's gang kills everyone in town—on a Friday the 13th no less. They then commit suicide and wait for an opportunity to kill again. Fast forward to the present when a bus carrying students from Carmel College find themselves in this same town—and it just happens to be on a Friday the 13th. Now rather than reveal any more of the film and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that for a made-for-television movie it had decent special effects and enough suspense to keep things somewhat interesting for the most part. Likewise it didn't hurt to have two attractive actresses in Jessica Rose (as "Jenna") and Annabelle Wallis ("Serena"). Again, while it certainly wasn't the best horror movie ever made I found it to be enjoyable enough and I rate it as about average.

Busload of annoyingly stereotypical teens, stranded in a ghost town inhabited by murderous outlaw poltergeists, attempt to survive their stay without "freaking out" while also solving the mystery behind their spooky surroundings. Jittery, witless low-budget thriller, barren of substantial ideas or honest scares. TV-buffs should enjoy seeing Gil Gerard again (playing the preacher), but the movie doesn't have an ounce of originality. The poor bus driver throws up motor oil in the most ludicrously-derived supernatural sequence (actually a quasi-steal from "Poltergeist II"), while the long-in-the-tooth students banter back and forth so vacuously that one is apt to sleep through "Ghost Town" without so much as a shudder. NO STARS from ****