There are terrible movies. There are unwatchable movies. And then there is the work of Chris Seaver.
Seaver is the guy behind the appropriately-named Low Budget Pictures, a Troma wannabe that shot all of its features right on VHS using what I'm guessing was Seaver's dad's camcorder. With a little gumption, they has even managed to sell their work at various conventions, building a name for themselves among the Troma/Sci-Fi Channel/Z movie/indie comics geek crowd. And so Seaver and Company finally managed to splurge, upgrading to a 24p digital video camera and blowing $2,000 on what I think was supposed to be a horror-comedy.
The $2,000 movie in question is "Carnage for the Destroyer!" previous titled "Carnage for Dummies" and then previous titled "Appokolyn the Destroyer." One wonders if Seaver spent 90% of his production trying to think about a nifty title. It gives a new low to homemade movies that managed to scrounge up a nationwide DVD release; this is a work of sheer incompetence, an unholy mess of a film, the kind that makes you hope and pray for the quick release of death. But hey, at least it's got that 'nifty title.'
Actually, "Carnage" is worse than that. The film starts with a lousy idea: let's watch heavy metal junkies debate pop-culture! Hardy! Har! Har! The result is a bunch of death metal kids running around, barely audible (thanks to the sloppy production that forgot to include such items as workable microphones), pretending to be some "Nightmare on Elm's Street PART 3" reject characters. The entire movie can best be summed up by one scene, in which LBP mascot Teenape masturbates onto a woman's breast. Teenape is some dork, probably Seaver himself, dressed in a ape mask and swinger clothes. He'll enter an LBP film at random, have raunchy sex, then leave... none of which serves the plot or is remotely funny. That is, unless your idea of 'funny' is watching some teenage idiot fun around in an ape mask masturbating. Why are we watching this? Why are we wasting our time with close-ups of Teenape jizzing on some fat girl's breasts? Because Seaver doesn't have the first clue how to make an actual movie, that's why.
Nor can he write a script, at least not one that's not dependent on an endless chain of references for laughs. What's not improvised on camera (and from the look of the thing and the awkwardness of the performances, I'd guess that ninety percent of the movie was ad-libbed) is watered down into cheap steals from better sources. Lines like "We'll fight them From Dusk 'till Dawn at least until the morning" make the assumption that familiarity breeds hipness. However, hipness is not something you can graft onto a film no matter HOW MANY pop-culture references you place into your movies. What Seaver forgets is that your pop-joke MUST HAVE A POINT. And I think this hits to the heart of the matter about WHY Chris Seaver movies blow. His entire movies don't have so much as a single point to grab onto. They are just random expressions of insecurity and immaturity and ho-hum, been-there-down-that, perversions caught on tape. You know you are in trouble when your idea of 'perverted' is even considered boring by most standards.
And so, if you need an example of pop-culture jokes that work... then consider the following example: Pulp Fiction. Seaver is obsessed with Tarantino. SO it can't be too hard for him to 'get this.' In Pulp Fiction, Travolta is arguing with his drug dealer about drugs in Amsterdam compared to drugs in the states. Travolta arrogantly assumes that in a free-love, free-drug society like Amsterdam THAT pot MUST be better. To which, his drug-dealer replies, "Hey, I'll take a Pepsi Challenge with their drugs to my drugs any day!" THe pop-joke is funny because it takes a familiar cliché, the PEPSI CHALLENGE, and converts it into believable language to express the moods and feelings of the time (i.e. a generation saturated by corporate culture). ANd yet, all Seaver seems to get from Tarantino and Troma is that they are pop-culture drenched, violent movies.
So as long as Seaver looks at these films as nothing but porn, then I guess we can't expect him to make anyihing other than bad porn. The odd thing, though, is that "Seaver" has multiple connections to Lloyd Kaufman and Troma. Lloyd has even appeared in many Seaver films. Yet because Troma apparently stayed away this film when it came time to actually release the thing, that duty came to Tempe Video, which is essentially a bottom-rung Troma would-be. Like Troma, they know they can sell anything they buy if they slap this film into a nice box. But even for the Z-grade Tempe, "Carnage" is a new low.
It does not boggle my mind that movies as bad as "Carnage" can get made. With cheap cameras and workable editing equipment, everybody's a movie-maker nowadays, and amateur flicks like this are getting churned out in basements and backyards across the globe. What boggles my mind is that somebody thought that people who weren't actually involved in the production of "Carnage" would actually want to see it. I cannot say that this is the worst movie ever made; too many homegrown productions are out there, and surely millions of them are this painfully inept. But I can say that "Carnage" is unquestionably among the very worst movies to ever land an official, professional public release.
A final thought. I'm told that there are 'at least' some people on the fringe (who visit horror conventions) that actually DO like this movie. This is true. Also, some people think Ashlee Simpson is an accomplished musician, some people think the capital of Canada is Milwaukee, and some people like to drink other people's urine. Good night.
