Future-Kill

Future-Kill (1985)

Directed by: Ronald W. Moore

Rating: 2 out of 4 Pentagrams

Reviewed by: Jeff Deth

With a bizarre blend of street punks, toxic poisoning and fraternity humor, Future-Kill comes up Troma-esque. I had a hard time following this flick, as it’s a mish-mash of moods and ideas. Maybe I was just tired when I watched it? The plot contains two distinct settings that I haven’t seen put together before and I’m not sure they should be put together. It’s really a tale of two cities. The first being an Animal House inspired college town filled with a bunch of moronic frat boys partying their brains out and pulling gags on a rival frat. On the other side of town is a deteriorated inner-city gangland of anarchist punks protesting nuclear waste that turns people into mutant psychopaths. As it turns out they are all posers to the one truly fucked-up mutant, “Splatter”. Splatter has been mutated into a new-wave killing machine and he’s pissed.

The other mutants in his gang wish he would mellow out on the violence. They see themselves as a non-violent protest organization. Splatter enjoys killing at random.

Worlds collide when the frat boys decide to venture into the city to kidnap a mutant as a prank. Well, they F-up big time when the come across Splatter who kills the president of the fraternity. Splatter’s number one rival, “Eddie Pain” who is of the non-violent faction of mutants doesn’t like this one bit. This becomes an opportune moment for Splatter to take him out as well, pinning it on the frats.

With their car destroyed the kids flee deep into the city while the mutant army is sicked on their ass. This opens the movie up into a Warriors like running and hiding chase with punks battling frats along the way.

This was not the movie I expected. In trying to be many things, the script fails at being much of anything. It ends up just a jumbled mess of ideas that worked separately as other movies.

There are a few cool kills but nothing special. The budget provides no room for many quality effects. Not to mention the fact the production is horrible, the sound is bad and the costuming while inventive is a bit amateurish.

This is simply a misstep of the mid-eighties when everyone was trying to make the next Road Warrior or Toxic Avenger. The major downfall is the failed comedy involved. They clearly could have focused on just making a bad-ass violent sci-fi movie.  

The awesome cover art by H.R. Giger is the only inspiring thing to come of this project despite casting two stars from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They don’t do themselves any justice here. Had this movie contained a sliver of the evilness displayed by the cover art, this movie would have been sweet. 

Scalps

Scalps (1983)

Directed by: Fred Olen Ray

Rating: 2.25 out of 4 Pentagrams

Reviewed By: Jeff Deth

Scalps is the story of a group of college archeology students who venture out into the desert searching for ancient Native American artifacts. Of course it all goes horribly wrong. Once their professor backs out on joining them at the last minute, the kids head out on the road planning for a weekend of drinking and fornication.

Normally that would have been great, but without him the bumbling teens unknowingly trespass onto haunted Indian burial grounds. But it’s not as if they weren’t warned. After all, the creepy town derelict at the gas station told them all about the scalpings, etc. going on in the Black Tree area where they were headed. But of course they were too busy buying their beer and planning to get laid to give a damn.

In a sense this film is derivative and formulaic. It reminded me of The Hills Have Eyes but with a Friday The 13^th cast of horny couples. Not that that’s a terrible thing. I give the film credit for introducing a new spin on an otherwise typical slasher story.

I expected the acting to be horrible given the low-budget. I was surprised and fairly satisfied with the believability of most of the characters under the circumstances. The budget was low but they did plenty of things right with it. The soundtrack was really good, setting a dark vibe throughout. I found the cinematography to be engaging at times as well, with some interesting shots being attempted. One aspect I could have done without was the dog-faced mask on one of the killers. Clearly it’s a mask and it doesn’t help that it was shot straight on in full light. They might have gotten away with it if they had heavily shadowed him.  On the other hand, the killings showed some quality special effects with some slashed throat and decapitation action. There is one full-on scalp that takes place but for a film called “scalps” you would have expected more.

I really like the idea of Native American ghosts haunting the desert as the basis for a film. Scalps, does an ok job of executing it but it could have been better somehow. I’m not going to put it down too hard because over-all it works and did more things right than wrong on balance.  If you’re a fan of the early work of Wes Craven you will probably appreciate Scalps. Or, you could just as easily find it to be a poor man's knock off all the same. 

Splatter Farm

Splatter Farm (1987)
Directed By: Mark Polonia, John Polonia, and Todd Smith
Camp Motion Pictures DVD
Rating: 1.5 out of 4 Pentagrams
Reviewed By: Jeff Deth

I’ve been brave enough to give Camp Motion Pictures another try, although I’m still recovering from the anguish of Woodchipper Massacre.

Expectations where low from the onset to avoid any emotional crash as the result of viewing. I simply placed the disc into the player and braced myself for the worst.
And that was certainly the smart thing to do but even still, I had braced for bad, not
insest rape, necrophilia and rape of the anal sort.

This was an incredibly uncomfortable film to watch. If you have a girlfriend, do not subject her to this vile offense. Unless she is extremely demented and tortured, in which case she may enjoy it.

The directing and staring twin brothers (Mark Polonia, John Polonia) play Allen and Joseph, two unbearably annoying twits paying a visit to their perverted sicko Aunt Lacey. Lacey, who is old enough to be their grandmother lives with the cannibalistic corpse fucker, Jeremy. Jeremy is responsible for tending to the farm and it’s animal inhabitants. Aside from that, he hovers around in the barn chopping up bodies and having sex with them.

The brothers, although extremely dim, begin to sense that auntie and her helping hand have got some weird stuff going on. It was only a matter of time before Jeremy is seen
defiling body parts and auntie can’t control her 60 year-old sexual appetite for young boys. Young boys she happens to be related to. Things spiral out of control and Jeremy gets to killing.

The acting is horrendous and stiff throughout. Although Jeremy is actually believable as a twisted backwoods freak as he doesn’t actually have to deliver many lines. The production is pure VHS quality. I will give it up to them in regards to special effects. Sure, they had no money but that didn’t hold them back. There was a definite effort put forth to create some actual “splatter” as promised. Everything looks fake and cheap but they tried and they manage to pull off some pretty disgusting stuff.

If this film intends to make the viewer feel sick and awkward, I believe it was a success. I can’t say it succeeded on many other fronts though. I was certainly taken off guard with all the sex-crime on display. There’s some shocking scenes without a doubt. Splatter Farm was a lot better than I prepared myself for but still not good enough to ever watch again as long as I live.

Woodchipper Massacre

Woodchipper Massacre (1988)
Directed by: Jon Mcbride
Rating: -4 Pentagrams out of 4
Reviewed by: Jeff Deth

Holy Mother of God. This can't be for real. This is a home video. I don't even know if I can attempt to review this as if it were a movie. Sure there are things about this that lead you to believe it's a movie. But really, this is someone's home video. The fact that someone pressed this onto a DVD, the fact that Netflix actually distributes this as a film near a criminal act. I will not even attempt to explain the storyline of this film. The name of this movie is the only reason it stands any chance of being viewed by anyone.

So listen very closely... DON'T EVER EVEN THINK OF RENTING THIS PIECE OF TRASH NO MATTER HOW DESPERATE YOU ARE!! If you are that desperate, I suggest you break out your old Super-8 camcorder and just start filming your relatives and neighbors. You'll have more fun trying to make your own pathetic "slasher" movie. This was clearly some film student’s senior project. How it got the label of being a “cult-classic” is beyond me.

There was a $5 dollar budget to make this thing and not $1 was spent on special effects. I prayed from the opening sequence that at the very least these people had gotten their shit together enough to at least show me someone going through this fucking woodchipper. I was promised a MASSACRE! At least some me some shit flying out of the chipper. After 15 seconds I reconciled myself to the fact that that was this films dying hope.

You get nothing. Massacre? Try two weak kills. No blood, no gore. No massacre. I found it hard to even laugh at this attempt to be some form of entertainment. The unbelievable hairstyles, the painfully horrendous overacting, the ridiculous story. The awful lighting, sound and camera work. Every aspect of this "movie" is an experience in atrocity.

Let me be honest. I should receive a medal of honor for sitting through the torture that is Woodchipper Massacre. But I also deserve to have that medal stripped for ripping this nightmare from the player with only 5 minutes left. I had to make a decision after they let me down by not showing any gore during the second chipping. That 5 minutes more of sleep was more valuable to me than seeing this seething pile of rubbish come to a conclusion.

Maybe this was all a joke. “Ha, ha, look how bad of a film I’ve made! Isn’t it great? " Even it that’s the case, I’m still not a satisfied customer. You called it Woodchipper Massacre and you splashed blood all over the box art. I don’t appreciate this kind of false advertising. Jon Mcbride, you sir are a bastard!

Jack-O

Jack-O (1995)

Directed by: Steve Latshaw

Rating: 0 out of 4 Pentagrams  

Reviewed by: Jeff Deth

It was clear that this was going to be a bad film. I only hoped that some how there would be some redeeming camp value to it. None whatsoever to be found. Jack-O is an abomination. It’s horrifying only by way of its pathetic attempts at horror. Take bad and stack it on top of more bad and you create films like this. Bad acting, lame script, And worst of all, a laughable villain.

The filmmakers try to set up a ridiculous Halloween night premise to heighten the mood but it all comes off forced. The story bounces from present to past to tie together the story of the “evil” demon/warlock pumpkin-head.

A young boy and his parents are the main characters being stalked by Jack-O, apparently descendants of a family at war with the harvester. Of course it’s a group of partying teenagers that set off the latest killing spree by accidentally uncovering his grave. Things never get more interesting than this.

I honestly wish there was a sweet low-budget slasher about a scarecrow or a pumpkin-head killer. There have been plenty of attempts but its always rubbish such as this.  There’s just nothing to salvage this crap. The kills are all yawns. the effects scream, “we have no money but we’re going to do a severed head anyway!”  The actors, oh the actors. Not a believable line delivered amongst them. Even if the script were good there’s no getting around these hams.

There was really no hope for this at all. Even in a best-case scenario, it’s only a person like me who will sit through this derivative drivel. It just kills me that they pull out every tired cliché known and they have no irony about it whatever. They actually are trying to use this shit to scare people. I mean they actually thought this could be entertaining!? And there were actually three people involved with writing this thing. Huh? Luckily director Steve Latshaw hasn’t been given a seat since 98’. With a filmography that includes Vampire Trailer Park and Biohazard: The Alien Force he hits the 3 strikes and your out law. Or at least there should be a law. And did I mention the titles? Fucking balls! Jeez, I’m starting to lose my head here.

I can’t recommend this on any level unfortunately. It’s not because I have such high standards or am some kind of cinema snob. No, this movie just plunges far below my low standards to a level of utter banality. So I say, subject yourself to these horrors… if you dare!