Wrong Turn Wednesday:Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead

Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (2009)
Starring: Tom Frederic, Tamer Hassan, Janet Montgomery, and Gil Kolirin
Director: Declan O'Brien
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

After a clan of mutant cannibals dwelling in the woods of West Virginia cause a prison transport bus to crash, a prison guard (Frederic) must scheme to save himself and a survivor from a previous attack by the cannibals (Montgomery) not only from the mutants but from the vicious criminals to have taken them captive.

In some ways, this is the best entry in this series so far. In others, it's the worst.

In the "plus column" there's the fact that the filmmakers tried to come with something a little different. They mostly dispensed with the usual bunch of Attractive Young People and replaced it with a bunch of escaped convicts and their hostages. The mutant cannibals remain the same--exactly the same as in the previous two films in fact--but the fact that they are preying on predators this time makes for an interesting change. The various plot complications that arise are also different than the usual fare in films of this kind.

In the "minus column" there's the problem that some of the different ideas haven't been implemented all that effectively. The promise of the "cannibals vs. criminals" is never exploited as effectively as it could be, beyond a couple of interesting death scenes. The two lead criminals are established as cunning and skilled killers, and another prisoner is billed as a former soldier, but they don't really do much except to behave like bullies and just talk about taking the fight to the cannibals. While I've no doubt that this is how real criminals behave, it doesn't make for interesting movie characters. There's also the issue that the murder scenes, while gorier, are generally so outlandish or cartoonish that they are more laugh-worthy than horror inspiring--and it doesn't help that many of the gore effects are fake-looking. Finally, the acting ranges from indifferent to bad, with Tamer Hassan and Gil Kolirin (as the lead escaped convicts) being the only really interesting cast members because they are so over the top at all times.

There's also a nitpicky flaw... that being the near-total absence of a "Wrong Turn" anywhere in the story. I suppose if you engage in a logical stretch, the "wrong turn" could be the choice of camp site by the river rafters who become the cannibals first victims this time out. Or maybe the "wrong turn" could be the choice made by our hero when he leads the convicts to the watch-tower and hoped-for safety--this being the watchtower that burned down in the first "Wrong Turn" movie. But both those are quite the stretches to get the event of the title into the film. This then becomes a "Wrong Turn" film without a wrong turn, which is something a poster on my Facebook feed joked about following my review of "Wrong Turn 2". (And while I'm on the subject of the title, who exactly was "left for dead"? Did I miss something?)

Although better in some aspects than the original "Wrong Turn" film, and it gets some consideration for playing with the formula in an even more extreme way than "Wrong Turn 2" did, this sequel is still flawed enough that you can leave it until you've seen all the other mutant cannibal films you can think of. Including "Wrong Turn 2: Dead End"... and for that matter even "Wrong Turn" as it had better acting and the nifty scene in and around the watch-tower.

Wrong Turn Wednesday:'Wrong Turn 2: Dead End'

It's the second Wednesday of 31 Nights of Halloween, so that means it's time for a look at another installment of the Wrong Turn Series.


Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007)
Starring: Erica Leehrsen, Texas Battle, Henry Rollins, Aleksa Palladino, Daniella Alonso, Steve Braun, and Matthew Currie Holmes
Director: Joe Lynch
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

 The contestants and crew of a reality show are stalked by in the deep forest of West Virginia by inbred cannibal mutants who want to add them to the menu.

 "Wrong Turn 2: Dead End" is one of those surprising sequels that improves on the original. While the first "Wrong Turn" movie was a lazy collection of slasher movie tropes, the writers here actually seem to have made an effort to come up with something a little different.

While most of the characters are the usual assortment of cliches you expect to find populating a movie like this--the obnoxious hipster, the sullen goth chick, the slimy filmmaker, the nail-spitting lesbian--there is usually enough of a twist on the character to make it appealing... and if the character itself doesn't have an interesting dimension, the casting and direction is solid enough that you still regret to see the character fall victim to the marauding cannibals.

The most fun character in the film is Dale Murphy, a retired special forces colonel portrayed by Henry Rollins. A typical approach in a film like this is to have the Hollywood-type who appears to be a bad ass turn out to be all bark and no bite when the real danger manifests itself--"Wrong Turn 2" took a different approach and made Murphy every bit the bad-ass he appears as on the reality show, and then some, as well as being a heroic figure to boot. It was nice to see a character take the fight to the psychos immediately instead of waiting until cornered.

The filmmakers even managed to make the reality show conceit work, something which only the minority of the five or six other films that have tried that have managed to do. The set-up and the approach to filming it felt real to me, and the way the show's producer became a contestant and ultimately a victim was also very well handled. All in all, the filmmakers did a nice job of making me buy into the possibility that a reality show could be made like this, and they did an even better job of threading the hi-tech multi-media aspect of that set-up through the entire film.

Now, the film is not perfect. By using the same setting as the first film, they leave a big question out there: How the hell can these cannibals still be running around given the fact they were so thoroughly exposed in the first film? I find it heard to swallow that state troopers didn't flood those woods and raid every cabin spotted from the air or the ground. The easily accessible location where the film's climax took place seems particularly fantastic given the ending of the original "Wrong Turn". There are also several examples of characters being stupid just because if they weren't, the film would be a lot shorter.

But I can forgive those flaws because of Henry Rollins running around kicking cannibal butt. Having his character in the mix really makes this movie for me.

While I can't recommend you waste your time on the first film in this series, I think the fun factor in this one makes it worth checking out. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, and you're going to need a high level for gore for the sake of gore--but if you didn't, why would you want to watch a movie featuring cannibal mutant hicks in the first place?--but there are worse movies you could waste your time on.

If you end up watching 'Wrong Turn', you may have chosen badly.

Welcome to the first Wrong Turn Wednesday... even if I'm already starting to regret the decision to watch and reveiw these flicks as part of the build-up to Halloween..

Wrong Way (2002)
Starring: Desmond Herrington, Eliza Dushku, Emmanuelle Chriqui, and Jeremy Sisto
Director: Rob Schmidt
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A group of twenty-something beautiful people are stalked and brutally murdered by mutant cannibal hicks in the deep woods of West Virginia.

If you've seen even one killer redneck movie, you've already seen everything "Wrong Way" has to offer. They may do it better here--depending on what film you watched--but it brings nothing new to this slasher film sub-genre. The characters you expect to survive do so, and the characters you expect to get killed fall in predictable order. The film feels like the writers and director were working form a list of check boxes of genre tropes and once they got them all included, they felt their work was done.

There is nothing all that good about this film, but there is also nothing outright awful. The scene in and around the old observation tower is the high point of the movie (hurh-hurh... I made a pun), but it is nowhere enough to elevate this cookie-cutter, lazy genre film above its mediocre status.

What's more, the good will that scene earns this picture evaporates during the its climax where the filmmakers show us that not only are they not terribly original, they don't know when enough is enough and subsequently manage to transform the final fight stand of the Beautiful People against the Hideous Hicks from thrilling to ludicrous.

(By the way, filmmakers... if you want to make a movie about mutant cannibal hicks who have murdered so many people that they have a whole glade full of cars, you might want to NOT have them start killing cops and forest rangers. I can kinda-sorta accept that everyday people might be written off... but when it's law enforcement that starts going down, my ability to suspend disbelief goes down, too.

Unless you simply can't get enough of malformed cannibals haunting the back-country of West Virginia, or are a founding member of the Eliza Dushku or Jeremy Sisto fan clubs, "Wrong Turn" is a film you can safely skip.

'Poker Run' follows predictable trail

Poker Run (2009)
Starring: J.D. Rudometkin, Bertie Higgins, Robert Thorne, Jasmine Waltz, Debra Hopkins, Jay Wisell, and Skip Pipo
Director: Julian Higgins
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A pair of successful lawyers (Higgins and Rudometkin) buy a pair of motorcycles and drag their wives (Hopkins and Waltz) on a mid-life crisis inspired Poker Run in the California desert. However, they fall prey to a pair of psychopathic bikers (Wisell and Thorne), who abduct the women and force the men to perform a series of murders that they frame them for.

"Poker Run" merges the "killer hicks" genre with motorcycles and throws in a dash of torture porn and "The Hitcher". It's mostly well-acted, technically competent, and very suspenseful at times. Unfortunately, it's also very, very predictable. If you've seem two "city folks in the back-country" horror movies prior to this one, you've seem most of what this film has to offer--not necessarily done better as there are a lot of crappy movies with that theme, but you will have seen it.

The strongest aspect of the film is the performance given by Robert Thorne, as the murderous master-manipulator who seems to have every resident of the California desert obeying his every psychotic whim in order to preserve their own lives. It also ultimately becomes one of the film's downfalls, because his control is so absolute and so far-reaching that viewers find themselves at a couple of occasions reacting more with a "Seriously?" rather than a "Oh, my God!"

Another performance worth mentioning is that given by Debra Hopkins. She gives such a perfect performance as a shrewish wife that I've not found myself wanting a character to be killed so badly since Barbara Shelley in "Dracula: Prince of Darkness".

"Poker Flats" is available in at least one DVD multi-pack where it is joined by two decent flicks and one weak one. It's worth the asking price when joined with other films--if you enjoy Killer Hicks movies--but I wouldn't waste my money on it as a stand-alone.

'Trailer Park of Terror' is trashy, gory fun

Trailer Park of Terror (2008)
Starring: Nichole Hiltz, Jeanette Brox, Brock Chuchna, Stefanie Black, Matthew Del Negro, and Trace Adkins
Director: Steven Goldman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When a bus-load of troubled teens on a church retreat crash during a rain-storm, the passengers and their chaparone (Del Negro) take refuge at a nearby trailer park. Unfortunately for them, the trailer park is merely the ghostly reflection of a murderous den of hillbilly criminals that died in a gory, revenge-fueled massacre decades earlier. They now re-inact their brutal ways on hapless travelers, under the command of Norma (Hiltz), one of their victims who has turned victimizer thanks to a deal with the devil (Adkins).

"Trailer Park of Terror" has something for just about every horror fan. It takes nearly every disgusting thing you've seen in a Killer Hicks movie from the 1970s forward and combines them with a sadistic sense of humor that will put you in mind films like "Spider Baby" and "Re-Animator", as well as slightly more modern off-kilter horror features like "From Dusk 'Til Dawn". Further, the ghosts mostly manifest themselves as disgusting walking corpses, so lovers of zombie films will have something to sink their metaphorical teeth into, while admirers of Torture Porn flicks will get to watch one victim get her arm sawed off while tripping so high she doesn't notice until after the fact, and another victim is turned into jerky meat while still alive. And then there's the horny teens that are forced to be the stars of a snuff flick.

I'm not a big fan of mean-spirited and sadistic horror films, so there was quite a bit about "Trailer Park of Terror" I didn't care for. I also like my gory ghost movies and slasher flicks to have a "morality tale" aspect to them, and when they don't--or it's a weak part of the film, as it is here--the film invariably loses me, so that was another reason for me not to like this flick.

However, this thing is so well-written and so finely acted by everyone involved that I couldn't help but like it. Virtually all the characters are so purely one-note and cliched with the hillbilly ghosts  that combining them all in one place manages to breath a form of demented freshness into the film--the writers didn't even try to expand the victims beyond horny teen, asshole teen, druggie teen, and so on; nor to give the ghosts more definition than rapist redneck, robber redneck, cannibal redneck, and so on.

The only character with even the slightest depth to her is Norma, who in life was the only non-psychotic inhabitant of the trailer park... at least until she decided she had enough of them and gunned them all down and killed herself. But the facets to the Norma character never manifests itself quite in the way one expects as the film unfolds, something which becomes which is highlighted and becomes even more interesting due to the plethora of one-note stereotypes that otherwise inhabit the film. It also helps, of course, that Hiltz is a better actress than her repeated casting as a white-trash bimbo (here, and in the television series "The Riches" and "In Plain Sight") warrants. I'd like to see in more horror movies, and in different roles than what she seems to be playing over and over.

The only real down-side that I saw to this film is its somewhat disorganized structure. It starts with an extended sequence in the past and then interrupts the present with a couple of extended flashbacks that both fill in back story but also stand alone to some extent, giving the film the fell of a half-baked anthology. Given the film is based on the anthology comic book series "Trailer Park of Terror", I understand why the filmmakers wanted to make a nod in the direction of their source, but I just wish they had done it in a less choppy fashion.

In the final analysis, though, "Trailer Park of Terror" is well worth watching.

It's not always the hitcher who's dangerous

Road Kill (aka "Road-Kill U.S.A.") (1994)
Starring: Sean Bridgers, Andrew Porter, Deanna Perry, Nick Searcy, Jeff Pillars, and Andy Boswell
Director: Tony Elwood
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Josh (Bridger), a naive kid hitchhiking his way to California, is picked up by a couple (Perry and Porter) who are murdering and robbing their way across the United States.

"Road Kill" is a strange movie. I'm not entirely sure what the overall point of it was, but my enjoyment in watching came from guessing when Josh, who must be the most sheltered of sheltered small-town boys, was going to realize there was something seriously wrong with the people he was traveling with. I also got a kick out of the way the film drifts further and further into a reality that exists separate from anywhere else, a place when the mad-dog killers and their clueless passenger can pick up a hitchhiking clown (literally... with balloons, big shoes, and full facepaint) in the middle of nowhere!

I'm hesitant to say much more about the actual content of the film, as it's one of those movies that's best experienced with an unbiased mind... my summary above may even give away a little too much about the flick. Think of it as "The Hitcher" in reverse--the innocent sap is picked up by the maniac instead of the other way around--but with more humor and far stranger. (And with a creepier death scene... one of the victims is murdered by having his nose and mouth super glued shut!)

This is the third movie I've seen by Tony Elwood, and it confirms without a doubt that he is a master of making low-budget movies with nasty edges to them. If you want to see a film that truly embodies the "grindhouse" vibe that everyone was talking about a few years back--and which is being dragged out again in the context of the "I Spit On Your Grave" remake--and you want to make sure you're not subjecting yourself to complete and utter crap, you need to get a copy of this film, the underrated horror classic "Killer" (review here), or Elwood's most recent film "Cold Storage" (review here). He has a great eye for how to set up a scene, and he knows to get the most drama and suspense out of what he has to work with. And in a picture where much of the action is fairly static--there are a lot of conversations in cars and hotel rooms--this is a valuable ability.

"Road Kill" is a quirky thriller that's definately worth a look. The low budget origins of the film are visible at times--there are some issues with sound quality and color correction here and there--but the film offers more than enough excitement and content in other areas to make up for such minor blemishes. With a clever and strange script, a cast of decent actors--Andrew Porter as the psychotic driver Clint, Jeff Pillars as a slimey hotel owner, and Nick Searcy as a clown that I think any of us might want to kill if subjected to him, are especially effective in their roles--and some gruesome death scenes, it's a ride you should take.

For more information on this and other films by Tony Elwood, visit the website for production company Synthetic Fur by clicking here.

Speaking of production companies and distribution, I found it extremely amusing to compare the current DVD cover artwork with the original VHS artwork that distributor API promoted it with. Here they are, side by side.

 

While I love the sort of art on the right--as anyone who worked with me when I've been in positions to commission artwork for covers and interior illustrations--one has to wonder exactly what movie the artist was painting this image for. While if you squint and turn out head at a sharp angle, you can kinda-sorta see the characters from the film, nothing else in that picture reflects what's in the movie. The big-head photo montage from the DVD release actually captures the mood of the film more accurately. (And, yeah, I used a non-representative picture as the main illo for this article, but that's because I was unable to get any screen captures I liked from the DVD.)

A small-budget film with a big-budget feel

The Craving (2008)
Starring: Lesley Paterson, Grayson Berry, Wallis Herst, Jesse Boyd, Anselm Clinard, Curtis Krick, and Jason Kehler
Director: Sean Dillon
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Five friends on their way to the Burning Man festival (Berry, Boyd, Clinard, Grayson, and Herst) take a shortcut across the desert, only to get lost. When the drive up to a ramshackle cabin, its crazed resident (Krick) opens fire on them with a shotgun, disabling their van and causing them to be trapped with him in the desert. The murderous hermit is the least of their worries, however, because when night falls, a creature emerges from its den... and it is very, very hungry.


"The Craving" is an old-fashioned monster movie with a very modern sensibility. The set-up is like any number of "beautiful young people on a road trip Meet a Bad End" movie that you've seen in recent years, but it quickly veers into a territory that's as stylish and well-photographed as anything Terence Fisher or Mario Bava ever offered up, and as gritty and intense as early Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven films with each other.

What seperates this film from the pack it shares some similarities with is its well-crafted script and the performances given by its actors. It may be a fairly traditional tale of a group of dimwitted people stranded in the wilderness with a monster that's messily picking them off one by one, but it's told with a style that's all-too-rarely seen in movies of this sort.

First of all, it delivers a number of unexpected twists as the story unfolds, but they're not the out-of-left field sort of twists that are increasingly the norm in horror films. The twists here are either well-founded in the plot (our crazed hermit has a very good reason for hanging out in the desert... and it's a reason that's both obvious and shocking and one that is in complete keeping with the theme and nature of the story) or ones that play with our expectations for how this sort of movie unfolds and concludes (it may be a small thing, but I really appreciated the third-act violations of conventions as far as the deaths of main characters and the order they get dispatched in--and no, that's not a spoiler... I mean, we don't expect ANYONE to survive in movies these days, do we?).

Second, the script presents dialogue that is far better crafted than what we've come to expect as standard these days. Not only do we have dialogue here that sounds the way real people might talk but screenwriter Curtis Krick has given each character a unique speech patterns and sound. It's dialogue that lets the actors bring their characters fully to live and make them believable even when they are doing things that I found unbelievable. (The only complaint I have in the "there went my suspension of disbelief" category is when two characters have sex after one has suffered a severely broken leg. Yes, he's on pain-killers, but, having been where he's at as far as broken bones go, I don't think they'd have been enough to dull the pain to the point where I'd be interested in a romp. Wallis Herst's character, Diane, is definatelly the sort of girl that every guy in the 20s dreams of having and every man in his 50s is a little fearful of... but I don't think Scotty would have been able to accomodate her with her broken leg, no matter how funny I found the scene.)

Another thing I found laudible in the film is the amazing use of sound in it. Too many indie films (and even a few studio efforts with huge budgets) suffer because not enough attention is paid to sound-mixing or the proper use of music.

"Curtis and I created a version of the film with sound effects added, but we soon realized that the film would only reach its potential if we engaged a really talented person to complete the movie's sound," director/producer Sean Dillon commented to me when I mentioned how spectacular the use of sound is in the film. "Then we found Josh Eckberg, a wonderfully talented sound designer and editor who shared our vision for the film. He found the time to do the sound right. For 'The Craving,' we understood how much of the tension came from the sound of the creature. If we hear it, we know it's near, but we still don't know exactly where. That can be much scarier than actually seeing the creature onscreen. Josh had the skills and the resources to actually execute an ambitious sound design."

The soundtrack music used in the film is also great. Composed by Krick, it's not the sort of music that calls attention to itself and instead builds tension and horror where it is deployed on an almost subliminal level. It's not only an example of great score music, but it's an example that other filmmakers should follow when placing soundtrack music in their films. For a first feature-length effort, it's exceptionally well done.

I just realized that I've gotten almost to the end of this review without discussing the film's monster. That oversight is a symptom of my desire to keep my posts here short and because Dillon and his crew handled the monster exactly as they should have.

The creature is "The Craving" is a bizarre one, with a number of surprising traits and behaviors, yet ones we can buy into as the film unfolds. I had a small WFT moment during the first monster attack, a moment where I couldn't quite get a read on what was going with the characters and their conflicting reactions to the creature's strong body odor and Diane's really bizarre behavior. However, as the film continued, it started to make sense and it made the creature even scarier.

Although the film takes place in the middle of the desert and the creature here isn't hairy--it looks like it's completely smooth-skinned it the quick glimpses we get of it--there are a number of things about it that reminded me of Bigfoot legends. Heck, the monster here explained some of the Bigfoot stories better than the Bigfoot stories do, such as why some people describe a strong stench around the creature while others don't, and why some say Bigfoot is frightening and others claim it to be a kind and benevolent creature. The strange creature is better thought out and more logical than something that many people believe is real.

In addition to being cleverly conceived from a story point of view, the monster in "The Craving" is also expertly handled from the technical aspects of horror filmmaking. Dillon and his crew wisely chose to have the monster remain mostly hidden from the viewer, showing only glimpses of it. This keeps the creature as frightening as possible as it then ends up residing mostly in the audiences imagination, causing us to picture something far more terrible than anything that could probably have been put screen--and given the highly effective and convincing gore we do see,
I think most of will imagine the creature as pretty damn horrible.

By keeping the creature's screen appearances limited to silhouettes and quick glimpses, Dillon not only shows that less really is more when it comes to this sort of thing, but any possible weaknesses in their monster design and make-up are also kept from view. This is not one of those independent horror films where the creators screw up their movie by giving the audience extended shots of a badly done monster. The opposite is the case here--we've got a good-looking moster that is still shown sparsely and thus becomes even scarier. (Dillon told me that the monster make-up and look improved as filming progressed, so it could be those few excellent glimpses we get were late in filmed late in the shoot. Whatever the case, the creature looks great, better than those featured even in films you may come across during "the most dangerous night of television" on your favorite cable channel. If the look of the creature improved as the film unfolded, then it ended up in such an excellent place and was otherwise so artfully filmed that the we'd never have known it wasn't perfected before filming began.)

In fact, everything in this film is so well done that you'd never know the film was shot in over a mere two weeks, with some of the cast being available only part of the time because of other commitments, severe weather impacting the shoot, and many of the people involved in the production wearing many different hats both in front and behind the camera. It's a film that has the look and feel of a movie shot over a much longer period, and for a whole lot more money than the good people from Biscuits and Gravy Productions had access to. It's a film that shows what a talented group of dedicated creators who know their craft can come up with.

'Deadly Memories' is worth forgetting

Deadly Memories (aka "Body Shop") (2002)
Starring: Phillip Newman, Rachel Robbins, L.P. Brown III, William Smith, and Robert Z'Dar
Director: Donald Farmer
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Small-town body shop owner Art Gary (Newman) is still trying to piece his life together two years after the accident that killed his wife and left his daughter comatose when a neighbor (Z'Dar) manages to identify the teenagers who caused the accident with their reckless driving. They start dying under mysterious circumstances and all signs point to Art having snapped. But is there more to the story?


"Deadly Memories" is a so-so thriller that's done in by an unfocused, meandering plot and characters that are almost too real in the way they're written and acted. They are so real that they will remind you of your own mechanic, or maybe your Uncle Bob, or your next door neighbor. In other words, they're boring. (And at the opposite end of the realism scale, the murder victims are so completely and totally obnoxious that you'll want to reward the killer for putting them out of our misery.)

The best thing about the film is that it provides enough suspects and sheds enough doubt on who the killer might be that it's an open question until he is revealed. However, this bit of quality is itself undermined by an ending that starts out weak and which is underminded further a desire on the part of the filmmakers to make sure this film included all the elements we've come to expect from a slasher film. (The overlong, completely gratuitous shower scene with Tina Krause's naked body being shown in loving detail I can forgive, but the lame attempt at a surprise shock return of the killer I can't. Especially not when it's as badly done as it is here.)

I do give the film good marks for actually offering an upbeat ending--there are entirely too few of those on horror movies these days--and I think that Phillip Newman gave a decent performance as the body shop owner who may or may not be a psycho killer. It's a shame that this seems to have been his last movie.

'Killer' is deserving of cult classic label

Killer (1989)
Starring: Duke Ernsberger, Andy Boswell, Mark H. Creter, Jeri Keith Liles, and Terry Loughlin
Director: Tony Elwood
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A maniac killer (Ernsberger) descends upon a small town, butchering random people that annoy him. When he kills Ash's adopted father (Loughlin) and kidnaps Ash's girlfriend (Liles), Ash (Boswell) and his best friend Calvin (Creter) take it upon themselves to end his rampage.

"Killer" is one of those movies that shows that when it comes to movie-making, creativity, skill and talent is more important than big budgets. Made for just $9,500 over a couple of weeks in the late 1980s, it towers quality-wise over films made with one-hundred times that amount of money.

Although far from perfect--some of the acting and writing leaves a little to be desired in spots, and there are several shots where you can tell they were quickly losing daylight--these flaws can be overlooked because of the raw intensity of the overall movie. Shot on Super 8 film with mostly handheld cameras, it has the feel of a much older movie. It feels like it dates from the early 1970s, as the slasher subgenre was being defined, but it incorporates fully mature tricks and techniques, making it a unique film experience.


What is also unique is the performance given by Duke Ernsberger. He gives one of the creepiest, most intense portrayals of a maniac murderer ever captured on film. His tour-de-force performance in the last half hour of the movie--from his chilling conversation with the captured girl about how he is going to slowly slice pieces off her and eat her while she's still alive (and thus fulfill a life-long dream, to his his monologue about how the doctors in the mental hospital drilled holes in his head and allowed his soul to escape and thus made him immortal, to his crazy Russian Roulette gamel, and the extended final chase scene--is one that ranks among the greatest screen maniac performances. I've no doubt that if this film had been made by "serious filmmakers", Ernsberger would have won all sorts of awards and accolades for it. (Forget Jack Nicholson's annoying display in "The Shining". Ernsberger delivers the REAL goods! It's too bad he hasn't appeared in more movies than he has.)

The label "cult classic" gets slapped on a lot things by marketeers and overzealous critics. Mostly, it's code for "this thing sucks, but let's trick people into buying it", but in the case of "Killer" it's well-deserved. It's a movie that deserves a lot more attention that it's ever gotten, and it deserves it now more than ever with a DVD release that features a re-edited and ditially cleaned-up version of the original film with a new soundtrack. It's a film that should be seen by anyone who is a fan of the slasher films--and it's an absolute MUST if you consider yourself an aficionado of the genre.

The DVD director's cut of "Killer" is available from Amazon.com and it's worth every penny. In addition to the movie, the DVD contains an interview with director Tony Elwood and screenwriter Mark Kimray that is interesting and informative--unlike the usual self-congratulatory and/or infomercial crap that often passes for interviews on DVDs--and a second audio track on the film that has Elwood and several of the cast members discussing the shoot and commenting on the differences between the original release and the re-edited DVD version. It's great stuff and well worth the time to sit through.

All in all, this is a DVD that belongs in the library of every fan of the horror film genre.

A grand opening you can safely skip

Memorial Valley Massacre (aka "Valley of Death") (1988)
Starring: Mark Mears, John Kerry, John Caso, Lesa Lee, Jimmy Justice and Cameron Mitchell
Director: Robert C. Hughes
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

The opening weekend for a new campground in Memorial Valley is plagued by disaster and a murderous wild man (Caso) who doesn't appreciate all the newcomers to his previously quiet land.


"Memorial Valley Massacre" is a cross between a slasher flick and the "vacation spot disaster movie" subgenre (of which "Jaws" is the best and most famous). The film includes most tropes from the horror movie subgenres it's drawing from, but it doesn't do anything particularly new or particularly creative with them. The cast of victims are even less likeable than usual for a film of this type, so there really isn't anyone we're not sad to see go. Further, the one minor plot-twist the film features is both predictable and so far-fetched that it's something you'll be groaning at when it comes along. And, finally, this film was in serious need of a continuity person, or someone less drunk in the editing booth. There are a couple of scenes with characters in them that aren't summoned to the location they happen at until after the scene takes place.

This film might be worth adding to the line-up for a Bad Movie Nite, but otherwise it's not worth your time.

This isn't a Farmer's Daughter Joke

Silent Bloodnight (2005)
Starring: Vanessa Vee, Robert Cleaner, Alexander E. Fennon and Mike Vega
Directors: Stefan Peczelt and Elmar Weihsmann
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A farmer and his son (Cleaner and Fennon) go on a killing spree in a small Austrian town to avenge the rape and murder of the farmer's daughter, and to eliminate any potential witnesses to the rape and their subsequent killings. And then to get rid of witnesses to the killings of the witnesses. When sex-pot local access channel TV reporter Sabrina (Vee) starts to investigate the string of murders, she becomes a target as well.


From its title through the final scene, "Silent Bloodnight" is a stupifying mess. The plot makes absoultely no sense, the reasons for the many killings are nonsensical (even for a pair who must have been psychopathic before the slaying of their daughter/sister), questions are raised in the course of the movie and never answered, and the film SHOULD have been over about thirty minutes in, if the local Chief of Police (Vega) wasn't so incompetent that it broke my disbelief's suspension. (I want to know where to send the repair bill.)

The film also has the further problem that its cast is made up of Austrian actors performing in English. Their Engilsh is decent enough, but I can imagine that those who didn't grow up around a variety of accents may occasionally have trouble understanding what is being said at times. I also think that the fact the film was shot in English instead of German may have harmed some of the acting in it. What we have here is actually a little above par for a low-budget slasher film these days (where anyone with a Camcorder, some red dye, and a few friends with enthusiasm and spare time on their hands thinks they can make a movie), but I can't help but wonder if Vee might not have been better in a couple of the scenes if she hadn't been so obviously focused on enunciation of English phrases that might otherwise be slurred and incomprehensible under her Austrian accent. (Arnold Schwarzenegger makes it seem a lot easier than it is.)

This movie would really have benefited from a few more thousand dollars worth of budget, and a decent group of British voice actors. In fact, this is ready-made to be redubbed, as several scenes have been carefully staged to avoid any signs in German--we don't even see the side of the police car that appears a few times--and the actors are listed in the credits with Anglicized names.

With all that said, the movie still has a number of good qualities. First, lovers of the slasher-genre will enjoy a number of parallels to the early "Friday the 13th" movies, and they should also appreciate the fact that this is an attempt to make a serious slasher film. Second, any horror fan will able able to appreciate the decent camerawork throughout--I wish the entire film had been as spooky as the opening scenes of the barefoot young woman in a white dress doing ballet steps down a country, but what we get is decent enough. Third, the gore effects are expertly done (except for the spurting severed neck we see a couple of times... they should have made the shoulders look a little less plastic). Fourth, Sabrina does her newscasts in a bikini, and she and the most of the other girls in the film are usually wearing tight or skimpy outfits, just like old time slasher-flicks! The film also features a very high degree of nudity and sex. Fifth--a personal favorite of mine--the film features a van that gets turned into a mobile gas chamber!

"Silent Bloodnight" was a film that I had a little harder time than usual assigning a rating to. The movie has some pretty glaring flaws (the weak script that relies to a large extent on Stupid Character Syndrome being the biggest), but there was also a fair degree of craftsmanship and creative energy evident throughout. More importantly, the film kept me entertained, even while rolling my eyes at the lameness of Mike Vega's character, and the entertainment value always is an important factor in how highly I rate a movie. In the final analysis, this film ends up at the low end of average with a rating of Five.

'House of Wax' has little in common with classics that share the same title

House of Wax (2005)
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, and Paris Hilton
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A group of teenaged friends get lost and then stranded in an isolated stretch of back country. Seeking help in a nearby town, they come upon a wax museum far more remarkable than it even appears at first... and the fact the whole building that houses it is made of wax is pretty damn remarkable. Naturally, there's a crazed killer or two lurking among the exhibits.


"House of Wax" is scary in the way one of those Halloween haunted houses that spring up in neighborhoods, amusement parks, and empty warehouses this time of year is scary. It's also a film that requires a similar level of suspension of disbelief and willingness to play along. While it does contain some genuinely creepy moments, its very premise is so far fetched and ludicrous that even the most "game" viewer will find himself shaking his head at times. The acting is what you'd expect in a film like this, and the director and casting folks need to be congratulated for putting the best actors in in the movie in the leads.

For slasher-movie fans, there are a couple of nice kills--including that of Paris Hilton's character--but limited gore. For fans of absurd, there's the climactic encounters between siblings--our protagonists good girl Carly (Cuthbert) and her rebel-without-a-cause-but-with-a-criminal-record brother Nick (Murray) versus the crazed twin brothers who are masters of the House of Wax (both played by Holt)--in a most unusual environment, and they build to a thrilling finale to the film. For fans of horror movies in general, there are some good scares and a handful of wild set pieces that make the movie worth your time.

'Nothing But Trouble' nothing but fun

Nothing But Trouble (1991)
Starring: Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, Dan Aykroyd and John Candy
Director: Dan Aykroyd
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Financial advisor Chris Thorn (Chase) tries to impress his sexy new neighbor (Moore) and two of his best clients by taking them on a road-trip to Atlantic City. They get sidetracked, and they find themselves at the mercy of an insane small-town judge (Aykroyd) and his equally insane family.


This film is a funny spoof of movies like "The Hills Have Eyes" and the remake of "House of Wax", or any other of dozens of the "city folk get menaced/killed in a horrific, backwoods death-trap inhabited by inbred, nutty hicks" horror movies. It takes that already ludicrous concept and sends it waaay over the top in the most absurd and hilarious fashions. Heck, in some ways, the movie's even better thought out than most of films it's making fun of, because it explains how the crazy family has been able to murder literally hundreds of travelers without law enforcement noticing.

Although a comedy, the film also manages to be supremely creepy. The junkyard surrounding the mansion where the maniac judge holds court is more chilling than some of the locations for serious movies with the same sorts of settings.

Where "Nothing But Trouble" falls down is that director Aykroyd doesn't know when to quit. The movie has two denouements, one which is cute and one which is unfunny and left a slightly sour taste in my mouth.

'Slashed Dreams' describes what'll happento your hopes of watching a good movie

Slashed Dreams (aka "Sunburst") (1973)
Starring: Peter Hooten, Katherine Baumann, James Keach, and Robert Englund
Director: James Polakof
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A pair of college students (Hooten and Baumann) decide to seek out their Thoreau-wannabe friend in the woods (Englund). Unfortunately, there are vicous redneck rapists lurking near this particular pond, and when the couple go skinny-dipping, they bring them out. Rape and wimpy vigilantism ensue.


"Slashed Dreams" is a meandering, pointless movie. If you're into movies that spend most of their time showing a pair of college kids hiking around then this is the film for you. Be warned, though. There are several wimpy, 1970s songs included here, and you may find yourself wishing that someone would rape the singer just to make the pain stop. And as the credit rolls, you may find yourself wondering why the couple whose lives have just been shattered are walking off into the sunset.

Whether too deep for me to understand, or too stupid to be understood by anyone, "Slashed Dreams" can only be described as a waste of time.

'Terror at Red Wolf Inn' is pretty terrible

Terror at Red Wolf Inn (aka "Terror House", "The Folks at Red Wolf Inn", and "Terror on the Menu") (1971)
Starring: Linda Gillen, Mary Jackson, John Neilson, Arthur Space, and Margaret Avery
Director: Bud Townsend
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Ditzy college student Regina (Gillen) wins an all-expense-paid vacation at the scenic Red Wolf Inn, a complete surprise to her since she didn't enter a contest in the first place. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth--or even ask where it came from--Regina heads off for her vacation. The inn is run by a kindly old couple (Jackson and Space) with help from their grandson (Neilson) who seems to be nice enough when he's on his anti-psychotic meds. When a fellow guest and contest winner (Avery) mysteriously dissapears, Regina starts to wonder if there might not be something strange going on... and what is the big deal about that walk-in freezer in the kitchen that's always locked?

"Terror at Red Wolf Inn" is either a failed horror movie or a failed dark comedy. My money's on the former, but the latter is themore likely possibiity. Whatever the filmmakers had in mind, the film is neither particularly scary nor particularly funny. Plus, it's got one of the most annoying main characters I've encountered in my many years of watching trashy movies.

The main character/heroine of "Terror at Red Wolf Inn" is one of the dumbest characters to ever be written, and her idiocy goes a long way to making this film the dissapointment that it is. The film asks us to believe that she's a college student, but she is shown to be such an idiot that one has to wonder how she even graduated from high school, let alone be admitted to a university. Who else but a complete idiot would "forget" to tell her parents--or anyone for that matter--that she's won a free vacation and that she is being rushed to take it until she's about to board a plane chartered just for her? And who other than a complete idiot would get on the plane without telling anyone, just because the pilot insists she does? Or call from the airport she arrived at? Given how stupid Regina comes across, it's clear she's only in college to land herself a husband (the film is from the early 1970s when this was still common), but someone this stupid would barely be able to hold a job as a hotel maid.

Regina's idiocy coupled with a couple excrutiatingly boring dinner scenes--the director was undoubtedly trying to be clever, thinking they were serving as "the gun over the fireplace" and the audience would reflect on them as the story progresses with an "aha!" but he drags them on for waaay too long--and the director's apparent ability to create scenes that are completely suspense free all combine to make the movie the failure that it is. Once one adds the many inexplicable events, unexplained crucial details, and underdeveloped characters, we end up with a film that's not worth the time you'll devote to watching it.

"Terror at Red Wolf Inn" is another one of those movies where I feel sorry for the cast, because they all do a good job. Gillen manages to play Regina in such a way that she never becomes annoying, despite her boundless stupidity, while Jackson and Space play the elderly couple who operate the inn and prepare its unusual menus, with just the right amount of sweetness to make them perfect for the story--in fact, they're the best part of the whole movie. With a better script, I think these three could have been fanrtastic in their parts.

But even good acting doesn't make up for the fact the movie starts flawed and doesn't get better.

'Cold Storage' is a film that deserves a wider audience

Cold Storage (2007)
Starring: Nick Searcy, Joelle Carter, Matt Keeslar, Brett Gentile, Jeffrey Pillars, and Terry Loughlin
Director: Tony Elwood
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Clive (Searcy), a mentally disturbed mountain man, meets the girl of his dreams and commits to spending the rest of his life with her. Unfortunately, she's already dead, having suffered a fatal injury in a car accident near Clive's isolated shack. However, he isn't the sort of guy to let a little thing like decomposition get in the way of happiness. Nor will he allow anyone else to get between him and his true love, especially the living who might come looking for her, such as her strong-willed sister (Carter) and her looking-to-reconcile ex-boyfriend (Keeslar).

"Cold Storage" is a top-notch horror flick that gets just about everything right. It features a great script that refrains from giving into genre cliches so so it remains exciting and its developments unexpected remain unexpected up the very last moment. Made for just a few hundred thousand dollars, it's a film that puts movies made with budgets measured in multiple millions to shame.

This is a movie that could easily have been yet another slasher movie about cityfolk meeting hicks in the backwoods who when they aren't breeding with their sisters are killing strangers who happen along. Thankfully, director and co-screenwriter Tony Elwood created a far better film than that. In fact, he used the rural setting of the film as a means to make it even more suspenseful by playing against the typical Hollywood image of anything outside Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York City.

Most of the film's action takes place in or near a small North Carolina mountain town called Rainerspoint. While there are some decidedly freaky people living on the town's outskirts, the town itself is inhabited by normal, typical Americans and it is like any other small town you might visit anywhere in the country. The sheriff--played by Jeffrey Pillars--comes across as bigoted, lazy and a bit incompetent, but that's more out of the fact that he has very little to do with his days than outright malice, and his attitude and behavior is countered by a couple of the shopkeepers we meet during the course of the film. In general, the people of Rainerspoint aren't a bunch of toothless freaks just waiting to pounce on anyone who happens by... they welcome the tourists and it's clear that if anyone was aware of what was going on out at Clive's shack, they would have been horrified and taken action far sooner than they did. No one here is trying to cover anything up, but, like most Americans, they tend to mind their own business and assume the best about their neighbors.

By making Rainerspoint a typical small town inhabited mostly by friendly people, Elwood makes the creep factor (and ultimately the horror factor) of the happenings at Clive's shack that much more frightening and intense. The weirdness of Clive isn't diluted by surrounding him with equally weird and scary neighbors--with one exception... and that neighbor is probably worse than Clive. Elwood further deploys set and lighting design to contrast the normality and the town with Clive's private world in the forest; the scenes in the town are all in clean, brightly lit places and the sun always seems to be shining on the street, but Clive's place is full of filth, deep and dark shadows and it always seems to be overcast or raining. It's a powerful approach, and it's one that shows that productions and scripts developed with thought and care will deliver powerful experiences no matter what the budget.

"Cold Storage" is as good as it is because of the great care that has been taken in creating it. During filming, it's clear that Elwood understood what to show and what not to show in order to build suspense, and it's equally plain that a good deal of post-production work took place. For countless reasons, post-production is where the mistakes that cause many low-budget films not to reach their full potential, mostly because the filmmakers cut corners. Oftentimes, it's the color correction process or the sound design/re-recording that drags a movie down. In the case here, viewers treated to big-budget post-production quality on a small-budget film. And it shows.

The film also gains much of its strength from its script. I've already talked about the intelligent portrayal of Rainerspoint, but the quality of the script also shines through in the way the story unfolds at a perfect pace. Although we know full well that the two main characters, Cathy and Daric, won't find Cathy's sister alive, the gradual revelation of exactly how insane Clive truly is ensures that the viewers will be on the edge of their seats when the inevitable confrontation with Clive happens; it's an encounter where we know someone will end up dead, and it will probably be one or both of our heroes.

Speaking of heroes... this is another area where the film excels. It features a cast of very talented actors who take the excellent material provided to them in the script and bring it fully to life.

Nick Searcy gives a spectacular performance as the deranged Clive that makes the viewers feel sympathy for the character even as he repulses and terrifies us. It's a performance that displays both acting and scripting of a caliber that is all-too-rarely seen in films.

Joelle Carter is also noteworthy as Cathy, who portrays a stubborn, confident woman deeply concerned for her sister. It's a part where she easily could have come across as bitchy, but she never does. Similarly, her character comes across so clearly that when she does something very, very stupid toward the end of the movie, it seems perfectly natural for her to do so, instead of an example of Stupid Character Syndrome (where a character's brain stops working because the plot needs him or her to do something so the story can continue).


"Cold Storage" isn't perfect--it DOES have one example of pure Stupid Character Syndrome [although, maybe not, because the character being boneheaded and putting himself in danger because of it doesn't seem very swift to begin with] but this is small flaw is heavily outweighed by the superior quality of everything else in the film.

From the script, through the set design, the lighting, the acting, the cinematography, the special effects, and the musical score are all of a quality that puts to shame any number of horror flicks that have appeared in the theaters in recent years. The only thriller and horror movie fans who will be disappointed by this film are those who are into the "torture porn" genre or who feel that if there aren't any boobs on screen it's not worth their time. Everyone else will love it!

"Cold Storage" is, sadly, still looking for a distributor, so it may be a while before you'll have a chance to see it. I sincerely hope that someone has the good taste to snatch up this film, because it's head and shoulders above most modern horror films.





To read more about the film, visit the office website by clicking here.