‘Empire of the Dark’

The convoluted plot of actor/director Steve Barkett’s shoestring-budgeted action epic ‘Empire of the Dark’ involves pan-dimensional Satanists and a Ray Harryhausen-styled stop-motion demon. A private detective searching for a killer comes across a satanic cult from another dimension, monsters called up from hell and murderous ninja assassins. Barkett’s scatter-shot yet entertaining effort brings back a lost world of gung ho micro-budgeted 1990s moviemaking.