"The Outing" is supremely cheap 'n' cheesy, crude 'n' clumsy, no budget horror entertainment. Granted, it's slow to get started and the good stuff is mostly saved for the second half. But once the mayhem begins, it proves to be quite amusing. The actors aren't the most professional one will ever see, but who would choose to watch something like this and expect any different? The important thing is that the movie *does* entertain the viewer, if on a somewhat modest level.

A trio of rednecks attempt to rob an old woman. They try to make off with her genie lamp, but they all get slaughtered. Eventually the lamp makes its way into a museum. The curators' daughter Alex (Andra St. Ivanyi) is possessed, or something, and entices her friends into spending some time after hours in the museums' basement. Soon the djinn, or genie, within the lamp is free to continue the body count.

The action in the second half can boast showmanship. The swooping camera-work isn't bad at all and the special effects and gore are substantially enjoyable, no matter how tacky they may be. Among the highlights are a boy chopped in half, a girl attacked in a bathtub by snakes, an opera singing security guard impaled by a spear, and a scientist shoved through a ceiling fan.

The movie also stars the bland James Huston as curator Dr. Wallace, Deborah Winters (from such pictures as "The People Next Door" and "Blue Sunshine") as his love interest,Eve Farrell (Winters also plays the young and old Arab women),and Danny D. Daniels ("Retribution") as Wallaces' colleague Dr. Bressling. Tom Daley handles the directing duties.

All in all, this is diverting enough to appeal to die hard genre devotees.

Six out of 10.

Watched this film for the first time since the 80's when it was released. I remember watching this one as a kid and the thing I remember the most is the scenes of the jinn floating around the museum chasing the last few survivors of the film. It is not bad, but at the same time it is not all that good either. Better pacing would have helped immensely, especially in terms of the kills within the film. We get three deaths right off the bat and then a period of nothing. n another death and another somewhat long stretch of nothing and then we get like seven or eight deaths in like a ten minute span. I would have preferred the deaths be space out more as it kind of takes awhile for the teens to break into the museum so the horror could begin in full instead of just teasing. Another problem is that this thing has the power to do anything, it is a genie, so I would think that every death is going to be unique and awesome. Well, that almost happens, but not entirely. We get two people torn in half, two people killed by snakes and multiple stabbings too. So, there were some good kills, the plot was interesting, but they needed more variety to the kills and maybe a better setting too.

The story has these three horrible people going to an elderly ladies house so they could find some money. Well, they drag the old lady from the bed, beat her and then put an ax into her head after they only discover a lamp and no money. Well, some sort of force causes the elderly lady to reanimate and take care of one of the intruders and tears one of them in half and takes care of the female intruder too. Well, the lamp ends up at a museum where a girl makes a very flippant wish and then we meet two more horrific people, one of which the girl used to date. I don't find it hard to believe that she dumped him, but I do find it hard to believe she ever dated him in the first place. Well the school has a field trip to the museum where the girl who now sports the same bracelet as the old woman and seems under somethings control, her boyfriend and two other couples decide to sneak back into the museum after hours for a sex party! Well, the lamp is home to a jinn and it begins to kill and make good on the girl's wish as she is to become the lamp's keeper!

If there is anything that movies from this time period have taught me, it is that young adults in the 80's always seemed to want to go to the most complicated place ever to have sex parties. Who knows why, but I've seen them going to malls, mausoleums, old mortuaries and in this film a museum. They just over complicated things back them as they would rather circumvent security systems or some such than simply go to the home of someone whose parents were gone or maybe even to one of those cool parents' houses who would not care if they were getting it on! Just makes me chuckle, and why the heck would there be a regular looking bathtub with curtains that looked as if it belonged in a house in a museum? I could see a shower stall, but not what was in this museum's basement.

So, it had its moments and it had your typically dumb 80's teens doing their usual breaking and entering to get some. What it needed was better pacing. Seriously, they had lots of death, but it was so condensed that one minute everyone is alive and getting it on and the next they are all dead! There were too many horrible people in this one too. The first group being the intruders at the beginning and then the two jerks that should have been in jail after pulling a knife on one of the teens and attempting to assault a teacher. They went over their allotment of super jerks, though I did like the one death with the mask. One final thought about this film, considering that everyone was pretty much dead at the end, I do think the girl should have just become the jinn's keeper. Seriously, her and the teacher are probably going to jail after all is said and done, because who the heck is going to believe a genie killed everyone?

I was attracted to this film through the very pretty VHS box artwork which made it look like something different, something new. But the truth is that THE LAMP plays more like a typical '80s slasher than an actual monster movie. The standard plot can be categorised in two halves: the first has a build-up to the events; the killer is introduced; there are typical high school fights and stuff. The second half is the isolated group of teenagers having sex and getting killed. Just substitute the genie for a masked killer and you've got your Friday the 13th, you've got The Burning, and countless others.

So did I like this film? Yes, I did. It's nothing above average of course, but it has a sense of fun and you have to give the makers credit for creating a mildly entertaining film on such a low budget (even the boom mike shows a couple of times). I liked watching this film because it's so bad. Actress Deborah Winters plays four characters and is the assistant producer, which gives you some idea of the home made feel to this film. There are lots of things to watch for, be it the stupid deaths or high school punks, or perhaps the genie himself, an absurd creation which looks like Yoda on steroids and is obviously being wheeled along on a trolley. If you like cheesy slasher movies then THE LAMP is for you. It's got all the right ingredients from nudity to gore to atrocious dialogue, which come together to make a satisfying, if not particularly tasty, meal. If you're into this genie lark then you might want to check out WISHMASTER, too.