'Unborn Sins' is a concept that deserved better

Unborn Sins (2005)
Starring: Michelle L. Harris, Sean Contrearas, Jim Barbour, and Paul "PJ" Peneloza
Director: Elliott Eddie
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A psychic detective (Contrearas) and his partners attempt to stop the deadly rampage of the spirit of an aborted baby (Peneloza) that has been summoned into the world by cultists so it can take revenge on everyone involved it having it aborted, including its would-have-been mother (Harris).

"Unborn Sins" is one of those movies that has an intriguing idea at its heart--what happens to the souls aborted babies?--that deserved a far better execution than the means available to writer/director/producer Eddie Elliot. With decent sound work, decent lighting, better cinematography, better actors, and a script that had been taken through a draft or two more--or perhaps revised by a more experienced writer--this could have been one chilling movie. As it stands, it's a movie that I really wish I could like more than I do, and a movie that I wish could be remade in stronger hands.

Lighting and sound problems aside, the biggest weakness of its film is its running time. There are several scenes that are near-pointless (such as the one where Harris' repulsive boyfriend dances by himself to rap music for what seems like forever, or the basketball game at the park that likewise went on and on and on) and a subplot involving some sort of kidnapping/drug deal that doesn't have anything to do with anything else in the movie, except that the detective agency was somehow involved with that case. If the film had been tightened up from and its running time of nearly two hours shortened to 80 or 90 minutes, I think it might have rated as much as a 4 on its ideas alone.

(The technical problems and the running time aren't the only problems. There's also quite a bit of unintended hilarity in the film, such as when the obnoxious boyfriend is prowling through his apartment trying to look all Gangsta with a gun in each hand, holding them right next to his face. I kept hoping he'd fire, because watching the ejected cartridge smack him in the face would have been very amusing. Similarly, the Big Fight between the heroes and the angry spirit is more ridiculous than suspenseful because everyone starts behaving as if they just escaped from a Kung Fu movie made in 1973. These elements might make the film worthy of inclusion in the line-up for a Bad Movie Night, so long as you keep in mind there will be long stretches of overly padded scenes.)

"Unborn Sins" is one of the most intriguing films I've ever given a low rating to, and I wish I liked it more than I do. As I said at the top, the whole abortion angle is an intriguing jump-off point for a horror film and I wish this had been a more solid film. Therefore, despite its many flaws, I think it might be worth checking out for those who are able to look at low-budget films with kind eyes and forgiving hearts.

"Unborn Sins" is available as part of the inexpensive "Sinister Souls" 6-movie pack, the even-cheaper-by-the-movie "Tomb of Terrors" 50-movie pack, or as a stand-alone DVD. I think you'll find your money better spent if you acquire it along with 5 (or 49!) other low-budget indie movies. I think it's worth seeing, but it's not worth full price.

'Purvos' is one to pass over

Purvos (2006)
Starring: Dave Workman, Stephani Heise, Nathan Day, Conrad Brooks, and Natasha Rogers
Director: Jerry Williams
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

When a sleep disorder researcher (Heise) starts finding similarities between the dreams of several patients--including her own ex-lover (Rogers)--she starts to believe there may be a paranormal connection. Her investigation eventually leads her to a deadly confrontation with a serial killer (Workman).

"Purvos" is one of these shot-on-video productions that has amateur written all over it. It's one of those films made with more love than skill, so I find myself hesitating to pan it--and therefore review it.

However, "Purvos" is available both in the "Demented Deviants" and the "Tomb of Terror" DVD multipacks from Pendulum Pictures, and as a stand-alone DVD from Brain Damage Films. Someone other than the filmmakers obviously believes this film is worthwhile, and I can't bring myself to agree with them. So, I feel like warning those who haven't been exposed to it yet.

At its best, "Purvos" rises to the level of solid mediocrity. The camerawork, editing, lighting, any other technical aspect of the film are average for what I've come to expect from filmmaking at this level. In fact, the editing is slightly below average, but I think this stems from a problem with the director rather than the editor, as I more than once had a sense that veteran film actor Conrad Brooks was repeating himself during a scene so the best delivery of a line could be included, but instead the repetition is included in the film.

Where things start getting really bad is the acting. Universally, the acting is of the sort I'd expect to find in a community theatre production, not in a movie. In fact, most of the actors are delivering their lines as if they on a stage. Almost every performance is stiff and unnatural... and, frankly, feel more like they are rehearsals than final, film-ready performances.

Of course, the bad acting may not entirely be the fault of the actors. The film features some pretty awful dialogue. It's not quite the worse I've ever encountered, but it is close. Perhaps if the dialogue had sounded more like the way people talk instead of sounding like it came from the first draft of a story submitted to a fiction workshop.

But the bad dialogue is only part of what drags "Purvos" down from being a standard amateur horror production to being barely worth watching. In fact, the rest of the script makes the bad dialogue seem like it's not that big an issue. We've got bad pacing, badly motivated characters, badly explained or utterly worthless plot elements, and a non-ending that makes no sense anyway you choose to look at it.

I think the most frustrating things about this film is that the two worst elements of the script and the way the film is executed could have been the most interesting parts of the film. There are good ideas somewhere here, but they are so badly executed that it's hard to recognize even their potential.

The worst of the badness is the mad slasher, Uncle Max/Purvos (played by Dave Workman with gusto but not terribly convincing). How/why is his causing nightmares in his niece? Why does he want to kill her? Why is his backstory so damn trite that it would have been best if it had been left out all together? The supernatural tie-in here--manifested by some sort of psychic link between Uncle Max and one of his intended victims--could have been a saving grace for the picture, but it remains mostly unused and it's completely pointless in the overall flow of the picture. (There is a far more plausible path included in the film to involve the film's main character in the events than she's uncovered some sort of pyschic activity.)

The second worst is the character of Professor Jessup (played by Conrad Brooks with... um... I'm not quite sure with what, but something involving 80-proof comes to mind). In the first place, his character is a worth appendage to the film, almost as if it was inserted after what passes for the script was written and someone said, "Hey... my dad knows Conrad Brooks, and he's going to be in town for the weekend, and he wants to be in our movie!" And, to make matters worse, his character is featured in a nonsensical ending that I'm sure is intended to be some sort of twist. But it's not. It's just bad. Yet, if this part had been better written and more tied to the story of the film, this could have been place to fully develop the supernatural angle of the story.

In final analysis, "Purvos" is a film that's barely worth watching. It's harmless filler in the 50-movie collection "Tomb of Terror", but it's bound to be drag on the value of your movie-watching dollar in the "Demented Deviants" set, and it's certainly not worth whatever the price for the stand-alone DVD is as a purchase or a rental.

Its got nothing to get in the way of the violence

Kill the Scream Queen (2004)
Starring: Bill Zebub, Deborah Dutch, Debbie D, and Isabelle Stephen
Director: Bill Zebub
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A sexual psychopath and serial killer turned movie-maker (or movie-maker turned sexual psychopath and serial killer) (Zebub) lures wanna-be actresses to an abandoned bar with the promise of being in his horror movie/snuff-film. He then tortures and rapes them.


That is not only a summary of "Kill the Scream Queen", it is the entire content of the film. There is virtually nothing worthwhile here, unless you want your "torture porn" almost completely free of plot and character development, and with a little more actual porn that you find in the "Hostel" and "Saw" movies.

The very low One Star-rating I'm giving this pointless piece of "filmmaking" is based on the one victim that fights back in a big way. Otherwise, most of the girls here are just so much meat--only two show even the slightest glimmer of acting talent--and the filmmaking and effects are pedestrian in the extreme.

Worse, the film is such an amateur effort that the director can't even keep his continuity straight. In one scene, he rips a girl's panties off so he can rape her, yet when he dumps the body, they're back on and they're intact.

(The only positive things I can say is that the "writer and director" of the film didn't attempt to overreach his $1.25 budget. There's also the "message" that gets delivered via film-maker's monologues directed at his victims... that an emphasis on sex and gore over acting and story is ruining the horror genre.)

I like the high concept of the movie... but I just wish a movie had actually been made with it, instead of a collection of clips with girls taking their clothes off and being menaced and killed with nothing else going on.

'Kill Them and Eat Them': Low-budget horror with a classic feel

Kill Them and Eat Them (2005)
Starring: Sandy MacDonald, Richard Archer, Francoise Snobel, Lloyd Cameron, Hugh Gibson, and Wil van der Zyl
Director: Conall Pendergast
Steve's Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When a geneticist nicknamed "Dr. Gore" (MacDonald) goes renegade, two incompetent corporate security agents (Gibson and van der Zyl) track him down to stop his mad experiments. Unfortunately, Dr. Gore and his psychopathic assistant (Archer) have been turning homeless people into bizarre, flesh-eating mutants. Will our hapless heroes be able to save the day, or will they be the next test subjects for Dr. Gore?


"Kill Them and Eat Them" is a unique film that offers an interesting viewing experience. And when I say "unique" and "Interesting", I mean it in both good and bad ways.

On the one one hand, it is painfully amateurish, filmed with what must have been Camcorders and probably funded with whatever spare change the cast and crew could find between couch cushions in their homes. The acting is inconsistent by everyone who appears--each actor has a few decent scenes, but they are negated by ones where they are awful beyond description--and the story seems to unfold in a random and haphazard fashion. While some creativity went into designing the creatures, the extreme lack of funding for this film is also evident in them. When this movie is at its weakest, it is very, very bad. Strange, but bad.

On the other hand, there's a sort of wild, creative energy that runs through this whole production the likes of which I've rarely come across outside a few low-budget films from the 1930s and 1940s. When the actors are at their best, the lines they speak and their delivery of them reminds me of those old horror flicks as well. There's also a intentional sense of the absurd about the whole movie, and, to top it off, the climax is a monster slapfest the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Spanish horror flicks of the 1970s. During its high points, the film comes across like a homage to the old fashioned mad scientist movies.


The classical low-budget horror flick air about "Kill Them and Eat Them", plus the fact it's pretty funny (intentionally so) at times, went a long way to helping me forgive its many of its flaws.

(Flaws I can't forgive are the scenes with bad sound, and those that seem to be in the film for no reason other than to pad the run-time. I really wish low-budget filmmakers would stop thinking the microphone on the Camcorder is good enough when it comes to making a movie... and for crap's sake, filmmakers, if you think your movie is running short, WRITE SOME MORE SCENES. Don't pad it with shots of actors wandering through the woods, or repetitive and/or unnecessary establishing shots.)

While I would hardly describe this as a good movie, I don't regret spending time watching it. I think that Conall Pendergast shows a talent for screen-writing that many of this contemporaries do not. I think that if some more time and effort had gone into polishing the script, and if Pendergast had been a little more realistic in the sort of film he could make with the resources at his disposal (the monsters really did require a bit more money to look good... and the same can be said for the lab of the mad scientists, although Pendergast had a funny in-movie reference that took care of that, even if it came a bit too late) I think he might be able to turn out a funny movie. If he sticks with the script-writing, he might be pretty good some day.

Vampire mobsters are VERY serious about the blood oath

Strange Things Happen at Sundown (2003)
Starring: Joseph DeVito, J. Scott Green, Joshua Nelson, Masha Sapron, Jocasta Bryan, Shannon Moore, Livia Llewellyn, Giovanni DeMarco, Robert M. Lemkowitz, Steve Gonzalez and Gina Ramsden
Director: Marc Fratto
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Jimmy Fangs (DeVito), a Brooklyn-based mobster who also happens to be a vampire, has discovered a way to impregnate marijuana with his blood and thus turn potheads into flesh-eating zombies under his mental control, but the cash he was going to use to create his unstoppable army was stolen by another vampre, Marcel (Green). Never one to let a slight go unpunished, Jimmy hires vampire hitman the Reaper (Gonzalez, voiced by Lemkowitz) to make an example of Marcel and retrieve the cash. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman with vast knowledge of how to kill vampires (Sapron) has everyone in her sights. Can this end any way but badly?


"Strange Things Happen at Sundown" can best be summarized as a cross between "Pulp Fiction" and "Near Dark", as created by Quentin Tarantino, Charles Band, John Carpenter, and George Romero. (It was actually directed and co-written by Marc Fratto, but I think that, in time, we will see his name along side those greats I just compared him to.)

The film's three biggest weaknesses is one that is often present in independent films from first-time directors.

First and foremost, Fratto has a tendency to let scenes go on for too long, or doesn't cut shots close enough. There literally isn't a single scene in this film that wouldn't have been stronger if it had been trimmed anywhere from a few seconds to a minute, and if some of the individual shots had been edited a bit tighter, the second problem might have seemed a little less evident.

Then there's the issue of some scenes feeling stagey. Too often, the actors seem to be waiting politely for the other person in the scene to finish their line, even in some heated situations. This is less of a problem in this film than in most indie films helmed by a first-time director, but when it's present, it's distracting. Despite the occassional staginess, though, all the principal actors do excellent jobs in their roles. Much of the time, the characters seem believable and the lines seem like they are spoken in earnest instead of recited--but then the loose editing comes into play in certain spots and undermines that sense of reality.

For all my complaining, though, I did enjoy this movie. I got a big kick out of the quirkiness of the characters and I loved the mashing together of humor, horror, and mob cliches that run through the film. (There is one character in particular who must be seen to be believed and who must be experienced cold to have its full impact. I'll just alert you to watch for the vampire who seems like she's a housewife just walked off the set of a 1950s TV show. Played with great flair by Livia Llewellyn, this character is by far the funniest thing about the film.)

While I personally found the vampire victim scenes increasinlgy tiresome as the film went on--particularly after it was explained why no one seemed to go into shock or pass out from bloodloss--I suspect viewers more into gore and "torture porn" than I am, won't mind them. The gore effects are mostly well done for a film at this level, and, unlike some films, there is a valid reason for the suffering going on other than the filmmaker just wants to gross out the viewer.

"Strange Things Happen at Sundown" is a quirky vampire movie that has a few weak spots but that still entertains. It's a film fans of vampires and mafia stories alike should get a kick out of. (Also, if you're still playing the old "Vampire: The Masquerade" RPG, you might be able to steal a few adventure ideas from the film.)

'The Traveler' is a good movie I'll never watch again

The Traveler (2006)
Starring: Jonathan R. Skocik, Shawn Burke, Melanie D'Alessandro, and Megan Hartley
Director: Jonathan R. Skocik
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Seven people are trapped in an abanonded house by a supernatural force, and an immortal man with monstrous strength (Burke) soon appears and forces them to torture each other to death. But he is keeping his most special, most terrble plans in reserve for young married couple Alan and Suzan (Skocik and D'Allesandro (with Hartely providing the voice of Suzan).

Once in a blue moon, I come upon a film that I can say is fairly decent, but that I will still never watch again and that I am hesitant to recomment to anyone else.

"The Traveler" is one such movie.

I have never seen violence this graphic and terrible in a movie before. I'm the first one to admit that I'm a bit squemish when it comes to slasher-flicks and torture scenes--I know the reality of severe pain, so I can't stand watching it staged on-screen, and you'd probably laugh if you saw me squirm and look away while viewing many movies--but it's rare where I am shuttling past extended sequences because they are making my skin crawl and because they are just too horrible to watch.

"The Traveler" features six such terrible, extended, extremely graphic scenes. And the violence mostly looks horribally realistic--only once did I think "that looks fake"... but that could just have been because I was zooming past the guts spilling out from one of the characters at x4 speed.

I did watch snippits of each of the death sequences (yeah... most everyone in the house dies most terrible, anquishing deaths, and I don't consider that a spoiler in the day and age of "Saw" and the various imitators, of which this is one). The violence looks horribly realistic and the well done sound effects make it even more stomach-turningly believable. The best (or most horrible) torture sequences were the one where the "host" takes a spike and a hammer and shatters a victim's teeth one by one--and we get a top view so we can see it happen-- the one where another victim gets hoisted into the air on a meathook that penetrates the roof of the mouth and exits through an eye-socket, and the one where a victim's face is literally shaved off.

Despite my revulsion at the graphic violence, despite the fact that I will never consider watching this movie again, I admire the technical know-how that went into creating it.

This is a well-made film over-all. There are a few clunkly moments here and there--tinny dialogue, flat acting, a special effect here and there that don't come off quite right--but overall it features decent camerawork and staging, it's free of all the padding and time-filling garbage that ruins so many horror movies, and it even offering a story that's interesting and engaging,

What's more, the director has the ability to honestly assess what worked and what didn't work in the movie; the camera lingered on the gore and special effects that worked with terrible convincingness, while those that clearly didn't work as I'm sure was hoped are passed by with fairly quick cuts. (There's a "regenerating head" sequence that I think fits this bill.) Too often, low-budget filmmakers allow the audience to see their film's shortcomings too clearly by dwelling on them. Not so with Skocik... he's clearly a filmmaker with a good eye, and I'd be interested in seeing what he might come up with in the future (even if I have to shuttle past portions of the movie).