A Noite dos Tommyknockers

There are not a lot of scary westerns to choose from so I thought I would give it a try.

This was bad, I mean really bad.

Bad story, Very Bad Acting, Overall Bad Movie.

I have sat through bad movies (and I have seen my share) but I couldn't even watch this one to the end.

About halfway through the movie is about as far as I could watch.

The storyline had potential BUT the acting was truly that bad. It wasn't just one or two actors, but all of the actors were that bad. I was surprised that Tom Sizemore agreed to do this move.

If you choose to ignore this review and watch this movie, do not say that you were not warned!!

Tons of micro-budget westerns flood the DTV space yearly, most best left unseen, but sometimes worthwhile fare emerges. The itch for more horror-westerns led me to Night of the Tommyknockers. Not good but not a disaster; it's under 90 minutes and doesn't shy away from monster gore once the bandits-vs-lawmen first half leaves its outlaws in a gold-rush ghost town besieged by gnarled Descent rejects.

If you can accept the meager production values this kind of film must scrounge up today, then this is an overly-talky obviously-cheap yet still enjoyable creature feature. Just mind the acting; although even that in regard, the actual character dynamics were fun in spite of the bad-to-average performances but I got to grade on a curve considering how rare horror-westerns are, let alone ones as relatively focused and action-filled as this.

The movie opens with the Dirk Gang robbing a bank somewhere. One of them guts the bank manager because he's a psycho and likes to stab people I guess. They get away with the loot but a bounty hunter is on their trail and the brother of the murdered bank manager vows revenge. They decide to head to the town of...(Google)...the generically named town of Deer Creek because there's supposed to be gold there. They arrive in town to find it apparently deserted. Their plan to rob the bank fails because there's no one there to open the safe. They soon find some survivors holed up in the saloon and some monsters attack. They are supposed to be Tommyknockers but they bear pretty much no resemblance to the Tommyknockers of folklore.

This movie is all over the place. Some of the cast are veteran actors like Robert LaSordo while others seem like friends of the filmmakers that were given small parts. Some of the gore effects are passable and some are laughable. The monster costumes are not bad for a low budget movie but they aren't very good either. The story is really disjointed. There are little Western movie vignettes that don't really have much to do with anything. Characters appear only to get killed off almost immediately. Things just happen without a lot of rhyme or reason. At one point, a character has a revelation about the monsters that isn't really based on anything and makes no sense considering what they have been doing but is, of course, entirely correct. Things happen that leave you wondering why that didn't happen a while ago. The ending is really rushed.

The movie isn't terrible. I have certainly seen much worse Western horror movies. It's just kind of disjointed and meandering. There's a lot of stuff that seems to have been just thrown in to pad the run time or because Western movies have this.

There's "A", "B" and then this thing which is chock full of bad acting, horrible special effects and no direction. Bad lighting contributes as does the acting which is just pitiful. Watched 5 minutes and wish I could get this time back. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for a good "B" movie but this looks like a bad grade school production. Some actors I recognize from 90's movies and I know have some talent. I guess they need the work but for this movie, I think they should have passed. The other "actors" seem to forget their lines at times. I'm certain queue cards were behind the camera. WHY did I try this!

Oh my, I can't believe I wasted my time on this. The intro was just PAINFUL ... I have seen better acting at the community playhouse downtown.

Then the meat of the movie started. I am not sure what was worse, the absolutely waste of a script, the poor timing of the directing, the even poorer camera work, or the even worse scene staging.

Sad too. It seemed a few of the actors actually had some talent and were hoping to make a go of it. And unlike many low budget films, this one actually sported more than just 4 people for the entirety of the movie. There were actually moments of good acting, but a VERY few bright spots can't make up for the rest of the problems.

Hope no one was hoping this film was gong to be their 'big break'.