An American rock and roll star named Nick Cooper (Jack Jones) hasn't released a record in six years and as such, it's time for him to make his comeback. In order to do this, he heads off to England where he holes himself up in a creepy old house where he'll have the peace and quiet he needs to create his latest and greatest musical masterpiece. What Nick doesn't know is that shortly after he left his American abode, his ex-girlfriend (Holly Palance – yep, Jack's daughter!) was chopped up into bloody little pieces by a maniacal killer dressed up like an old woman.

Once Nick arrives in England he's met by the sexy Linda (Pamela Stephenson), the secretary of his manager, Webster Jones (David Doyle who is instantly recognizable from Charlie's Angels). The two hit it off in more ways than one and despite some glares and passive aggressive comments from Jones, they start to fall for each other. Once he starts really getting into his work at the house, things start to get weird for Nick. The hired help, an elderly couple who go by Mr. And Mrs. B (Bill Owen and Sheila Keith respectively) seem innocent enough on the surface but they just might be up to something sinister if the voices that Nick starts hearing are anything to go by. The more time he spends there the stranger it gets when he starts seeing his ex-girlfriend's corpse wandering around the building and when most of the people Nick meets wind up dead, you just know there's something seriously wrong here…

From the opening scene in which Holly Palance gets chopped up through to the shock ending, The Comeback is a fast paced movie that, despite the goofy premise and at times rather obvious red herrings, proves to be quite a bit of fun. It isn't an intense psychological thriller or a thinking man's horror film, it's a slasher with some possible supernatural overtones that plays around with a few themes of mental instability and terror. Throughout the movie it becomes obvious that someone or something is trying to drive Nick insane, it doesn't take us long to figure that out, the fun comes in trying to guess who it is and what their motive could be. After all, everyone loves a rock star, right? With Palance's corpse wandering around though, is it all in his head or is someone really pulling some strings behind the scenes, making life difficult for him?

The film benefits from a few excellent murder set pieces and some grisly gore effects that take things a little further than you might expect them to. The case is also pretty interesting, it's a lot of fun to see David Doyle pop up in this one as he's so often associated with the character of John Bosely from Charlie's Angels. Jack Jones is fine in the lead, and it's interesting to note that he was the son of Allen Jones and that he also showed up as the lounge singer guy in Airplane II: The Sequel. The highlight of the film in terms of the casting however is seeing Pamela Stephenson in various states of undress. She's not only a gorgeous woman but she's also quite good in the movie, using her doe eyed innocence and natural good looks to charm the pants off of Nick pretty early on in the film. She has an interesting chemistry with him on screen, it's a shame that they didn't work together more and that she didn't get more film work (most of her appearances after this film was made were on various television shows, most notably a stint on Saturday Night Live though she did show up in Superman III and Mel Brooks' History Of The World Part One).

Video:

While the back of the packaging states that the movie is presented in 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen, the picture is in fact presented in an open matte fullframe presentation that has, sadly, seen better days. The colors are flat, the image is murky, and there's some mild print damage present in a few scenes. It's watchable and the compositions don't seem to be too affected by the aspect ratio chosen for this release, but there is definitely room for improvement here in terms of quality and clarity. Some of the darker scenes look fairly muddy, and skin tones in a few spots look rather sickly.