FieCrier Some years ago, some aboriginal Australians were raped and killed by some white rangers. The aboriginals then buried them in sacred ground, and then they too were all killed in a fight. Developer Sorenson built a housing community on the sacred ground over the objections and warnings of protesters. He also walled up a cave that had the skeleton of a kadaicha man in it. Supposedly it's under a supermarket, but it seemed to be behind under a road with no buildings around.Teenagers living in the development one by one have a dream of the cave and the kadaicha man handing them a kadaicha stone, a rough clear crystal with some designs painted on it. They wake up with it next to them in bed. Later, they get killed by various wild creatures. As they turn to the "full blood" Billinudgel for help, they get a spirit stone, and he tries a ceremony, while the evil possesses one of them and starts doing poltergeist activity.Not a bad movie, but nothing great. Having aboriginal Australians' burial grounds rather than native Americans is a slight twist, but it doesn't make much difference apart from the digeridoo on the soundtrack.

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) STONES OF DEATH as the old rental tape of this film is titled is a pretty competent if somewhat lackluster Australian made teen horror film that plumbs it's material from two American made hits of 80s horror fare: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and POLTERGEIST. Throw in a diggeredoo soundtrack and intrigue about native Aboriginal customs and there you have it. The plot centers on a group of high school friends (all appearing to be about 22 - 25 years old, actually) who start having disturbing nightmares involving creepy native Aborigines who apparently live in the sewers beneath their trendy sea-side modern day housing community. One by one the kids have identical visions and awake to find a native Kadaicha -- some sort of Aboriginal death stone crystal -- on their pillows, then are invariably killed in somewhat unique methods that all seem to involve demonic or possessed animals.The standout sequence is when one of the guys from the pack of friends does some late night studying in the library and gets too close of a look at a bizarre spider that gloms onto one of his eyes like the face hugger from ALIEN. One of the girls has a somewhat gruesome encounter with a lawnmower after being chased by a dog, and another is pulled to her doom by a giant snake (unseen for the most part, which is too bad: I love snake horror) when the surviving pack of friends decide it would be a really good idea to go for a swim even though they are being killed off one by one. Teen agers will be stupid the world over, I guess, and a somewhat awkward subplot about the guys being guitarists in the school rock band seems more like an effort to spice the film up with some rock & roll rather than genuine character attributes.The kids are behavioral studies rather than actual people, and for the most part played by attractive young Aussie actors who's parents are even more attractive (one of the dads has a really hot date with a total babe in a dress that she looked poured into: how'd he meet her??) and not much older. By contrast the local native Aboriginal descendants come across as unique, insightful and spiritual people, suggesting to me that this film actually has a social agenda about blaming the woes of the world on wealthy Caucasians who screw up everything nature has to offer by building unwanted housing developments in unfortunate places. Borrowing from POLTERGEIST, the housing community has been built on the site of native Aboriginal burial grounds, and the spirits of the dead aren't too happy about it.Conveniently though one of the local natives is the descendant of a shaman or religious specialist in Aboriginal culture and he agrees to help the kids out of their jam by staging a ritual down in the sewers to purge the malevolence from the skeletons of the dead. He gets dressed up with the stereotypical face makeup with a rattle & shakes his bag of bones at the skeletons while lighting effects and diggeredoo music drones on ominously. This would be the Aussie equivalent of having a horror movie Injun Medicine Chief agree to help the White Man suppress an angry Wendigo, suggesting to me a sort of attitude of duality towards the natives by the filmmakers that stops just short of being racist in nature. It's more sort of slack-jawed and stupid than offensively demeaning, however, regarding the old shaman with a kind of awe that in the later 1980s age of Peter Gabriel type fascination with 3rd world cultures was very fashionable at the time.The film was written by Ian Coughlin, an Australian who had previously made the interesting if also somewhat understated ALLISON'S BIRTHDAY, a ROSEMARY'S BABY ripoff that likewise demonstrates Coughlin's admiration for Americanized horror conventions. With a bit more zest in the form of some nudity or more explicit gore this effort might have proved to be more commercial than his previous horror film, but sadly the movie is perhaps too low keyed for it's own good -- Aside from a couple of interesting shocks and a lame attempt at "An American Werewolf In London" style dead friends humor towards the end there isn't anything too remarkable, though the film is very well made and not as boring as some might let on.Recommended for fans of 1980s teen horror, and even though it's somewhat derivative it's Australian roots defy the traditional predictable formulas of the idiom's usual fare. It's also incredibly obscure in North America, prior rental tapes are your best bet for finding a copy though you may have to look high & low before finding one.5/10

Tikkin Plot: Residents living on land built on an ancient burial ground die after finding strange stones. Kadaicha started off looking very promising but as time went on, didn't seem to go anywhere at all. It started to meander too much and take too long to reach the conclusion. The acting was very good for this type of movie (compared to most low budget horror flicks), but the deaths weren't very gory and the ending was rather dull.Overall I feel this film could have been much more interesting as the storyline itself was quite good. Sadly it's just too boring - I wouldn't recommend seeking this out unless you're a collector.4/10

brandonsites1981 Residents of a small housing development are being butchered off after finding strange rocks on themselves. Seems that the houses were built upon an old graveyard. Low budgeted flick has an interesting enough premise, but falls very short of its goals mainly due to an extremely low budget, shoddy camera work and a weak, below par cast. Rated R; Violence.