Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain

Two teachers (Bobbie Phillips and Howard Rosenstein) chaperon a school trip to Ireland so five students can study the history of Druids or some such nonsense. A forest-dwelling mutant shows up to kill them all off. The director of this cheap-looking and disposable hunk-o-junk claims the film was ruined by studio tampering, unwanted script rewrites and such, so I'm tempted to cut him a little slack because these things are known to happen. As the film now stands, it's close to being unwatchable.

Truly terrible in every regard; barely (just barely) kept afloat by ample doses of gore and T&A. The acting is some of the worst I've ever seen. Literally everyone in the cast is embarrassing. I don't think that has anything to do with tampering, just a combination of amateur actors, a director that doesn't know how to work with them and awkward dialogue that's impossible to say without coming off like a total tool. Richard Grieco, who looks like he's had either one face-lift too many or too much botox pumped into his face and is starting to look rather inhuman these days, is falsely advertised as being one of the leads when his part is minuscule. The other names in the cast you'll probably only be familiar with if you're an avid porn viewer. Jenna Jameson pops up for a couple of minutes to say a few lines and die. Ginger Lynn has more screen time and delivers one of the worst Irish accents known to man. Not that the guy cast alongside her, whose overacting is unintentionally hilarious, is any better. There are a few other adult actresses on the payroll but their screen time is even smaller than Jennas.

Even worse than the acting is the writing. The storyline is muddled as hell and incomprehensible, the editing is choppy, characters disappear right and left for no reason whatsoever and it is overloaded with annoying, childish and lame post-SCREAM hipster dialogue about how big breasted women always die in horror films and such. Even the friggin theme song at the beginning is screwed up! The vocalist actually MISPRONOUNCES the word "Samhain;" pronouncing it exactly how it's spelling instead of "Sow-en!" For the love of God, do some research people! Some of the gore effects are decent, but you have to be very forgiving of complete technical ineptitude to tolerate this mess.

Oh, this is so bad, it is funny. The only way one could explain something like this is a porn party with drugs that resulted in the resolution to make a movie just for fun. I mean: you get to see porn actresses topless, having sex, then killed by human mutants. There is plenty of gore, including the classic "something is wrong with her, oh no, it's half the person she used to be" and the accidental murder caused by panic. But you can also find funny stuff like intestines pulled through someone's ass and a guy running in the woods then finding himself decapitated by a wire tied between two trees (that makes a metallic doiiing sound afterward, like in cartoons). Somehow there is a market for people going beyond porn, they really need to know what's inside an actress, mere genitals are not enough. Therefore you get to see plenty of summary autopsies on slain bimbos. There is NO dialog. Jenna and Chasey have really small parts and I really wonder what Richard Grieco wanted when accepting a role here. I think this is a film one must watch with the button on fast forward and watch only the juicy stuff, just to be reminded of the old school C class horror movies.

Understand i'm reviewing the film I have seen. I realize virtually all the nudity and gore was cut from this film, thus neutering it completely. When seeing names like Ginger Lynn and Jenna Jameson attached, I knew I wasn't going to get a horror classic, but at the very least I expected gratuitous boobies and bloodshed. But no, this has got to be the most butchered modern horror film, I mean it's easy to tell there is much more to certain scenes', but they suddenly cut away, or the scene just totally ends right as it begins. How does one screw up cannibals' and porn stars? I mean thats a winning formula, it makes me wonder if the director slept with some executive's wife or something, because it is literally amazing how much got cut from this. Reading about it a few years back in Fangoria, I was excited, it looked like a fun film, but unfortunately the true film is locked in a vault somewhere, and we must endure this piece of excrement retitled Evil Breed. Hopefully an unrated cut will be released someday, as I think a good movie exists in this mess, but until then best grab a twelve pack of Bud, cause thats the only way you'll make it through this movie.

Tourists head to Ireland for a school trip to learn about Druids. What they encounter is a horrific tale of cannibalistic killers.

If I had to sum up Evil Breed, it would be a low grade gore fest. The film mixes Dead Alive, Evil Dead, Wrong Turn all in one. It's just too bad that the film has so many inconsistencies to keep track of that it loses any "fun" one would have watching it. The film has lots of random "horror" nudity...although the film also stars four porn stars, yup four, so there could have been plenty more. Breed also showcases a good amount of gore.

Evil Breed has a horrible start, with laughable dialogue and horrible acting. That's a given in a straight to video horror film, but this takes the cake. I can't really figure out who the main character is, since the one female who "lives" at the end is not really in the movie all that much. Speaking of the ending, that has to be one of the most random and bogus ending in the history of film. It has no purpose with the rest of the film and totally changes one's view of the film.

You have to see this film to believe it, since there are some pretty great death scenes. There are two death scenes that come into my mind, one in which the inbred killer rips the intestines out of a naked woman through her chest....yea her chest, don't ask me. The other id when the guy gets his intestines, yet again, ripped out through his asshole. Does that kill the guy? No, the killer continues to strangle the guy with his own intestines. These scenes remind me so much of Dead-Alive, with the right amount of humour in each. I also got the sense of Evil Dead, with the pointless mentions of horror films and Sam Raimi. Along with Halloween, when the female character is in a closet screaming for her life with the killer trying desperately;y to get in.

Although, the gore and nudity are not enough for the poor audio and visual quality of the film. When the teacher wakes up from her bed and walks down the stairs, her footsteps are so loud and hard that it seems like she was wearing boots. Distracting indeed. As well as the continuity in the film, with only one inbred killer? As well as which character dies at which moment. I couldn't tell if the breast implant chick was Jenny or Gary's sister/cousin...I can't remember. As well as the random naked chick with a dead baby hanging out of her body, still attached with the umbilical cord.

The horrible editing is distracting as well, the opening credits are too fast and disorienting. It did have a bad start and got better, but the ending just brings the film back down to a horrible level. If maybe there were better production values and more faith put into this film, then it wouldn't have been horribly butchered to death. Stay away from this film, unless you are happy with the below budget horrible bad film with decent gore.

Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain (2003)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Direct to DVD horror film about several college students traveling to Ireland where they plan on studying Druids but they end up running into the creatures who want to eat them. This film had an interesting build up and it starts out okay but things slowly fall apart from there. This is one of those movies that keeps you interested because you want to see what all unfolds but when things finally unfold it really wasn't worth your time. Another problem is that the director gives us over forty-minutes worth of dead space where nothing happens. The cast is mostly forgettable and that includes Jenna Jameson in a small cameo, although she is kind enough to show her boobs. There's some decent gore and a lot of talk regarding other horror movies but this only goes so far. There's also a scene in the movie where the kids are watching a horror movie, which is clearly meant to be Halloween since the music, killer and characters are all the same so I'm shocked the filmmakers didn't get sued here.