The Summer Of The Massacre (2006)

JULY 23, 2012

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

There’s a movie called The Summer Of Massacre that supposedly has the world record for on-screen kills in a horror movie, and that’s what I thought I was renting. Instead, I got The Summer Of The Massacre, which adds a “The” but takes away about 150 deaths and, I can only hope, production value. Adding insult to injury, I actually OWN this damn movie already, as its included in the Decrepit Crypt set, which I “retired” due to the fact that the movies were all awful.

Unsurprisingly, Massacre is no exception. It’s laughably cheap, poorly directed/edited/acted/written, and is so blatant with its copying of Texas Chainsaw Massacre that it even copies some of its opening narration word for word from the mouth of John Larroquette. In fact I taped that part off the screen for your enjoyment (it goes very fast, might want to freeze frame so you can enjoy all of the typos and grammatical errors):

And that was as good as it got. Thus, same as it was for most of the other Decrepit Crypt movies I’ve watched, I spent most of the runtime wondering if I should just quit HMAD on the spot rather than finish it, because watching it served no purpose. I’ve already said everything I possibly can about this sort of crap, and now I even have people ragging on me for watching movies like this when I have so many titles on the recommendation thread I may never get to. So it’s not even worth watching for YOUR amusement!

For what it’s worth, the PRECISE reason this movie is a failure is the fact that it’s not really a movie, but a series of identical sequences strung together. Once our group of obnoxious young heroes go through the motions (traveling somewhere remote, getting lost, breaking down), there is no discernible difference to the rest of the movie – one of them goes off, encounters the killer (Hammer Head), runs around screaming as he grunts in pursuit, followed by a clumsily staged fight where every blow is off-screen, more running/screaming/grunting, followed – at long last – by their death. Then it starts over again. These scenes feature no dialogue beyond things like “NO!” and “Oh god!” or whatever, and the lack of any sort of actual prosthetic/makeup appliance means there’s never a good kill to at least make up for the tedium that preceded it. Hell after a while I began to wish that the director had opted for some cheap/bad CGI just to spice things up a little.

Also, the killer is the lamest in memory. He’s got a cheap mask on and wears a tie/shirt for some reason, and his weapon is a tiny little mallet that would fit in the top tray of your toolbox. His entire function in the movie is to run around grunting as he chased after his victims, all of whom manage to get away from him at least once (because if he did them in quickly, the movie would be even shorter than its 76 minute runtime), but that’s not even the main problem. If you notice, the Chainsaw films always have Leatherface as part of a family – that’s because by himself he’s boring, another generic mute killer. Apparently director Bryn Hammond didn’t pick up on that, so one of the few things he DOESN’T copy directly from Tobe Hooper (or Jeff Burr, or even Kim Henkel) ironically makes his movie even worse. Here he is getting stabbed by corn:

And here’s the kicker – this movie can be bought on its own for 15 dollars on Amazon. As shitty as it is, at least if it was confined solely to the Decrepit Crypt set I could shrug it off; the consumer is paying about 20 cents a movie, and thus the filmmakers are probably being compensated with pennies, identical to the ones they used to make their movies in the first place (as with others, this had no discernible budget – non-actors, consumer grade camera, sound seemingly recorded with the camera mic instead of separately, no sets, etc), and they should be happy that their movie got that much of a release. But as a consumer, I can’t condone the idea of slapping a professional cover on this nonsense and charging full price like it was a real movie – I can get a Blu-ray of The Dark Knight cheaper, in fact! You can and should watch better movies for free on Youtube.

In short, sorry for wasting your time by reviewing yet another terrible movie no one in their right mind would ever want to watch anyway.

What say you?

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The Shunned House (2003)

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

As I am sick of writing “I haven’t read the source material” when it comes to reviewing Lovecraft adaptations, I went and read both “Dreams In The Witch-House” and “The Music Of Erich Zann” after I watched The Shunned House (Italian: La Casa Sfuggita), in order to better acquaint myself not only with the stories on which the film was based (along with the title story, which I could not find to read for free online so oh well), but with Lovecraft as well, whom I hadn’t given a look at since my early days in college (over a decade ago now!).

My opinion hasn’t changed much (at least, based on these two tales - if time allots (HA!) I will try to check out a few more and get a better idea of the whole scope), unfortunately. I find his prose slightly over-wordy, with far too many made up words to wrap my head around, and characters I never quite get a good handle on. The one-line summary for any of his stories is usually interesting to me (for example - “Witch-House” is about a guy who moves into a strange house and becomes increasingly drawn into its dark power, and is also apparently menaced by rats. Cool.), but the execution just doesn’t grab me the way Poe or King does. Sorry, HPL fans. I am trying though!

Anyway, The Shunned House is an odd fit for the Decrepit Crypt set. It’s still shot on low grade consumer video, but it’s A. largely competent on a technical level and B. pretty good to boot. There are a lot of problems, but you gotta grade these things on a curve, and there is definitely more genuine ambition and dedication to making a good film in any 5 minutes of this film than you can find on any other film on this set (with the exception of the legit 70s film Scream Bloody Murder (aka Matthew), which got tossed on the set (on this same disc in fact!) for reasons I’ll never understand).

The biggest problem with House isn’t the source material, surprisingly enough, but rather the production’s odd decision to shoot the film with Italian actors speaking English, despite the fact that they clearly don’t know how. Folks talking about being “poonished” (punished) or declaring “I ate rats!” (I think she meant “hate”) is, of course, worth a chuckle, but the script is dead serious, and thus the broken voices constantly distract away from the narrative. Although, there is nothing more awesome than hearing a woman shout in a thick Italian accent "Shut up; I'm telling you my fucking dream, shut up!"

Also distracting is director Ivan Zuccon's habit of switching from one story to another with little to no seamless bridge between them. See, the movie takes one HPL story (“Shunned House”) and makes it the sort of wrap-around for two other stories (“Witch-House” and “Eric Zann”), intercutting back and forth throughout the film. Sometimes it makes sense - the guy in the wraparound will start reading a diary of the hero from “Witch-House”, and it will fade to the guy writing that entry. But other times it just cuts from “Witch” to “Zann”, and the fact that all three stories take place in the same house and that all of the not very well lit actors sound alike due to using their forced English makes these transitions jarring and confusing.

But with a better director (or even editor) and actors speaking their native tongue, this would actually be a pretty damn good movie. The stories are interesting, and even though (as I have discovered) they aren’t entirely faithful to the source material, Zuccon (with co-writer Enrico Saletti) captures the atmosphere of the tales quite well. Again, the movies on the Decrepit set tend to be super cheesy and unparalleled in their terrible-ness, so to see a film with not only a real story but some legit scares on the same disc as Vampire Hunter is something of a minor miracle.

There are also a lot of creepy visuals to enjoy. A woman eating her own wrist, several bloodied folks (dead or alive) wandering about, etc. They seemingly forgot about the rat monster from “Witch-House” (which was adapted by Stuart Gordon in the first season of Masters of Horror, unfortunately I recall little about the episode anymore, other than that it was OK), but that’s forgivable - the budget is clearly low, and any attempt at a “monster” likely would have looked terrible. Zuccon was wise to keep the scares based more in reality (i.e. bloody people) and get the idea of the story across instead of the specifics.

So HPL fans will likely balk for changing the stories (actually the plots are the same, but they change everything else - setting, characters, etc), and of course, those who are used to Gordon’s productions will feel short-changed by this no-budget incarnation, but I found myself largely entertained by it. Some of it was a bit confusing, and like I said, the accents never stopped distracting me, but its heart was definitely in the right place, and unlike the other films on the set, I wasn’t appalled that the filmmakers expected people to pay money in order to watch it. And hey, it got me to read some Lovecraft, which makes it the Reading Rainbow of no-budget independent horror movies.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Vampire Hunter (2004)

MAY 14, 2009

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

I have a tough time buying the excuse “We didn’t have enough money” when it comes to shitty independent horror movies. Because while I don’t doubt that they didn’t have a blank check to work with, it seems to suggest that they were being forced to make a movie in the first place. Look, if nothing else, this site proves that there are plenty of horror movies to go around, so if you can’t afford to make a movie at least LOOK good on basic technical levels, then don’t bother making it until you can. There is no hole your movie needs to fill. Such is a lesson I would like to bestow on Sean Gallimore, the director, writer, star, choreographer, producer, editor, camera operator and sound effects guru of Vampire Hunter, which single-handedly reduces my expectation of what a movie on the Decrepit Crypt set can look like.

Since there’s no point rambling on about the dumb plot, horrid pace, and complete lack of actors who seem the slightest bit interested in what they are doing (since they are very likely friends of Gallimore who begged them to wake up early on a weekend to be in his vampire movie), I will just offer some advice to Mr. Gallimore and any other filmmaker attempting to make their own epic without any resources whatsoever or the humor to suggest that they were at least having fun doing it (like Suburban Sasquatch).

1. Use appropriate sets. Why all of these vampires seem to congregate around what appears to be a high school art room is beyond me, but it’s a completely ridiculous image, made worse by the fact that about 1/3 of the movie takes place there. Vampires should hang out in dark, kind of creepy areas, not brightly lit galleries with a painting of the Jack of Spades on the wall. Also, maybe it was supposed to be a funny character quirk, but when our title character is supposed to be a badass and he has a room full of action figures and Star Wars posters, I don’t see anything but a nerdy dude trying to look like a badass in a goofy vampire movie.

2. Hire an actor for the lead. It’s nice that you can wear so many hats, but maybe focusing a bit more on those behind the scenes roles will result in a better movie, while an actual actor handles the performance on which the entire film rests. Nearly every city has a community theatre group that will almost definitely have an age-appropriate actor who will be willing to donate his time in exchange for a lead role to put on his reel.

3. Get a boom mic. Luckily the movie isn’t too talky, but all of the audio in the film sounds like it was recorded through a wall, because the in-camera mic wasn’t very good. Since this was a camcorder-shot movie (it was filmed in 1995 and not completed until 2004 - because the time for Vampire Hunter had finally come, I guess), the mic was only designed to pick up the sounds of your children’s delight as they open their birthday gifts, or merely distinguish which of the two people in a homemade sex tape was moaning and grunting. Even the thing I bought for 10 bucks at Best Buy to record our audio commentaries produces a crisper sound than this film does; imagine what 50 or maybe 100 bucks can get you!

4. Learn how to import/export your footage properly. There is no reason why the film should have a horizontal blur at the bottom of the screen, a vertical pink bar on the right, and several bars of video noise running throughout the film. I’ve used a camcorder to make a movie myself, and it looked a fuck of a lot better when I put it on a VHS tape to show my friends (which is where the film’s lifeline ended - I wouldn’t dare think to shop it out to a distribution company and ultimately charge people 40 cents a piece to see it). If your footage looked like that from the start, then you A. need a new camera and B. should be focusing on that instead of making your movie (which presumably was made to show off your skills), as no one will take you seriously when the first 5 minutes contain just about every mark of an amateur production in the book (and a few new ones).

5. I’ve said this one a lot, but it bears repeating: learn the 180 rule. It’s OK to break it in certain circumstances, but two guys talking in their cars is not one of them. It’s a pretty easy rule to follow. When filming a conversation, think about how it will be edited together. If one guy is looking toward the right side of the screen, then the other guy should be looking toward the left.

6. Use less wipes. It’s clear that you are a Star Wars fan, and maybe a simple push would have been OK. An animated wipe that could best be described as “Paint Splatter Wipe” has no business in a humorless vampire film.

7. After your first day of filming, re-watch the movies that clearly inspired you (in this case, Blade seems a likely candidate). Compare the footage, and try to list at least 3 positive things your movie offers that the big movie did not. If it does not, then by all means shoot your movie for the learning experience, but for the love of Christ, don’t put it out on the market for people to pay for. Assuming my advice is not taken, what good did it do Gallimore to shop this movie around? The film’s IMDb page carries no user comments, no message board postings, no external reviews, and only 11 votes (half of which are apparently from the film’s production as they give it a 10), so clearly it hasn’t even found an audience wide enough for someone to bother writing “Worst movie ever!” on the message board. So it’s theoretically possible that the only person beyond your own cast/crew has seen the movie is me, and I am almost annoyed to having had to waste a daily entry on it (I was stuck at work and had nothing else but the Decrepit disc, and it was the shorter of the two movies on the disc that I hadn’t seen yet). No one wins.

Thank you,
BC

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

MAY 11, 2009

GENRE: COMEDIC (?), INDEPENDENT, MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

Today’s review owes its existence to Simon Barrett. After recording the 2nd commentary for our Horror People, Dear Reader video podcast, we began to toss out ideas for the next film. I handed him my budget packs, since 99% of the movies on them are in the public domain. It didn’t take long for him to zero in on a title: Suburban Sasquatch. He more or less demanded that it be our next film, and I decided to watch it the next day (today) - Simon likes to go in blind for these things, but I like a little familiarity.

And man oh man, I’m glad I did, because watching this movie once will simply not be enough. It just ended and I already want to watch it again. Not that it’s good in the traditional sense, heavens no. Its inept on every level, glacially paced, and features an endless array of visual effects that are as terrible as they are unnecessary (for example, the CGI net seen below - because simply obtaining a real net would be too much of a bother).

So why would I want to watch it again? You only need to take a look at the clip below for at least three examples (sadly, that cute and hilarious host girl is not in the film). How would anyone ever tire of watching a guy in a gorilla suit wave his arms around, making a sound that sounds suspiciously like a .WAV from Yar’s Revenge crossed with a guy going "RAWR RAWR RAWR!", as helpless victims act scared (or at least, mildly inconvenienced) as their CGI limbs fly through the air, breaking all laws of motion in the process? Shit, I could easily watch this movie all day.

What makes this movie so amazing is how sincerely it seems to be told. I don’t QUITE get the idea that the filmmakers or actors knew that they were making the least professional movie of all time. I can be sure that they know they’re not going to rival King Kong (or even King Kong Lives), but it’s also missing that winking feeling that you get from movies like Die You Zombie Bastards. It’s more or less played straight, limitations of budget, talent, and resources be damned.

You can sense the trouble right from the start, as a pair of vacationers drive around 8 miles an hour on a backwoods road. At least six times during this sequence, we cut to a shot of Suburban Sasquatch watching them drive past him. Either he is running ahead and finding a new hiding spot from which to observe them, or the director wasn’t really thinking (later we discover that Suburban Sasquatch actually does have the power of teleportation, but whether this is explained I’m not sure, as I missed a few plot points here and there while running over to my PC to tell people how much they had to see this movie). Finally, Suburban Sasquatch appears in front of the car, where he proceeds to do his arm waving/limb flying thing (this is one of the attacks seen on the clip below).

From this epic attack we cut to a cute mystical girl who has a spirit guide and a pretty nice looking bow and arrow. She is, of course, one with nature and everything (we know this because a CGI bird follows her around), and thusknows how to stop Suburban Sasquatch. So she sets off on her quest, and then the two worst cops in movie history show up, saying things like “We gotta tell their parents!” as if they just realized that that was part of their job. They are the only two cops we ever see, even though one of them frequently alludes to a police coverup for Suburban Sasquatch.

The rest of the movie plays out identically. There’s a murder, the mystical chick (and our “hero”, a reporter for the local, presumably free newspaper, who is also hands down the worst actor in the movie) runs around with her bow and arrow, and then the cops discuss one or both events. It’s very cyclical, but I sort of liked that, because I knew when to pay less attention (the cops), and when to eschew all distractions so that I could focus (the scenes where Suburban Sasquatch kills some folks).

Really, I think director Dave Wascavage went out of his way to find the shittiest actors possible (I also entertained the notion that perhaps he was the world's most ambitious 7 or 8 year old child, but he appears in the film as "Dave", who is quite obviously a grown man). Not a single one of them gives what could even be considered an acceptably OK performance, and just when you think they can’t get any worse, they inevitably do. Wascavage's own mother plays the hero’s grandmother, and even though the role requires nothing of her but to do grandmotherly type things (i.e. welcome her grandson into her home and tell him she loves him), she can’t quite pull it off. But the hero guy is the worst. He reads every single one of his lines from a note or something in his hand, has no desire to actually react to anything, and begins the movie almost entirely nude. Now, I only bring that up because, as luck wouldn’t have it, this is so far the only Decrepit Crypt film that doesn’t have any female nudity. For the most part, this is not a complaint (the mystical girl is pretty cute, that’s about it), just an observation.

But the CGI in this movie, Jesus Christ. It's not that it's bad (and it is), but that most of it seems wholly unnecessary. I already mentioned the CGI net, and that's just one of the many "why did they bother" visual effects that were seemingly and needlessly rendered with a stolen copy of After Effects. The saddest has to be the hilariously terrible attempt to make Suburban Sasquatch look taller by simply extending his legs with the video version of Photoshop’s Clone Stamp. Needless to say, the effect doesn’t work even slightly, and half the time Wascavage forgets to use it anyway. There’s even CGI that has no effect on anything - at one point Suburban Sasquatch has one of the two cops in his grasp, and the cop holds his gun to Suburban Sasquatch’s head. He then says “Say goodbye!” or whatever, and instead of shooting it in the head, he fires at a “nearby” gas tank (I say “nearby” because it never appears in a shot with a character, so I have no idea where it is in relation to them). He actually fires three times before it finally explodes (and by explodes I mean an After Effects filter is placed in the shot), which sends both cop and Suburban Sasquatch flying, but neither of them sustain any significant injuries. So why bother at all? Who knows, but it provided another laugh.

And in the end, that is all that matters. I laughed out lout at least a dozen times during this movie, and was wide eyed and grinning for the rest. All of this amateur nonsense blended together in a uniquely perfect way that allowed me to not merely ignore, but actually EMBRACE how utterly inept it was. It’s not like I turn on a movie called Suburban Sasquatch and expect anything good out of it, so for Wascavage to deliver a film that went so far into the opposite direction was a wonderful surprise.

I understand that the film is available in a 6 pack called Depraved Degenerates (same company behind my copy). I assume that one at least has chapter breaks, as this film does not (and when it’s over, the next film on the disc, which happens to be Scream Bloody Murder, just starts to play on its own), and is of slightly better quality as it likely is not on the same side of a disc with 3 other movies. But however you find it, I can guarantee entertainment. I can also guarantee it will be the only movie you ever see that contains this following bit of heroically stupid dialogue:

“This could get one of us killed... I don’t know if I could live with that.”

Bless you, Dave Wascavage. Bless you.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

This Darkness (2003)

SEPTEMBER 24, 2008

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

You know my situation is dire if I am dipping into the incredibly aptly named Decrepit Crypt set. Since I had no time to watch a film before work, and as of this writing (10:30 pm) I am still AT work, I had no choice but This Darkness. Usually I can’t watch Decrepit movies at work due to the nudity they always revel in, but it’s so late that everyone else has gone home (except of course, for the people who are slacking and thus keeping me here, but they work in a different office), I figured I'd be OK. And I had nothing else that I would even consider horror.

While slightly more competent on a technical level than most of the other DC movies, this one is ultimately just as bad as the others. There are a couple reasons for this. One is the insane length. 107 minutes is fine if it’s wall to wall action, or a complex story, but this is just yet another “science makes vampires” story, and a very boring one at that. Our hero is a descendant of Van Helsing (somehow I don’t think they cleared those rights) who has people call him “Van” (fuck you) who has accidentally created a new vampire strand that allows them to be in the sunlight. Fine, but around 90 minutes of the movie is about other crap, like a kid who wants to buy a surfboard, a drummer at odds with his former band, a little girl learning her multiplication tables, etc. There are also long extensions to scenes that seem more like the actors goofing off than the characters improvising, such as during an already lengthy “training” montage when our hero begins whacking a training dummy with a broom over and over. If anyone with any sort of sense had edited this film, it would be roughly 34 minutes long at best.

Another problem is the atrocious acting of the lead, one Dylan O’Leary. Normally I wouldn’t care too much, but since he’s also the writer/director, I think it’s just an ego trip. There are about 3 too many good guys anyway, why not just take one out of the script, use that actor as the lead, and focus more on the directing? You’d be taking care of three problems at once: the length, the terrible lead, and the direction that made it incredibly hard to tell how much time had passed in between scenes.

Not helping matters in this department is the abysmal continuity. Either the main character is an obsessive compulsive who needs to change his clothes every 5 minutes, or O’Leary wasn’t paying any goddamn attention. I was under the impression that a couple weeks had gone by, and then halfway through the film a character points out that his friend, killed in the opening scene, has only been missing a day.

Luckily, there is the occasional terrible line of dialogue to amuse you. When flirting with the hero, a fellow scientist says “Oh, I love chains... DNA and all!” Another howler comes during the finale, when the villain reveals “I’ve killed dinosaurs....” Yay for Creationism!

Oh, and the hero fucks a woman half his age who somehow turns out to be his mom. It’s too baffling to be hot, but it’s better than nothing.

Like I said early on, it’s technically OK at least. DP John McLeod clearly has at least a basic understanding of blocking and things like that, and the audio is never muffled or coming out in wildly different levels. The gore, while pretty rare (as is the nudity – it’s the least gratuitous of the DC films yet, which is ironic because it’s the one that could have benefited the most from those elements), is also decent. The blood looks like blood, not Kool-Aid, so they got something on Zombie Town anyway.

Unlike the last DC movie I watched (Burning Dead), this one has an IMDb page. Like all indies, half of the comments come from friends and family (and O’Leary himself), praising the film and neglecting to point out any of its flaws. However, 2 of them are from angry crew members who apparently weren’t credited, which is pretty unique. One woman is particularly bitter about not having her name alongside all the other names no one will actually care about besides the other people in the movie. It reminded me of this time in college when I was a featured extra in a student film, and before I watched it, the director told me he forgot to put my name in with all the others. I was initially bummed, but then I watched it, and instead thanked Christ that my good (pfft) name wasn’t sullied by that piece of crap. Thus, I remain proud of my entire IMDb filmography (another student film).

Like me, O’Leary has no other credits to his name as of yet, but there is some hope for him. As long as he stays behind the camera and hires a better editor, I think he could definitely make a worthwhile no-budgeter on the level of Dead 7 at least. I only ask that if his sophomore film once again involves incest that he takes the time to make it A. hot and B. an actual plot point. His character never seems even weirded out by the fact that he totally fucked his mom. Come on man, it’s not like you have an aversion to slowing the movie down.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Burning Dead (2002)

AUGUST 17, 2008

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

I wonder if Pendulum had a certain set of criteria when putting together their Decrepit Crypt set. They are all indie productions that Pendulum bought later, but the 4 films I have watched share so much in common, and now the 5th, Burning Dead, is no exception. The films are all shot on consumer video, feature nudity from women of at least 30 years of age (as opposed to the younger girls you usually see nude in crappy horror movies), lots of the same names in the credits, etc.

However, Burning Dead has something going for it that the others didn’t: Hilariously cold/mean spirited dialogue! There are some lines in the movie that are just so strangely matter of fact, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud and love the movie a little bit as a result. Example:

Guy: I was married for about five years, and then everything went bad about a year and a half ago.
Hero: What happened?
Guy: She died.

He says “She died” in the same way one might say “She’s at work,” when asked by a friend where your wife/girlfriend was. Now, for all I know it might just be incredibly bad acting, but I like to think it was intentionally delivered in this strange manner. There are some other lines/conversations in the film that have the same “style”.

It’s also a pretty insane plot. This guy (who looks like Jeff Daniels dressed up as the Nickelback guy) is returning to his hometown, which he left years ago when he apparently burnt the ENTIRE TOWN to the ground, including his parents (another hilarious line – someone asks if his parents lost anything in the fire, and he says “Their lives,” with all the sadness and remorse one might have if revealing that they lost their china or maybe some particularly nice boots). But he didn’t do it to kill everyone; he did it to stop a power hungry wizard. For real. So now he sees these zombie type things all the time, which are supposed to be the ghosts of the burn victims.

I know I usually don’t give any sort of synopsis, but I feel I must for this film, because it has no IMDb entry. I can locate some of the cast and crew, but this one is left off their resumes for whatever reason. In all my years of watching indie horror movies, I’ve never ran into a case where it didn’t even have its own IMDb page; even unreleased films that the director personally sent me a copy of have that much. Google turns up a single other review as well as some merchant links for the set(s) that the film is included on, but nothing else.

The movie also has some incredibly forgiving characters. At one point, the hero is possessed or something, and he tries to cave in the head of his little nephew. The parents stop him in time, and then try to throw him out of the house. Suddenly, a few of the zombie “apparitions” that have been haunting him appear, and the parents see them too. “I’m not crazy!” our hero announces, and they instantly forgive him for the attempted murder of their child. The notion that whether the zombies are real or imaginary doesn’t change the fact that he is apparently prone to mind controlled kiddy-cide is ignored; I guess they don’t really care about semantics at this point.

It’s still pretty bad though. The “actors” aren’t, blocking is confusing, and the plot is far too complicated to pull off in a visual sense with the budget they had. For example, when the wizard guy is supposedly pulled down into hell, we see some guys in bad makeup literally wipe paint on the wizard’s face and sort of knock him over. When you have no money, it’s best to keep your ideas grounded in reality, befriend the subtle scare, and milk the premise for every penny, like Blair Witch, Halloween, and Paranormal Activity. This script, goofy as it may be, would probably make for a pretty fun movie if it had about 10 million or so to pull it off. I mean, the whole thing is built around a fire that somehow destroyed the entire town, you’d think you’d see a pile of rubble or something every now and then.

Still, it’s miles better than the first few DC movies I endured (not as "good" as Dead 7 though), so kudos to director George A. Demick for that much.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Dead 7 (2000)

JULY 23, 2008

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

Anyone who visits the Horror Movie A Day store (which lists all HMAD entries in reverse order, so that the most recent movie is on the top) will probably wonder why the Decrepit Crypt set is on the top spot when I haven’t watched a single movie from it since December. Well, there are two reasons. One, leaving a multi set in one spot is easier than looking around for it and ‘bumping’ it back up there every time I take in another of the 50 movies on the set; and two, I didn’t intend on going that long without dipping into the pack. But since all three previous movies, and now this one, Dead 7, had nudity and excessive gore, I couldn’t watch them at work like I do with the other budget packs. On the flipside, watching them at home is hardly enticing, as they are given lousy transfers that look worse on my HD set and also are simply not as appealing as my bigger budgeted, lavishly transferred Blockbuster/Netflixed discs, not to mention all the unwatched ones from my own collection.

However, today is the day I leave for Comic Con, and thus I needed a short movie so I could get it out of the way early before heading down to San Diego. So I grabbed the Decrepit set and looked for a movie under 80 minutes. Didn’t take long (the movies are 4 to a disc, on ONE side!), and in case you were wondering, I got down to San Diego right around when I wanted to. Hurrah!

Another sort of nice surprise was that Dead 7 was far more competent than the other movies I’ve watched so far from this pitiful set. It was still shot on ugly consumer video and starred non-actors, but that was a given. Unlike the others, I could tell that the director (in this case, one Garrett Clancy) knew what he was doing, and while he could use a better editor (than himself), the camerawork, blocking, etc were all fairly decent. You get the idea that with some money and a good crew backing him up, he could make an effective horror movie, a notion I never even dreamed about when viewing those other pieces of shit (all 3 previous Decrepit entries are among the absolute worst films I’ve watched yet for HMAD).

The acting is also superior to the others. None of them are particularly great, but they know their lines, put emotion into them, etc. Particularly delightful (respectively speaking anyway) is Joe Myles, as the main jerk (peculiarly named Brownley - first name) we are supposed to root for (our “heroes” are criminals, once again). He looks like a cross between Wil Arnett and Peter Stormare, and he seems to be enjoying himself. There’s a great random bit when he yells at his girlfriend for not respecting Steely Dan, and also demonstrates the proper way to handle a CD (something I wish the Blockbuster clerks would explain to their customers – the DVDs I rent from the store often look like they were molested by rabid bears), and stuff like that is enough to give the movie a (slight) pass. There is also a terrific severed head appliance that is superior to even some non-indie films, and the hottest female cast member (Janet Tracy Keijser) is the one that offers the standard DC nudity.

I did take issue with one bit though – someone says that he’s gonna “pull a Lizzie Borden” or something to that effect, but then only swings his axe three or four times. Uh, I do believe Ms. Borden gave her mother forty whacks and then 41 for her dad. Who did she kill with only four? That part wasn’t in the story OR the nursery rhyme. Was there a baby or maybe a family pet that got deleted from the final version of the tale?

Of course, the movie is hardly what anyone would consider good. The plot makes little sense at times, our main characters aren’t really sympathetic in the least, and even at 75 minutes or so, there’s some needless padding (like a hide and go seek game sequence). And the closest thing to a heroine the movie offers is absent for about half the movie, so when she finally comes back, it seems like an afterthought.

And I know they don’t have a lot of money, but fonts can be found free, so there’s no need for such lazy titles (and why is the last name a different font than the first?):

You gotta draw in the audience with exciting fonts! Throw some Blades or maybe even a Wingding in there! Also, the first scene in the film is some sort of narrator in the Cryptkeeper tradition, but instead of a funny animatronic ghoul, it’s just some douche who comes off like Azrael Abyss. Also, the plot he describes doesn’t seem to be the plot of the movie we see, as he talks about two women who are trapped in a hell on earth or something, but then the plot is about four lowlifes who are targeted by an unseen ghoul for knocking a retarded kid into a well. Luckily he doesn’t reappear at the end; you might actually forget about him by the time the movie is over (I in fact did, until I went back to screenshot the credit screen).

Still, the relative competency and clear evidence that the folks involved were putting some effort into their movie is appreciated, and even made me hopeful that there might actually be 2 or 3 movies on the Decrepit set that are worthwhile (not counting Scream Bloody Murder, which somehow got tossed in with all these DV quickies).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Toe Tags (2003)

DECEMBER 17, 2007

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

Man... there should be some sort of warning on these movies. “This was filmed with the same camera your uncle films family gatherings with and the acting within isn’t quite as good as that of porn.” Once again being marginally better than the previous film from the Decrepit Crypt set, Toe Tags is still a miserable excuse for a film that doesn’t deserve to be commercially available. If it was free on Youtube (which the video quality often resembles) it would be one thing, but come on guys.

Like Before I Die, these guys didn’t even bother using sound recording equipment for their film. Thus, when people are close to the camera, you can hear them, and when they are not, you can’t. If you for some reason decide to watch this film, be prepared to keep your finger on the volume button.

And these guys are supposed to be cops.

Also, this one is quite short. It lists a running time of 68 minutes, but the film itself is only 60. The other 8 are bloopers and behind the scenes footage of the (bad) makeup effects. The only interesting thing about any of them is hearing someone genuinely laugh at a guy’s terrible (and confusing) Tony Montana/Travis Bickle impression. Note to the world – saying either “Say hello to my little friend!” or “You talking to me?” in any situation or capacity is not funny, ever, and you really should just fucking stop doing them (and witnesses to them should not under any circumstances encourage them by laughing).

The movie also manages to top Silent Night Deadly Night’s antler scene in regards to how bad the character’s peripheral vision is. In SNDN, a guy doesn’t notice his girlfriend hanging by a pair of antlers, because she’s at his, let’s say, 4 o’ clock. Well this one is even stupider:

The blond chick doesn't see the woman walking up to her. Un-fucking-believable. Seriously, I’m about to throw this entire fucking set into the trash.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Terror Toons

DECEMBER 12, 2007

GENRE: COMEDIC, CRAP, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

The best, and pretty much only, good thing I can say about Terror Toons is that it’s the best movie I have seen so far on the Decrepit Crypt set. Out of two.

Otherwise it’s just a mess. I THINK it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s not, which makes about 90% of the movie fail from the start. We have guy in drag playing the mother of two girls who are supposed to be like 16 and 18, played by 20 and 34 year olds, respectively. OK. The plot about cartoon villains invading the real world is even stupider than it sounds, and the effects, cartoonish or not, look like shit.

Granted, there is a certain charm at times to the film, particularly in the opening sequence, which combines intentionally (I think) childish 2D cel animation with a “torture” scene, but it’s nowhere near enough to make the film even remotely worth watching. After that scene, it’s just one painfully unfunny scene after another, without a single thing such as inventive gore, wit, or even competent filmmaking to make up for it.

Also, cinema’s worst Devil. Ever.

The sad thing about this is that this movie was pretty much the only one on the set I had ever heard about before (not counting Matthew aka Scream Bloody Murder), and even looked forward to seeing it. Anyone who knows me or has read my reviews that allude to my cartoon knows how much I love the idea of combining humor and horror via animation. And yet the movie botches so much, I barely even THOUGHT about my own creation while watching this goddamn thing. I’m a pretty self-deprecating guy, but even I can safely say I could do a lot better than this.

Some folks I talked to (OK, one) got this mixed up with Evil Toons; which is pretty much the same movie from what I can gather. But it can’t possibly be worse, right? Anyone care to elaborate?

And I know someone else has the Decrepit set... tell me these are among the worst on the set, because if not I don’t think I will be able to get through the whole thing. I’ve already put the box back on my shelf at home rather than in my desk at work (which is where I would watch them, if ever).

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Before I Die (2003)

DECEMBER 11, 2007

GENRE: ANTHOLOGY, CRAP
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 3!!!)

Wow, a bad anthology movie? No! They’re always so great! Especially no-budget horror ones like Fright Club and House Of The Dead!

That enough sarcasm? Good. Let’s get to tearing apart Before I Die, a god awful piece of worthless shit that has set the bar insanely low for the Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares set (it was the first movie I watched out of the 50).

Filmed with what looks like a VHS camcorder from 1988, this movie is so mind numbingly dull and amateurish, it is borderline inconceivable that anyone involved in the film’s production had the drive to finish it at all once they began editing it together, and even more shocking that anyone, even Mill Creek, would put their name on it and distribute it.

The best thing you can say about it is that it’s somewhat short, clocking in around 80 minutes. They will FEEL like much more, but that’s neither here nor there. There are three stories here, each one marginally better than the one before it, simply because it’s shorter. Thus, the worst/longest comes first, a succubus tale with “comic” elements, mostly from a really horny guy that looks like the love child of Harold Ramis and someone who you might see on a local car dealership on Sunday morning TV.

Some 4000 hrs, or 40 minutes, later, the 2nd story begins. This one is also highly sexually charged, as a couple goes to a remote vacation spot and proceed to fuck each other several times, in between bouts of oral sex (the guy's dick must resemble red gravel by the end of the 2nd day). After a while, they start hallucinating and then a giant head yells at them and they leave. The end. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the point of this one.

The third story is the best, and not only because it’s the shortest. This one features some actual action (a couple of slashings in the first few minutes!) and the cast’s only attractive female, who also spends a good deal of her running time in the buff. Thank Mill Creek for small favors. Unfortunately, this one also has the worst technical gaffes, such as a 3 shot stabbing sequence in which the knife is shown being held 3 different ways. Like some other anthology films, this one also ties in a bit to the wrap-around story, but it’s so dumb (not to mention a bit repulsive) it’s not even worth mentioning.

This guy must have gone to Castleton...

The wrap-around, I will mention, is a writer trying to write a followup to his book (movie? magazine? blog?) "Horrortales" or some shit like that. He spends the first 5 minutes of the film unnaturally talking to himself (read: the audience) as he explains what he’s doing, why he needs to do it, etc. Damn, if only film were a visual medium, these things could be conveyed without having a guy say things like “I have writer’s block. I need to get around it. What did I do last time I wrote?” to no one in particular!

The sound is all recorded through the camera, the actors are all terrible at best, the makeup effects are as inept as they come, and the myriad attempts at humor all fall flat. The same could be said about two films I made in high school, so maybe I should give Mill Creek a call and see if they’ll distribute them on their next budget pack. I think I’d be pretty psyched if, 20 years from now, some dude who was carrying on my e-legacy and literally watching any piece of shit horror movie he came across tore my own amateur movie apart.

50 movies for 20 bucks means you pay about 40 cents per movie. In this movie’s case, I am pretty certain that effectively put them back in the black.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...