User reviews

First, here we have a non pretentious movie with a great cast and 80's style gore-action. Second, looks like the director was inspired by movies like From Dusk Till Dawn or Hobo with a shotgun and Carpenter's Vampires. Last, I really appreciate the effort of creating something decent here and in some ways it accomplished. To add, decent performances and great 80's stylish music. So, overall a great B-movie entertainment.

With "Bliss", Joe Begos shot right up to the top of my favorite horror directors, and "VFW" continues his wildly fun reign successfully. While it's not without its faults, "VFW" raises true grindhouse hell, soaked in neon, coated in the grainy 16mm aesthetic, full of gory delights & led by a truly amazing, in-for-it-all veteran cast. What else could a man want?

"VFW" is a much too rare type of movie in our era, which is not saying much, it being universally acknowledged as an 80's throwback midnight flick, but we need more movies like this. I do. "VFW" is highly and undeniably entertaining from start to finish, full of splatterhouse action, practical FX mayhem, various kills and thrills - all the goodies a horror fan needs. The real attraction, however, is the movie's core cast, the 80's stars in an 80's kind of movie. Stephen Lang, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, William Sadler and more provide snappy, relatable and just plain awesome characters having fun together and killing punks. A simple siege scenario, a classic good guys vs. bad guys idea, no twists, just a straight-forward, easily digestible fun. From a critical point of view, "VFW" lacks depth, feels a little disposable, has a high enough predictability factor & doesn't have all that much to say, but, frankly, throughout the 90 minutes, I couldn't care less. The script by Brallier and McArdle doesn't always hit the spot, not the entirety of the grizzled, old-school me-and-the-boys dialogues come off as organic & the narrative is shallow enough, but Joe Begos knows exactly how to treat it. Taking "VFW" on its own terms, nothing can go wrong, it's kinda like a grindhouse-indie "The Expendables", just cooler and with a lot more sauce.

"VFW", however flawed, will (and has) find its place in the heart of genre fans for it can't really fail, only in the hands of those who despise violence, old-school shenanigans & everything's that awesome. Joe Begos is, without a doubt, one of the best directors working the indie scene right now & I'm eager to hear what's next in store for us. My rating: 7/10

VFW is a low budget grindhouse actioner in the style of the 70's and 80's. This is a siege flick in the vein of John Carpenter's Assault On Presinct 13. Steve Lang heads an ensemble cast of old school bad ass actors that includes some of my favorites including William Sadler, Fred Williamson, David Patrick Kelly and Martin Kove. The cast had a great rapport and chemistry and must survive the night at the VFW against an hoard of drug addicts. These old timer war vets take out the trash in a brutal violent matter. The film looks really grainy with bad lighting to sometimes make it difficult to tell what is going on. But for a Gonzo cheapazoid action flick this gets the job done for some gory and trashy entertainment.

VFW was a surprisingly enjoyable and entertaining movie. The acting was good all around and the main protagonists are so likeable that right off the bat you care for them. The dialogue was good and there was nice humor added to the mix along with a good plot and ending. To make it all better, the gore was insane, so of the craziest stuff I've seen in a modern day film, the gore is so great, that's all the movie needed to be good, they just went the extra mile and made a great movie on top of that.

Joe Begos is quickly becoming my absolut favorite indie director. Coming off his fantastic down n' dirty vampire flick Bliss, he is now back with his take on the classic siege film, doused in his trademarks of excessive gore, synth/metal score and neon lights.

The overall story is the very definition of simplicity and works all the better for it. It truly feels like a movie from a bygone Era populated with rugged old-times battling leatherclad junk peddlers to the blood spattered end.

If you love movies like Carpenter' Assault on Precinct 13/Escape from New York, I'm confident you'll find something here to your liking.

Hope you enjoy it.

Love siege movies. This one is an obvious tribute to Carpenter + the gore. It even has a Carpenter like ostinatto synth music at the beginning which establishes the menacing mood as in Assault On Precint 13. Still, the movie falls short in every aspect. The cast is good but their performance is shaky. Lang, more than anyone, is the weakest. The guy who plays the ranger is also bad. The mood is also destroyed by some mediocre continutiy. One moment a dear friend of theirs die and the next they are all laughing and delivering tacky lines. At this point in the movie, the music turns into obnoxious generic sounds. While the gore is there, the dark images prevent us from seeing it and enjoying it (a recourse to hide low budget effects maybe?). Still, it is fun to watch, the great William Sadler is in it, and it's a great (although poorly executed) Carpenter tribute.

Or the More Expendable Expendables. Nice little low budget action movie. It doesn't pretend much so it kind of delivers. Lots of gore and fighting but little in the way of plot or drama.

I really enjoyed this movie. It reminded me of Peter Jackson's and Sam Raimi's early work. It feels like a total appreciation for anything "John Carpenter".

The gore is *chefs kiss*, the soundtrack is one of the best I've heard for a while, electro-bass pumping during the action. It's a great fun move worth your time.

The only previous work of director Joe Begos that I watched was "Almost Human", which was a likeable and entertaining - albeit unmemorable - throwback to alien invasion flicks & body horror of the 1980s. "VFW" can also be categorized as homage-horror, yet this time Begos aims his periscope at the 70s, and processes typically contemporary cult themes in his film, like (Vietnam) veteran vigilante squads and violent sieges. Fellow fans of that era will definitely recognize the subtle and less subtle references towards classics like "Assault on Precinct 13", "Rolling Thunder", "Escape from New York", "The Exterminator" and a handful of others.

"VFW" is highly unoriginal, but Joe Begos is a clever guy and realizes that approximately 80% of the success-rate for this type of movies is determined by the casting. The group he assembled for "VFW" is downright awesome, and undoubtedly the greatest asset of the entire film. What self-respecting fan of horror & cult wouldn't want to see a blood-soaked vigilante thriller starring cool old blokes, like Stephen Lang, William Sadler, David Patrick Kelly, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove and George Wendt? They all star as "Veterans of Foreign Wars", currently useless in the eyes of society, but still gathering in their lair to drink beer and remember the old days. They are forced to demonstrate their combat skills one last time when the bar is invaded by derailed, psychopathic junkies. Good unscrupulous fun, but the camerawork is often very hectic and the lighting is very poor.

When I saw the cast for this movie, I must admit that I was impressed, and it was definitely a movie that I had to sit down and watch. So I must admit that I had some expectations to the movie.

And now that I've seen it, I can say that the movie was adequately entertaining. However, the script and storyline was weak and offered nothing new to the audience. In fact, it was sort of not really enough to sustain a whole movie on. And with that being said, I must state that it was the cast and their performances that salvaged the movie, as the script and storyline had massive shortcomings.

"VFW" is the type of movie that you watch once and take in the impressive cast ensemble, much like "The Expendables", and chances are that you will quickly forget about the movie, because the storyline was so flaccid and mediocre.

There is a good amount of action and violence in the movie, which definitely was one of the reasons why the movie also was bearable to sit through, aside from the casts performances.

This 2019 movie is adequate for a single viewing, but ultimately it ended up as being a very mediocre experience when you look at the movie as a whole. As such, my rating of "VFW" ends on a five out of ten stars.

Saw this without watching the trailer n was pleasantly surprised. The poster with the old fellas with various weapons in their hands were suffice to entice me into seeing this film.

We have Martin Kove, Stephen Lang, William Sadler, David Patrick Kelly, Fred Williamson n George Wendt.

The plot has been done umpteenth no of times but that shud not deter u from seeing this transgressively violent n deeply '70s style thriller.

The film's pacing is taut, performances r good, the gore is over the top and the only drawback is the film's lighting and cinematography, maybe the budget, but then again this shud not deter u from seeing this film.

Some of the scenes r purposely grimy with a worn-out look. Few attack scenes r shot in a very fast forward way with bad lighting which makes it hard to distinguish what's happening. The gore effects, the camaraderie between the oldies, taut pacing n the action compensates the minor flaws.

Fans of Rio Bravo, Night Of The Living Dead, Assault On Precinct 13, Straw Dogs, Cyborg n Mulberry St. will definitely enjoy this low budget gem.

P.S. Watch out for the antlers kill scene n the knee to face smashing one. By the way William Sadler needs to lose some weight n his puffy face but it was good to see him in a major role, that too with a chainsaw n driving Deuce and a Half straight into the enemy's face.

VFW is a frustrating film. Granted, it's about exactly what would happen if you handed me $300,000 and an action script but it suffers from a few shortcomings. Let's talk about some of the good here first:

1) The music! It's synth wave at its purest form hearkening to the best of Mitch Murder, Perturbator, Lazerhawk, Night Stop, and the like. I think the general 80's throw-back aesthetic and sound design really can work here and there (see HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN or the first half of MANDY) and has a lot of promise in it.

2) The casting of so many 70' & 80's tough guys in sort of a "dream team" that doesn't disappoint. When a young guy walks into the bar and joins them, alarm bells were going off in my head that this movie was going to revolve around him and that Williamson, Kove, DPK, and Sadler were just going to disappear into minor cameo roles. Luckily they're all given fairly meaty parts though only Lang and DPK really put much effort into believable delivery. The two of them really sell it as the reliable character actors that they are, further cementing in their legacies even when acting in this lower-tier B-movie stuff. We get minimal stunt doubles and get to see these septuagenarians actually get to throw their weight around one last time, for better or worse.

3) Generally it takes itself fairly seriously. There's plenty of violence, gore, and suffering to go around pretty much as you'd hope for and expect. It moves at a fairly quick pace and doesn't descend into goofy lunacy like we've seen in a number of Robert Rodriguez films, including PLANET TERROR which arguably started this whole niche of the throwback genre in the first place.

And now the bad:

1) Hideous cinematography. While the well-intentioned color scheme reminds you of something out of a Mario Bava or John Carpenter movie, it lacks in any kind of vividness. Many shots suffer from muddy under-exposed look and amateurish color correction. You could argue that it's meant to make this film feel more 70's grindhouse but just comes off as flat and lazy. At the very least they could have tried to separate the characters from the background better with keylights and backlighting, but instead it feels and looks inconsistent and dull. Camera placement also suffers heavily from boring staging and never properly establishing the geography of the two locations that we get.

2) Pedestrian directing. There's a lot of posing and hanging out from the actors but not a high degree of consistency or tension created. I am guessing the director had about as big a crush on the main "bad girl" actress as I did, probably to the point where he was reluctant to call her out on some of her awkward line delivery. She does have some good moments such as the "are you ready to die... old... MAN!" but unfortunately needed to get reigned in a little more. She's 100% more effective than the actual lead villain though. Since they put so much effort into rounding up the geriatric tough guys of yesteryear, would it be too much to ask for them to get an actual tough guy to play the villain?

3) Things are not helped either by the generally banal dialog and total lack of characterization. We know we're in big trouble early on when all the characters get together in a bar and start bantering with each other. It becomes clear that this banter is going to be the only window into each character that we're going to get as they become stock Vietnam vet cliches. Fred Williamson's character especially gets totally wasted as he's there but we have no idea what he wants or who he is. That goes for most of them, making us see them not as characters but as the actors that they are, and it gets confusing when they call each other by their non-actor names.

4) Unfortunately the universe of the film makes no sense. We're introduced to the city they're in as a dystopian lawless hellscape but a young soldier walks into the VFW fresh off of a deployment in his modern fatigues. If the U.S. government is still powerful enough to project force overseas, why would it allow warzones within its borders? Or is this some kind of vague social commentary on cities like Chicago with a murder rate higher than Afghanistan? It would have helped to throw a news report on the TV at the beginning instead of some vintage exercise video. That probably would have been asking too much.

If this sounds like your thing, go ahead and give it a go, but be aware that it's exactly what you assume it's going to be from looking at the poster.

Not bad. Steven Lang, who I'm totally into, leads an all old cast playing Vietnam vets who need to stop a gang of punks coked out of their minds who want something from a young girl who runs into the bar their drinking at.

The cast includes Corba Kai's Marian Kove and the legendary Fred Williams. These two have made careers of their senior years playing Vietnam vets. William Saddler is also in the film as well as the guy who plays Norm on Cheers and the guy who says "Warriors come out to play-yee" In the Warriors. It's a stellar cast of known people who I love, going after a group of punks who are easy to forget.

The movie could have used a better director or screenplay cause I feel more could have been done with the conversations these Manly men of the big screen were having, but the film does fall back on the violence pretty good. It has that going for it.

Definitely watchable!

Dark, so dark! Don't try to watch it during the day time, be sure to wait for the night. Otherwise you will miss the half of it cause everything is so dark. So many cheesy and unnecessary dialogues. Lastly wtf happened to William Sandler, couldn't recognize the dude. On the brighter side Fred can still act though.

What a great movie! I thoroughly enjoyed "almost human" and "the minds eye", this one is very different but with a similar crafted atmosphere and retro vibe. I normally don't like comparisons to other movies, but "green room" meets "from dusk till dawn" definitely comes to mind. Fun characters and lots of well crafted gore...Not a serious movie but a movie to take serious. Suspenseful and very well acted. Loved it so much, but not everyone's cup of tea

This is definitely a movie of 2 halves. The first half a little boring, some dodgy character development and not much else.

The 2nd half...it on!

Plenty of fun kills and stupid action and dialogue that really does feel like the 80's.

Overall a really good fun movie for those of us that are in to this kind of B-grade amusement :)

Dark lighting and vhs quality aren't good things to add to a movie, especially a very generic one that's bad to begin with, only thing I was looking forward to was Martin cove and the black guys knife and martins character sucked and the knife was never used

You can almost tell the ages of the reviewers by the scores they are giving this one. This is an 80s throwback Grindhouse classic. Everything about it feels 80s.

For those around in the 80s this stars every classic character actor all in one movie; Stephen Lang, Martin Kove, William Sadler, David Patrik Kelly, Fred Williamson, George Wendt all as a group of OAP army veterans who get together in a bar one night to celebrate one of their birthdays and reminiss on the old days in Vietnam.

Suddenly a girl runs in with a bag full of stolen drugs and a team of drug fuelled nuts hell bent on killing her, and everyone in the bar just to get it back. And thus, 80mins of nonstop home invasion franticness ensures.

This is right up there with the original Assault on Precinct 13, Straw Dogs and Feast for high intensity craziness.

I really hope another movie gets made with the same set of actors. As it is a masterstroke putting them together and they have such good chemistry together. Try and get Robert Englund in the next movie if you do too. He would fit right in.

What a fun ride! Those guys are good , Stephen Lang kills it ( no pun intended ) . Scenes are too dark and always green or red that's annoying, but overall there's action non stop, a lot of blood and it's also moving at times. Good one.

Terrible lighting which made this movie very difficult to follow. Inexplicably the bar had a power cut setting the film up in near darkness. Why? Low score for the lighting alone.

Fans of Planet Terror, Assault on Precinct 13, Hobo with a Shotgun, Machete, Green Room, & other ultra-violent bloodbaths should get some enjoyment from this. It's pretty standard fare if you know what you're getting into- nothing groundbreaking or overly interesting but you've got your hordes of "mutant" punks storming a ragtag group of survivors with their backs against the wall, dark cinematography & crunchy kills. If you're on this review page to begin with, what else are you really looking for? Go for it!

VFW is one AWESOME late night bloodbath of a movie, a low-budget old school B-movie straight from the 1980's & as if the legendary Director John Carpenter crafted this flick back in his glory days but of course Carpenter would've made it way better, but it has a Carpenter vibe.

"VFW" is so much fun especially if you grew up watching & loving all those old bloody & gory Horror-Thriller films on video, i did & John Carpenter is my all time favourite movie director & here there's homage to his gritty & ultra-violent 70's Classic Assault on Precinct 13 & a big dose of Troma sick flicks & just the general 80's vibe, look & dark atmosphere with great music to complete it's throwback quality.

My one main complaint is that the girl who comes to the bar for help is annoying & she can't act at all, Terrible dialogue from a horrible ungrateful character named "Lizard" i hated her & the other complaint i had was the actual bad guys or punk gang wasn't scary at all, not intimidating or really threatening at all as there was many chances they could've took & easily overrun that VFW bar!!!! It definitely would've been alot better if the threat was actually there & the gangs were actually scary.

Also it should've been more realistic & scary instead of over the top fantasy as there's nothing in here realistic at all but i guess that's the fun of it all, a gory little low-budget late-night B-movie.

Here this little story is about an old group of war buddies who hang out in a battered old den/bar for "VFW" folk, that's Veterans of Foreign Wars & here we get a fantastic team of great B-movie actors that have to team up Like the old days & protect & board up their little bar against a gang of drugged-up street punks as they lay siege to the bar when a young punk chick enters for protection from the punks & our team of old soldiers get another chance at action & must use any weapon available.

Now the America shown in VFW is almost a wasteland full of junkies & punk gangs & everything is grim & gritty, America is in a dark place with a new drug called Hype, i got vibes of the first two Robocop films, Mad Max 2, Assault on Precinct 13, From Dusk Till Dawn, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, The Warriors, John Carpenter films, Hobo With a Shotgun, Troma films & typical Gritty 80's Horror Thriller flicks, basically this is a fun piece of grainy & grimy Grindhouse Cinema for the Video era generation.

We get a great line-up of AWESOME B-movie stars like the Brilliant William Sadler (Die Hard 2, Trespass, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Demon Knight) a veteran of awesome Cult Cinema & one of my favourite actors of all time & Sadler is an underrated legend & here Sadler gives one of his best performances of his long Career in the meaty role of an army jacket wearing & very funny Walter, a great Show stealing role & that's because of Sadler's screen presence & likeability, also we get the intense Stephen Lang (Don't Breathe) as bar owner Fred, who is one tough dude & also we get the legendary Blaxploitation & B-movie legend Fred Williamson, a great presence who first came to my attention in the Cult Classic Tarantino/Rodriguez Horror-Thriller From Dusk Till Dawn (One of my all time favourite films) but this guy has been in so much but "Dawn" is what always comes to mind when i see him & this movie is very much a mix of Assault on Precinct 13 & From Dusk Till Dawn, anyway the very old Williamson plays the still hard & super Cool Abe & gets the best line in the whole movie & delivers it so Cool & calm it's just pure Awesomeness "Let's See What All This Rumblings About" to finish off our main group of old war vets are David Patrick (The Warriors, Commando, 48 hrs) as the hippy looking Doug & Martin Kove (The Karate Kid) as the smartly dressed Lou & even Norm from Cheers is sat at the bar lol & each have their own Cult following for their great & iconic roles in plenty of Cult Classic flicks. As you can see the cast is Awesome, just missing Robert Patrick, Ron Perlman & Danny Trejo in my opinion, maybe star in a sequel? I can dream.

VFW is a gory as hell splatter flick that's full of great moments & excellent characters bits & an exciting & gritty Survive the night scenario with a huge gloss of Carpenter style poured all over it & gorgeous Neon-soaked sets of red & blue & a fantastic synthesizer theme that feels menacing & dangerous, this is a fun survive-the-night film & made very similar to the 90's Classic From Dusk Till Dawn but there's still sum gems out there like The Green Room, Don't Breathe & Run all Night, for example.

A good bit of gory fantasy, old Vhs style late night flick full of over-the-top violence & foul mouthed funny characters & a show stealing performance from Bill Sadler!!!