Porkchop

Well, I'd been kind of looking forward to seeing this movie, as it had a cool hand drawn cover of the title character and the tagline bragged of 80's style horror. I was really hoping that I'd have some fun with this film, so I decided to pop it in tonight and see what it was all about. Well, what it seemed to be all about was breaking the cardinal rule of low budget horror films: Do Not Be Boring!

Porkchop is a no-budget movie shot on video, and it starts off terribly with an awful heavy metal tune titled "Porkchop" running over the opening credits of real footage of pigs being butchered in a slaughterhouse. As far as disturbing, or gross, this would be the highlight of the film.

It's the classic tale of getting a group of buddies together to go on a camping trip out in the woods where a rural legend just happens to still be around. We have six "buddies", and one robot. You heard me right, a robot is among the cast for the entire movie, spouting off terrible one liners and being the most annoying of all of the annoying characters in the movie. That's another big no-no that this movie has in store for us. There is not one character to root for in the film. Not one of them would we miss if they ended up on the end of Porkchop's chainsaw. The only thing that seemed to matter to me was hoping that all of the female characters got topless at least once. That one wish was almost fulfilled, as our lead female character does not lose her clothes during the film.

There were some characters that were so bad at acting that I wondered if there was even a script being used at some points. Some of the lines being read, or made up were so poorly acted that I wanted to hide my face in shame for them. I sure hope they got paid well, but somehow I doubt it. Taking a camera into the woods, and filming your friends trying to do scary things can be fun for the people doing it, but not always fun for the people that get to watch what you've made out of it.

The film had no sense of urgency, no atmosphere, no tension, and worst of all, no action at all until the one hour mark. Any attempts among the characters to make any type of jokes or humor fall completely flat. The only interesting time I had was during the campfire scene when the legend of Porkchop was told. It seemed to be the only part of the movie that drew me in for a few minutes, and was quickly discarded as the characters reverted back to their boring nature after that one scene was completed. No matter how many times the actors referenced different 80's icons, it did not look or feel anything like an 80's film like it had been advertised as. And seeing female teenage (supposedly) characters with tattoos and tramp stamps didn't help create any 80's vibe either.

Yes, this film was a disappointment for a lot of reasons. As little as I could let myself get into the film, I still saw mistakes that the filmmakers must have seen themselves and didn't want to, or couldn't afford to fix. A girl has no flashlight in one scene, then suddenly she has one in the next. Even so bad as to start a kill with a long handled buzz saw, and finish the scene with the killer holding a chainsaw. Inexcusable. There is no reason at all that you should need to see this film, unless you choose morbid curiosity, and then you'll just be torturing yourself.

"Partying, mayhem and gore...80's style."

So says the tag-line for "Porkchop", a micro-budget throwback to "kids are killed in the woods" slasher movies from the 80's. Maybe it's because I recently watched "Rabies", which managed to do something new with the backwoods slasher movie, but I found this to be a pretty bad movie all around.

The plot goes like this: Deborah (Ruby Larocca), Mike (Charles Sullivan), Chris (Chris Woodall), Ian (Brandon Raker), Courtney (Sierra Ferrell) and Rachael (Erin Russ) go to the woods for sex, drugs and good times. Also, they bring around a goofy talking robot named Elron (voiced by Danny Hicks of "Evil Dead II", "Darkman" and "The Intruder" fame.) Long story short, there's a hulking man wearing a pig-head mask known as Porkchop (Robert Cobb) that has murder on his mind, and you know what goes on from there.

While the killer is pretty bad-ass and the kills are gory as hell and usually inventive (with the gore and make-up effects actually looking pretty great), "Porkchop" is pretty bad. In some ways, it kind of reminded me of Drew Rosas' "Blood Junkie" in the fact that it wants so much to be like the slasher movies from the 80's, what with it's 80's fashions, bad hair, bad pop music, etc. However, "Blood Junkie" at least made me laugh. This movie was just annoying, with all of the jokes being deliberately bad. My problem with this is the fact that I hate it when a movie acknowledges that it isn't exactly a good movie, and just goes "f#@k it." Deliberately making bad jokes doesn't excuse anything. In fact, that just makes it worse.

In the process, everything else about the movie is just poorly done. Eamon Hardiman directs the whole thing as if it were his first motion picture, and that would be forgiving if it was (it's not.) The entire stretch before the kills start to occur is just a pain to sit through, with actors mugging for the camera and doing next to nothing interesting. Speaking of which, it takes way too long for the kills to start to happen, and by the time they do, you'll hardly be awake. This is a movie that, as I said, wants so much to capture the vibe of 80's slasher movies, but it lacks the most important element: fun. There's hardly anything in this movie that's remotely enjoyable. It just feels like a group of people goofing off with their home video equipment in the woods, and not like the tongue-in-cheek slasher fun-fest it wants to be.

If you want to see a fun, 80's style slasher movie-then go watch an actual 80's slasher movie like "The Prowler." It'd be a much better choice than watching a bunch of people play pretend for 92 minutes.

Porkchop is an uninspired, flaccid mess and i want my money back!. I love monster movies but there is nothing positive to say about this awful thing. Horrendous acting and poor cinematography are only the tip of the iceberg. If the dialogue wasn't totally improvised on the spot then the writing may be the worst I have ever experienced. If you like parody, comedy or horror, AVOID the hell out of this embarrassing pile of pig poo. I would give it NO stars if IMDb would let me. Stick with Motel Hell or Slaughterhouse if you want a killer in a pig mask. Or try Madison County, a movie that is pretty awful but is still miles ahead of Porkchop. Much of the plot and style are ripped off from other, more talented movie makers, only filtered through the minds of those with no talent, originality or creativity. Reading the few positive reviews above, I must assume they were written by cast and crew members. This is the only explanation I can imagine that would result in any one NOT trashing this putrid excuse for entertainment. I would normally say nice try to the film makers, but having viewed their " work " I'm guessing they either didn't try or they are untalented to the extreme. Just because you CAN make a movie doesn't mean you SHOULD. Stick with your day jobs, folks and leave the art to the artists!!

Porkchop from Independent Entertainment and Alternative Cinema is a well-done satire homage to classic low budget 80s slasher cinema. Directed and produced by Eamon Hardiman, a native of Charleston, West Virginia, a location not to far from The Liberal Dead's main headquarters in eastern Kentucky. The film revolves around a group of six young campers and a robot that retreat into the backwoods of West Virginia for a weekend of booze, drugs, and wild sex inside the abandoned Camp Wood. Soon, a weekend of debauchery turns into a fight for survival when the campers are hunted by a chainsaw-wielding psychopath in a pig mask looking to spill the blood of all those who roam into his territory. The film stars Ruby LaRocca, who readers may remember from Evan Makrogiannis' The Super, Erin Russ (Devil Sister), Ford Austin (Dahmer Vs. Gacy) and Brian Gunnoe. Porkchop will be hitting DVD on December 6th and digital markets.

A lot of filmmakers these days try to recreate the look and feel of classic grind house and 80s era film, but often fall short of really capturing the true look and feel. That is not the case with Porkchop; this film pays very close attention to every minute detail when it comes to creating an authentic low budget 80s horror experience. From a opening featuring an 80s thrash metal theme song that shares the title of the film, to the clever use of 80s products and pop culture references, it is hard to believe this is not some lost film that has been discovered from the era. There is two scenes in particular that really made me take notice of this, both featuring a duo of backwoods store clerks, one of whom is reading an issue of the Alf comic at one point and later in the film an actual classic issue of Fangoria Magazine from the proper era.

I found myself constantly laughing during my viewing and remembering all the hours I spent watching films of this nature as a kid. The film does a great job at creating a high level of nostalgia for old-school horror fans that grew up with horrible acting and micro budget special effects. This is most definitely the perfect type of movie to watch with a group of friends while munching out and cracking wise. One of my favorite aspects of the film is the fact it does not take it self to serious, this is where many attempts to recreate the feeling of a classic 80s slasher start to fail, people seem to forget that a lot of 80s horror was very campy in nature and notorious for poking fun at itself. With that said keep in mind that Porkchop features one of the best robot kill scenes known to man.

My only complaint with this flick is it really needed more gore; this is the only factor that held it back from being the perfect recreation of the genre and era. While there are some fairly gory kills, it really could have been amped up and in my opinion should have been. The gorier kills do all look good considering the filmmaker's dedication in keeping things legitimately 80s feeling. There is one scene, towards the very end of the film involving a foot stomp that I must admit put a smile across my sick twisted face. However, other than this minor complaint, I really had a blast watching Porkchop in the wee hours of the morning as if I was a mere boy sneaking up to watch horror films on HBO once again.

If you want to take a trip back to the days of when Wizard Video, Paragon, and Super Video filled your local mom and pop video store shelves with over sized VHS boxes, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Porkchop then sitting down with some friends for a night of campy fun. - The Liberal Dead

This film truly sucks, don't listen to the long review. he must work for them or something. I was bored enough to sit through the entire monstrous mess and if there was any way of me getting this time back I would take it. I can't begin to explain how many levels this film fails on. To list them all would take someone even more bored than I am now - and believe me - for me to be bothered to write this - if you knew me - you would know that this is really really bad.

All I can do is write this review in the hope it may save some of you people making the same mistake as I did.

If this is meant to be some sort of 'parody' it fails because at the end of the day its not entertaining and the actors 'pretend' wooden-ness just comes across as plain old wooden-ness.

You have been warned. Watch at your peril!!