Effects

I am or was when I watched this, quite pleasantly surprised. The production values may not be the best (low budget and all), but the story of a movie being shot and the suspicion being there might be something real to the violence going on ... well while this may not seem like revolutionary or even new if you think about movies you've seen, but I would assume it was back then.

And it aged quite well, which has to do with quite the tight script. Some dialog and acting exercise may not feel "real", but it can be easily excused if you let yourself enjoy the movie for what it is and what it's supposed to represent. Horror movies could and did try to shock in more than one way ...

I bought this movie because I am a fan of Joe Pilato. When I bought it, I actually expected him to be a little like Capt. Rhodes (DAY OF THE DEAD). I was very wrong. This movie and his performance blew me away.

Joe Pilato plays Dom, a very likable cameraman. He's basically an every day guy. He is even funny at times. And he falls in love with his gaffer, Celeste (Susan Chapek). He is just an average guy. He wasn't the ***hole he was in DAY OF THE DEAD. Instead, the ***hole of the movie is Nicky (Tom Savini).

He is also the only one in this movie who is completely innocent.

After watching a home-made murder movie from the director, Lacey (John Harrison), he suspects the murder was real. Even after Lacey tells him it isn't. He gets very suspicious. It turns out Lacey is directing two movies. The low-budget horror movie with the set of actors. And a real horror movie with real horror and murder. It is all up to Dom to make sure that it doesn't happen.

Effects (1980)

* (out of 4)

The film takes place in Pittsburg as a crew of low-budget filmmakers are making a horror film. Before long some members start to think that it's not a fake movie but instead a snuff movie.

EFFECTS is a rather interesting film. It was shot by people in Pittsburg who were in one shape or another connected to George A. Romero. This film appears to have been in production around the same time as DAWN OF THE DEAD but it would never get an official release. It played a few showings back when it was completed and then basically disappeared. Seeing that Tom Savini and Joseph Pilato (DAY OF THE DEAD) were in the cast, it kept fans guessing at the movie and then it would eventually get an official release thanks to Synapse.

For the most part I really didn't like this movie. I will say that the story itself was quite interesting and especially how the film bounced back and forth as to if what you were watching was real or fake. The "movie within a movie" was an interesting take on the subject and there's no question that the story is years ahead of its time and especially when you consider where reality TV is today. I think the filmmakers deserves a lot of credit for the interesting story and that they didn't just try to go for gory violence.

With that said, perhaps some gory violence would have helped matters because in the end the film just didn't work for me and I honestly thought the 84-minute running time dragged quite badly. For starters, the film just had a very hard time getting me interested in anything going on. The first forty-five minutes or so are basically us just watching this film crew shoot a movie. After a while we finally get to a snuff movie being shown and this sequence was actually very well done. It was creatively shot and there's no question that it's the highlight of the picture.

The finale also works well enough and leads to an ending that you really wouldn't expect. The cast and crew are full of Pittsburg natives and it's certainly fun see Savini and Pilato here. The film has a couple gore effects but one shouldn't see Savini's name and think you're getting something like DAWN OF THE DEAD or MANIAC. I really think this is one film that could benefit from a remake and especially in this day and age.

Not that there's a specific shortage, but it's surprising sometimes that there aren't more thrillers and horror flicks that toy with film production; the possibilities are endless when the line blurs between fiction and reality. It's also surprising, perhaps, that such a low-budget and independent production should pursue such a tack, but then again, everyone involved in creating this already had considerable experience in the industry. Set these facets aside, and what's striking is that while we do get some keen horror-thriller flavors early on, there is no meaningful plot development until we hit the halfway mark. We're more than three-quarters through before the turn comes, and at that, comes from out of nowhere. Ultimately the premise is fulfilled and we get what we came for - in a manner that's unexpectedly shrewd and even more sinister than anticipated, especially as the story had seemed at first to be a little more plainspoken. I dare say the strength of the last stretch, and the revelations that it bears concerning all the preceding length, definitely help to elevate the whole and pick up the slack. I'd also be lying if I said this weren't very rough around the edges, and 'Effects' surely won't meet with significant favor from many viewers.

I don't know precisely what the history of the picture is, though I rather assume that given the overall heady, meta, if lo-fi approach to the conglomeration, larger production companies wouldn't have touched this anyway as being too unorthodox, and too risky a venture. That's unfortunate, because all told Dusty Nelson whipped up a(n adapted) story and scenario that's deliciously twisted, and if this had been produced in subsequent years I've no doubt it would have found greater financial support. This falls into that category of horror that's not scary, or even "fun scary," but which instead inspires giddy delight as the underhanded deviousness is unveiled. The foundation is very strong, and this boasts a lot of value in other regards, including excellent stunts and effects. To that point, the enthusiasm that everyone obviously had for the project is quite matched by the skill they contributed. The cast is terrific, all fully embracing their varied roles; Carl Augenstein and Toni Semple's cinematography is unrefined (likely just a reflection of the budgetary limits), but very capable and well done. Nelson's direction can probably be described in those same terms, for that matter, and Pasquale Buba's editing is very sharp. Broadly speaking this is well done.

Well done - but unpolished. It's very noteworthy that the writing effectively shoves all its plot and horror thrills to the last quarter. There's nothing wrong with this; plenty of other titles do the same, and in this case especially I don't know how the material could have been approached in any other fashion and still landed the same way. What's troubling, however, is how brusque and abrupt the shift is, for the incidents of violence in the last portion come so suddenly that if one were shaping 'Effects' as a parody then there might not be any need to drastically change anything. Prior to that, the dialogue is sometimes less than convincing if not just plain bad (note the passing and absolutely unnecessary tinge of homophobia), and the scene writing is variable. For all the good ideas that there are on hand, in the first half especially there's also a fair amount of frivolous nothing that makes one wonder when something is going to happen - an emptiness that only exacerbates the suddenness with which the plot kicks up at long length. I think the feature needed more discrete substance outside the major story beats, something to uplift the front end especially: more emphasis, perhaps, on the dynamics between the characters; subtle bread crumbs pointing toward the turn; more use of the multilayered framing to give us red herrings.

Again, this is all made better by the revelations to come in the last stretch, and overall the result is solidly entertaining. It's just that the last stretch shouldn't have had to do this much heavy lifting, and with a few tweaks, it wouldn't have. Of course, it's also possible that I'm just being overly critical, and nitpicking. All I can say is that I very much enjoyed this when all is said and done, with the caveat that I had a hard time even keeping my eyes open for a sizable portion of the runtime. Unless you're a diehard fan of someone involved, Pittsburgh-area film production, or maybe horror-thrillers that play in similar spaces, I don't think this is anything one needs to go out of their way to see, and I must repeat that the rough spots are an issue. Still, when you get down to it 'Effects' is clever, and a pretty good time, and it's worth checking out if you have the chance.

Effects is based on quite a clever idea - maybe even too clever for a slasher flick. The title, of course, refers to special effects - and that's essentially what the film is about. Effects is a slasher flick based on a bunch of people making a slasher film. The director seems obsessed with blood and gore and a cast member starts hallucinating - although that particular cast member had just been smoking weed. The director later shows his crew a film that may or not be a snuff film, and then the cast start getting picked off, though there's doubt over whether it's real or 'effects'. It really does seem that this idea was too clever for this film because it doesn't pull it off. A potentially interesting idea is turned into a snooze fest thanks to far too much talking by dull characters and a plot line that really doesn't ever get to the point. This film was apparently lost before someone resurrected it for DVD. The last 'lost' slasher film that I saw was A Night to Dismember, and like that film; this one shows that lost slashers really needn't be brought back. The most notable thing about 'effects' the fact that Tom Savini appears and does the effects, although he has had better days in both departments. We don't really get what we came for until the final third of the film and by then I was pretty bored of it. Overall, Effects is a pretty dismal slasher and I definitely don't recommend it.