Best movie of this year hands down!

best movie i've ever seen.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Invitation to Hell (1984) * 1/2 (out of 4) A scientist (Robert Urich) moves his wife (Joanna Cassidy) and their two children to a new town where he's going to create a new high-tech spacesuit. Right from the start he realizes that the entire town is expected to be like one another and this includes joining a health club ran by Jessica Jones (Susan Lucci). Soon the scientist begins to realize that something is off and it might all lead back to the club.INVITATION FROM HELL is a pretty boring, bland and predictable made-for-TV movie that even director Wes Craven seems bored by. I say this because there's very little energy or style in his director and it really does seem as if he's stuck in the TV limitations and can never overcome them. It certainly doesn't help that the screenplay is basically a predictable re-working of THE STEPFORD WIVES and in the end there's really very little entertainment to be found.One of the biggest problems is that it's very easy to figure out what's going on yet the lead character just keeps walking around like an idiot and never being able to figure it out. While the viewer waits for him to figure things out, you grow more and more tired with everything you're watching. There are a few twists thrown in but they're all rather predictable. Another thing that doesn't help is the fact that the lead character is just a bore as are the supporting ones. If you don't care for a family then you're really not going to care if they live or die. There's no one to really root for or against in the picture.Urich is a fine actor but he's just too bland here to draw any attention to the character. Cassidy is good in her supporting part and I also thought Lucci was good in her role. Kevin McCarthy also shows up in a brief bit and it was nice seeing him. INVITATION TO HELL really has very little going for it. Craven certainly doesn't bring any energy to the material and seems to have been a project done more money more than love.

As far as horror films go, "Invitation to Hell" is pretty laughable. It seems like the Wes Craven was trying to create something in the likeness of an episode of the "Twilight Zone" but the story is very poorly told to the point of hilarity. The plot is difficult to explain, but it concerns a family that moves to a new town and are enamored with their new neighbors, until it turns out that there's something demonic going on at the local spa. Many plot elements have no payoff or are introduced very badly, leaving the audience scratching their heads. Early in the film we learn that our protagonist is working on a space-suit that can withstand extreme temperature and is meant for space travel. It also has the ability to recognize life-forms and inform the person wearing the suit if it human or not human (using SCIENCE!). When it becomes apparent that something is wrong with the people around him, I figured that this suit must have been created with some nefarious purpose in mind, because why else would it have such specific abilities? Did they anticipate to meet humans on Venus, where the suit is meant to travel to? I would imagine that if they saw ANYTHING moving on that planet, it would be easy to identify it as not being human because you know... humans are from Earth? Logically, the suit must have been made to allow humans to travel to hell! Actually no, it's just a coincidence that we have a suit that can detect non-humans and is able to travel to extreme temperatures. When we have a need to figure out who is a real person and who is an impostor and have to travel to the bowels of hell, just go ahead and borrow that convenient device, it's easy! The poorly written story goes further, with the head villain being given vaguely established powers that are used only when it's most dramatically convenient. The special effects are good for what they are (it's a made for TV movie from 1984) and if you are looking for something to make fun of, you'll have a good time. Otherwise, stay away! (On VHS, April 20, 2012)

In the opening scene, a chauffeur is distracted by two women in bikinis and runs over Susan Lucci's character Jessica. She pops back up and fries him.A family with a young boy and girl move to a new neighborhood. The father has developed a sensor of some kind which his new employer wants for a Venusian spacesuit. The suit can already withstand blasts of flame, as well as shoot lasers and flames. His old fraternity buddy recommended him for the job.The fraternity buddy gets initiated with his family into a local "club," called Steaming Springs, run by Jessica. They, and practically all the other characters want the new family to join too, but the father is very resistant. He grows more resistant the more insistent and strange the others become. People who belong exhibit sometimes strange behavior, like a boy at a sleepover who is found watching violent stuff on TV late at night, and who becomes hostile when it is shut off.Not surprisingly, the spa contains a gate to hell, the door code of which starts off with 666.It's a somewhat entertaining movie with lots of familiar character actors in it. Despite being directed by Wes Craven, there wasn't anything about it that really bore his hand, to my eye.

Ignore negative comments on this film: from the very start when an unsuspecting motorist runs over Lucci and she nukes him, you know who the bad guys are! An interesting investigation of the evil that lurks amid materialist splendor: don't you WANT the biggest, best, most expensive of everything??? You can HAVE it...for a price!! (Note:SCI-FI special-effects highlight the ending...)