Dead 7

After an incongruous Ed Wood Jr. Prelude, diabolically delivered by an enervating Deryck Whibley dweeb-a-like affecting a 'scary voice' no less abjectly than Christian Bale's egregious cannibal corpse impression, the micro-budgeted murder-fest 'Dead 7' (2000) rapidly escalates to the goodies in earnest as after so baleful an intro, as the song says, the only way is 7 Up! Greatly improving upon this piffle-laden interlude writer/director Garrett Clancey's laudably Gung ho backwoods stoner-slasher soon provides ample, amoral thrill-spillage for the more forgiving Fred Olen Ray-orientated, high-grue, low-res bad movie, splatter-minded, celluloid junk monkey.

The film's murderous miasma spirals skeevily around the illicit pharmaceutical machinations of monstrous skell Brownley Dawkins (Joe Myles) whose distempered white trash acting is straight out of H. G Lewis and, quite frankly, is all the better for it. After a most axe-ellently grisly, no less bloody vengeance-inspiring murder, all those directly or indirectly involved in sadistic dope-dealer Dawkins and his equally onerous sidekick Franky Desisto's desperately ill conceived act soon fall prey to this especially perspicacious P. O. V maniac!

While Clancey's blissfully boorish slasher is frequently hamstrung by its too-modest budget as both the sound design and make-up FX are rather rudimentary affairs at best, but narrative interest is rigorously maintained via an amusingly fly-blown clutch of hysterical performances, especially distracting is the greatly wronged sister Venus Equinox (Delia Copold) unapologetically remaining in full 'Spider Baby' mode for the duration, and bemusedly watching tweaker-twitchy Joe Myles gracelessly turning into a bargain bucket Don Stroud is sure to be an esoteric delight for all who might willingly succumb to his singularly elusive charms, and the cheapo film's gleefully gooey climax has all the creaky-crawly, second-hand Sturm und Drang of B-movie iconoclast Don Dohler's immortal classic 'Fiend'. The Babe-soaked, beer-choked, brain-dead backwoods slasher 'Dead 7', protuberant warts an' all, is an altogether asinine, sinfully sublime, terrifically trashy, terminally tasteless, no-budget, blood-spurtingly silly S. O. V gem!