Natas: The Reflection (1983)

At times you have to wonder if some ancient Indian shaman didn’t lay a curse on …um…white man, decreeing that…um...white man never be able to make...um...interesting horror movie about...um...Indian folklore. It is a particular area of horror cinema that really seems to have brought out the dullest in filmmakers…as anyone who has seen Wendigo, Ghost Keeper, Satan’s Blade and Frostbiter will attest. There are certain creatures in horror films that have become synonymous with naff movies…Bigfoot and Nazi zombies for instance…but once in a blue moon a half decent Bigfoot or Nazi zombie movie will come along and save those entire sub-genres from being a complete dumpster fire…on the other hand I’m really struggling to think of any decent movies about the Wendigo, who itself appears cursed to never be the subject of a worthwhile horror movie.

Existing within the same ballpark as films about Indian curses and legends is Natas: The Reflection, which is one of those titles that has lingered in the back of my mind since childhood. I remember Natas mainly because of its VHS cover which had a Satanic figure transposed over a photo of a burning tree, and the fact that this was one of the earliest video tapes that my stepfather owned. This being the mid-1980s, when actually owning a VHS tape and not having to take it back to the rental store the next day was still a novelty. He’d picked Natas up from Pendlebury Market –now long gone, bulldozed, and made into an Asda- which every Wednesday had a flea market day where you could buy all these second hand goods, including old VHS tapes, on the cheap. Some of the other VHS tapes he got hold of there were Daughters of Darkness, the Belgium vampire film, which I have to admit I didn’t really appreciate at the time, and Titan Find, an alien rip-off starring Klaus Kinski during his ‘rent-a-sleazy euro villain’ period in 80s American movies.



Pendlebury Market

Natas: the Reflection was one of those obscure, American, regional horror films that it is likely no one would have ever heard of, had VHS not come along. It was a one-shot directing gig by an actor called Jack Dunlap, who never made another film, and co-produced this one with his wife. In true regional horror film tradition, Natas: The Reflection takes you down the kind of dusty back roads of America that you suspect were otherwise left untroubled by filmmakers. The film’s main selling point, cast wise, is that it stars a very old Indian, who in true carny tradition is actually billed as ‘109 year old Nino Cochise’ in the opening credits.

Natas: the Reflection concerns journalist Steve Granger, who has become obsessed with the Indian legend of Natas, a creature who according to the UK video release is “sentry to the gates of Hell, who stands guard over thousands of souls that can only be saved from an eternity of horror by the man who solves the riddle of ‘Natas the reflection’”. Steve’s obsession comes at the detriment of his professional and personal life; he gets fired from his job at a newspaper because of his indifference to anything other than Natas, and splits up with his girlfriend because she can’t cope with hearing about Natas all day either. So, Steve hits the road in his fantastically cool car, determined to prove that the world is wrong, and he is right, when it comes to the existence of Natas. You can’t help feeling that this film was born out of the same dogged determination and cavalier attitude as its protagonist, and that while everyone around him was telling Jack Dunlap that no one would be interested in a film based on the legend of Natas: The Reflection, he was gonna prove them all wrong, with possibly not the same amount of success that his onscreen protagonist has.

Natas: The Reflection doesn’t initially show a great deal of promise, with much of the screen time being dominated by Steve quizzing the locals about the legend of Natas: The Reflection and wandering around the great outdoors. It all feels as if Natas is going to pan out into one of those ‘Boggy Creek’ imitations, where the film is 95% travelogue of the American wilderness and only in the closing moments does anything of any remote interest happen. The pace is definitely laid back to begin with, as Steve leisurely treks around the Arizona desert, taking in the sights, the wildlife and the inevitable encounter with the 109 year old Nino Cochise. As you might imagine, Cochise plays an ancient Indian shaman, who gifts Steve an necklace that the film immediately wants you to forget about, but you just know will reappear at a vital point later on…it has deus et machina written all over it. By rights, Nino Cochise should have briefly put Natas: the Reflection into the record books. I believe the oldest person to ever appear on the big screen was a 115 year old in a movie from 1990, but Natas might have been entitled to hold that crown for a couple of years beforehand…had Nino Cochise actually been 109 at the time. There appears to be some controversy over Nino Cochise’s actual age and identity, he claimed to be the grandson of Apache chief Cochise and to have been born in 1874. However Cochise’s son Taza, isn’t meant to have married or had any children, and according to some sources Nino Cochise was actually a fraud called Robert Lee Majors, who was only 75 when he died in 1984. If the makers of Natas were taken in by Cochise though, they can at least take solace in the knowledge that they weren’t the only ones.

After a few false starts, Natas: the Reflection suddenly grabs your attention once Steve finds himself in an old Western town populated by zombie cowboys and zombie saloon bar girls, all of whom speak with distorted helium/chipmunk voices…that tends to render much of their dialogue inaudible. Natas: The Reflection might be one of the few post-1968 zombie movies that doesn’t appear to be heavily indebted to Night of the Living Dead. These zombies can run, talk, drink in bars, flirt with strangers in the case of the girl zombies, and just generally go about their daily business. Natas is to all intents and purposes a traditional Western for a couple of scenes, in which all the secondary characters just happen to be zombies. One of the greatest attributes of Natas: The Reflection is its location; absolutely nothing about this old Western town says a film set to you. It looks authentically dirty, abandoned, a hundred miles from anywhere and a place that the world forgot about and left to rot. I’d be curious about what came first, the idea for the film, or this location…in other words did they stumble upon this location and decide to write a film around it, or did someone write a script set in a ghost town and was fortunate enough to find the perfect location. If it was the latter, they really lucked out, because the location does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to atmosphere in this film. At its best, I think Natas warrants comparison with Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973), occasionally capturing the dreamlike, fairytale quality that Lemora had in droves. I don’t think Natas is quite the equal to Lemora, which is after all one of the great American horror films of the 1970s, but it taps into the same eccentric momentum, even if it can’t quite sustain it.



Natas: The Reflection may also be a master class when it comes to people doing stupid things in horror movies. No soon as Steve escapes a town full of bloodthirsty, murderous zombies, he goes about recruiting his friends for a revisit to a town full of bloodthirsty, murderous zombies…which they are all fine about and agree to. Then, when one of them is attacked by a zombie in a barn, they all immediately return to the barn to make sure the zombie is still not there! Given dumb decisions like that, you’ll be unsurprised to discover that it isn’t long before the zombie cowboys begin to drastically reduce the number of Steve’s friends. Although gore is certainly a long time coming, there is a nifty decapitation and a bloody stabbing scene for those willing to stick around. There is also a nude scene late on into the film that is hilarious in its gratuitousness, you can just tell that one of the film’s backers must have put their foot down and insisted that the film needed nudity, especially after an earlier, lovemaking scene had gone out of its way not to show any nudity.

In another example of how the characters in this film are none too bright, it isn’t until the very end of the movie that they work out the riddle of Natas the Reflection…which is that Natas, held up to the reflection of a mirror, spells Satan. A revelation that doesn’t even occur to them till after they’ve had a run in with Natas himself, who turns out to be this Satan like figure that lives in a cave. In keeping with the zombie cowboys from earlier on in the film, it is a little difficult to make out what Natas/Satan actually has to say for himself. Poor dictation is a reoccurring character trait for bad guys in this film, Natas/Satan being of the Brando school of heavily mumbled dialogue.



Given that Nino Cochise died in 1984 at the claimed age of 110, and is credited with being 109 in this film, Natas: The Reflection would therefore have had to have been made in 1983, although to be honest looks a few years older. Female cast members are still worshipping that Farrah Fawcett/Charlie’s Angels hairdo, the music and cars in the film are very late 1970s, and you’re left with the impression that either Natas: The Reflection stayed on the shelf for a few years or that 1970s culture just hung around a little longer in dear old Arizona. The title card of the film does have an out of place, early 80s video game appearance to it, and noticeably uses a different font to the rest of the opening credits, making you question whether Natas: The Reflection really was the film’s original title. Difficult as it to believe that this film may once have had an even worse title that Natas: The Reflection. A title that is way too dull and cryptic for a horror film, you suspect it would have done some business down at the drive-ins and grindhouses had they instead gone with a title like ‘Ghost Town of the Living Dead’ or ‘Saloon Bar Zombies’.



I have a feeling that its October 1984 British video release was the first time Natas: The Reflection had been seen anywhere. It doesn’t appear to have shown up in America till two years later, when it was put out in a VHS version hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. While I’ve never been big on riffed versions of films, I can understand why the powers that be decided Natas: The Reflection needed some extra, Elvira sized oomph to get people through it…like the AZ desert itself Natas does have a couple of dry spots.

For a film that left little impression on me all those years ago in the VHS era though, I was pleasantly surprised revisiting Natas: The Reflection. It is certainly a bit more lively and imaginative than I remembered. While you can understand why, in its day, this film was ignored and passed over in favour of the more visceral hi-jinks of Friday the 13th, Maniac or The Evil Dead, it is one of those creepy, slow burn, regional horror oddities that is well worth ..um.. backwards glance in ..um.. 21st century, Kemosabe.