Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill

While traveling in a van with their teacher for a contest, a group of college friends are abducted in a lonely road by the criminal Earl (Gregory Bastien), who forces them to go to the ghost town of Sunset Valley to meet his partner that was transporting drugs and money of their own. Once in the town, they realize that the dwellers are zombies and their leader is the evil Bloody Bill (Jeremy Bouvet), a Confederate soldier seeking revenge for the execution of his sister that was hanged by the population that was cursed by Bloody Bill for the eternity.

"Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill" could have funny lines and situations but it is too serious for a zombie movie. Further, the zombies move very fast, breaking the style originally adopted by George Romero in "Night of the Living Dead" and followed in other films of this genre. The story is predictable and the characters are forgettable, but the worst is the total lack of humor. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Vale da Morte: A Vingança de Bloody Bill" ("Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill")

A group of teens (on their way to a debating competition) are taken hostage by a drug dealer who is looking for his partner in crime. They are forced to drive to the dilapidated ghost-town of Sunset Valley. Here they are attacked by a load of zombies, led by the evil Bloody Bill, a Confederate soldier seeking revenge for the deaths of himself and his sister.

Byron Werner, the 'director' of this crap-fest, has definitely got ideas above his station. Instead of accepting that he's helming a low budget horror film, he goes all 'Tony Scott' on us and uses annoying directorial and editing techniques to excess: bleached out film stock, staccato editing, wobbly camera-work, coloured filters. This isn't art, Byron... neither is it a music video... it's schlock horror, so cut out the pretentious film-making and start off by learning how to tell a story!

The plot is a weak derivative mixture of elements from H.G. Lewis' 2000 Maniacs and Romero's Night of the Living Dead, without an ounce of the charm of either of these classics. The annoying teens are portrayed by a talentless bunch of nobodies and they deliver their lines as though reading off a board. The awful script is clichéd drivel, with dreadful dialogue and absolutely no logic. Hell, it even has the teens debating with each other whilst under attack from the living dead!

The 'special effects' are also lousy; the zombie makeup is extremely amateurish and the gore content is fairly low. Even the zombie extras are bad: they shuffle in a variety of unconvincing manners—some fast, some slow, and, I'm convinced, some with grins on their faces.

I'm a great fan of zombie films and usually cut even the worst efforts some slack if they deliver ample blood 'n' guts, but Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill fails even with this simple task and receives the lowest possible rating from me.

I rented this from Blockbuster because I could get 3 films for 7 nights for £5. The other 2 were Dead End and Black Knight (I wanted to see some cheesy goldmines). Black Knight and Dead End are cheesy goldmines which made me laugh so I thought £5 well spent until I saw this steaming pile! Truly awful! I honestly believe the guy who did this could'nt direct traffic never mind a film. Please no more - you've had your chance. First of all the music was terrible and boring. The opening sequence my girlfriend fell asleep to. The zombies looked terrible. That Chelsea Jean girl was possibly the worst actress ever. The only decent part was watching the awful characters getting picked off. We cheered when they got it. I only gave it a 3 because of the fact it was on for little over an hour which meant I didn't have to suffer for much longer. I'm handing it back to Blockbuster tomorrow where I will complain that it should be them paying me to watch this tripe!

Okay, I like zombie movies. I really do, and I'm willing to forgive a lot when it comes to low budget zombie movies. Especially ones that have their tongue firmly pressed into their cheek. Having said that, I think this may be one of the worst zombie movies to make its way onto the Blockbuster video shelves in a long time (and that's pretty bad, considering there's dreck like "Corpses Are Forever" out there).

It's not worth going into the plot, because there really isn't one.

It's vaguely like From Dusk Till Dawn with zombies, but without the Tarantino dialogue and Rodriguez direction. If you wind up renting this cowpie, look for the best editorial mistake ever. It's toward the middle of the movie, where the black drug dealer (stereotypes anyone?) says something like, "With all due respect, if you can point that gun somewhere else" then... watch for it, he actually mouths the other actor's line. Best part of the movie.

First and foremost, I worked on the set of Death Valley, so I may be a bit biased. The cast was great to work with for the most part. (There was a primadonna or two, but I won't name names) Byron's got enough experience under his belt now that his camera work is really starting to take off. The editing was fantastic considering I saw the "raw" footage while on set. This was my first production and I now look at movies a totally different way. Richard Miranda (El Intermedio, Way of the Vampire, and Army of Darkness) was superb at bringing the blood and gore of a zombie town to life. The soundtrack was awesome and really brought out the mood of the film. The ending, which I didn't see shot as I was on another portion of the set, was a great surprise. All in all, for the indie horror film world, this was great.