3 reviews
- Woodyanders
- Nov 11, 2010
- Permalink
This is a pretty damn bland... not particularly scary, gory, sexy or funny (which you might expect because of the leads and the director). Like a good bit of low-budget horror it pads out its running time with slooooooow scenes that are both pointless and boring. Not that I've got a problem with slow moving films... when there is some point to that pacing beyond just taking up film stock to get to feature length.
Blame it on the writing. There's not really much going on with the plot or the characters... a couple wander into small town full of cannibals waylays travelers in order to eat them. No real attempt to explain the how and why this got started. There is some sort of magic ceremony involved but never gone into.
There's nowhere near the gore you'd expect after seeing other 'cannibal' or zombie movies. No dismemberment or disembowelment is shown. Just splashes of blood here and there. What limited violence there is was staged very poorly.
There is nudity, as kind of promised by the title and cover art... limited to the breasts of a few of the female cast and a couple of the males. It's neither titillating in a soft-core porn sort of way or strangely alienating as it is in Jean Rollin's better movies. It's just there.
Despite the presence of Martin and Levy there is little or no attempt at humor. They play it straight.
There's also a bit of what I call 'Porn Fancy' going on... where a movie tries to sell some element as fancy or sophisticated well past its budget and the capabilities of the cast. This film does that in places with unintentionally ridiculous results. Why pretend that it's a fancy dinner in a mansion when you don't have a mansion or the wardrobe or anyone who can play that convincingly? Just say it's a backwoods barbecue place and it won't be nearly as daft.
Really, not a good movie. No reason at all to watch it unless you're a rabid fan of the two leads and/or the director.
Blame it on the writing. There's not really much going on with the plot or the characters... a couple wander into small town full of cannibals waylays travelers in order to eat them. No real attempt to explain the how and why this got started. There is some sort of magic ceremony involved but never gone into.
There's nowhere near the gore you'd expect after seeing other 'cannibal' or zombie movies. No dismemberment or disembowelment is shown. Just splashes of blood here and there. What limited violence there is was staged very poorly.
There is nudity, as kind of promised by the title and cover art... limited to the breasts of a few of the female cast and a couple of the males. It's neither titillating in a soft-core porn sort of way or strangely alienating as it is in Jean Rollin's better movies. It's just there.
Despite the presence of Martin and Levy there is little or no attempt at humor. They play it straight.
There's also a bit of what I call 'Porn Fancy' going on... where a movie tries to sell some element as fancy or sophisticated well past its budget and the capabilities of the cast. This film does that in places with unintentionally ridiculous results. Why pretend that it's a fancy dinner in a mansion when you don't have a mansion or the wardrobe or anyone who can play that convincingly? Just say it's a backwoods barbecue place and it won't be nearly as daft.
Really, not a good movie. No reason at all to watch it unless you're a rabid fan of the two leads and/or the director.
- venusboys3
- Mar 11, 2016
- Permalink
It's amazing how many trash Eugene Levy starred in during his early career. He is now a well known comedy actors, mostly thanks to his role in the American Pie movies but it's quite amazing that he ever became a big actor once you see the stuff he starred in at the beginning of his career.
It's also even more amazing to think that this movie is directed by Ivan Reitman, the man who later brought us the movies "Stripes", "Ghostbusters", "Dave" and the more recent comedy "My Super Ex-Girlfriend". Only his trademark comedy style can be seen back in this movie. Furthermore this movie doesn't show much of Reitman's talent, which is also do of course to the movie its really bad script (also partly written by Ivan Reitman himself) and its obvious very limited money and resources. The movie lacks some good editing cuts and camera position among many other things. The movie looks like a bad '70's porn, without all of the sex (but with the nudity). It's a real amateur like looking movie.
Despite having comedy elements in it, this movie above all is a serious horror attempt from Ivan Reitman. Luckily he soon discovered his talent more lays at the comedy genre, or else we wouldn't had ever had the fine and classic comedies he made later in his career. But how can you even really regard this movie as an horror film, when it has so little gore (well, at least for a cannibal flick) in it and no scares at all.
The movie basically has a non-existent story that is hard to follow because it just doesn't make an awful lot of sense all. You'll have a hard time understanding when the movie is in flashback mode and when it's set in real time and what's real and what's not. It's the sort of script that makes you wonder why they even decided to shoot it in the first place. It's a confusingly bad made movie, that often makes you go; 'What's going on here?!'. This movie is not at all what you could and should expect from a cannibal flick.
It's just not an awfully interesting movie to watch, since too little interesting is ever happening in it. It's not even interesting as a study of an early Ivan Reitman movie. There is really no reason why you should ever watch this bad '70's flick.
3/10
http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
It's also even more amazing to think that this movie is directed by Ivan Reitman, the man who later brought us the movies "Stripes", "Ghostbusters", "Dave" and the more recent comedy "My Super Ex-Girlfriend". Only his trademark comedy style can be seen back in this movie. Furthermore this movie doesn't show much of Reitman's talent, which is also do of course to the movie its really bad script (also partly written by Ivan Reitman himself) and its obvious very limited money and resources. The movie lacks some good editing cuts and camera position among many other things. The movie looks like a bad '70's porn, without all of the sex (but with the nudity). It's a real amateur like looking movie.
Despite having comedy elements in it, this movie above all is a serious horror attempt from Ivan Reitman. Luckily he soon discovered his talent more lays at the comedy genre, or else we wouldn't had ever had the fine and classic comedies he made later in his career. But how can you even really regard this movie as an horror film, when it has so little gore (well, at least for a cannibal flick) in it and no scares at all.
The movie basically has a non-existent story that is hard to follow because it just doesn't make an awful lot of sense all. You'll have a hard time understanding when the movie is in flashback mode and when it's set in real time and what's real and what's not. It's the sort of script that makes you wonder why they even decided to shoot it in the first place. It's a confusingly bad made movie, that often makes you go; 'What's going on here?!'. This movie is not at all what you could and should expect from a cannibal flick.
It's just not an awfully interesting movie to watch, since too little interesting is ever happening in it. It's not even interesting as a study of an early Ivan Reitman movie. There is really no reason why you should ever watch this bad '70's flick.
3/10
http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
- Boba_Fett1138
- Jun 17, 2008
- Permalink