Honey Britches

(1971) Demented Death Farm Massacre/ Honey Britches THRILLER/ COMEDY DRAMA

Co-produced and directed by Donn Davison that has four convicts on the run from the police riding their jeep until it runs out of gas. Leading the group is Phillip Courtney (Jim Peck) and his girlfriend, Karen (Trudy Moore) and Kirk Taylor ( Mike Coolik) and his girlfriend, Suzanne (Pepper Thurston) as their jeep runs out of gas. They are then forced to walk and soon stumble onto a farm with a single hillbilly wife, Reba Sue Craven (Ashley Brooke) waiting at home for her husband, Horlon (George Ellis). Complicating matters is when one of the criminals holds them hostage and begins to seduce Horlon's wife, Reba Sue The movie has poor acting, low budget, using an idea used a dozen times, and just when one presumes there is nudity in there, there is perhaps a breast scene and that is basically it.

There are certain movies you just HAVE TO watch if only for their titles alone. With such a title you automatically tend to think "how bad can it possibly be … right?" Of course, only a few minutes into the film and you can't but realize how awful it is and all of a sudden the title doesn't sound that funny anymore. A few minutes … that's how long it takes in order to be exposed to a world of horrible acting performances by randomly selected yokels, incomprehensible dialog and no plot development whatsoever. During the intro we have John Carradine (him again … the more bad B-movies I discover, the more I encounter his fatigue face) murmuring something about being the devil and thus He who decides whether a person goes to hell or not. Apparently this sequence, and a couple of other ones featuring Carradine, where edited into the film by Fred Olen Ray afterwards! Okay, now I understand how Olen Ray has over 110 movies on his repertoire as a director and Carradine over 340 as an actor! Anyway, after the Judge of Hell's bizarre uttering, we switch towards a remote countryside setting. We have a party of four, people that couldn't possibly look less connected to each other, wandering through the woods and finding shelter in a secluded farm house. Apparently they are fugitive jewel thieves, but these people honestly look way too dumb to commit any sort of theft, let alone jewelery. You would then subsequently expect for the "Demented Death Farm Massacre" to ensue, but no … First there's a lot of arguing about the difference between stealing a jeep and picking up what other people threw away (seriously, who "throws away" a jeep?) and other totally random and nonsensical gibberish. The fattest and ugliest redneck I've ever seen is married to a beautiful young girl with impressive cleavage. It is later explained that her father owed the fat bastard $200 and they settled it with a marriage. That's hillbilly logic for you! Every dialog is drawn out five or six times more than necessary and the "action" sequences are shot in slow-motion. They literally do everything here in order to reach a normal playtime. The absolute most shameless attempt to fill up the running time is an extremely long monologue of a guy talking to God. Seriously, FOUR full minutes of staring at a dumb yokel talking to the sky! There's so much talking in this movie, it's crazy. Either the screenplay contained approximately 7,000 pages or these rednecks were just instructed to improvise whatever the wanted. Naturally, there's also a chase through the woods guided by the obligatory banjo music and incompetent cinematography. In the end, the only "demented" thing about this movie is that there are idiots like myself who watch it. The "Death Farm" is just a shed in somebody's garden and the only farming tool used in the "Massacre" is a pitchfork. Lame.

A classic exploitation title for a film with almost no exploitation features in it, this tame affair is hugely disappointing on every level. A low budget, cheap effects and amateur acting are all to be expected in films such as these, but the lack of action in the film - which doesn't pick up until the last twenty minutes - is intensely disappointing. This was my first exposure to a Troma film and it left me pretty deflated, but at least the trailer for A NYMPHOID BARBARIAN IN DINOSAUR HELL looks cool.

So, the film has little happening except characters talking to each other a lot, and slapping each other and shouting. Big deal. There are also some incredibly racist attitudes towards the 'redneck' Bible-thumping farmers, which are intended as comedy but I'm not sure. The trouble with the film is the lack of any exploitative features. No nudity, swearing, violence, anything to get excited about. When the murders finally arrive the camera shies away from them, and all we get is a little bit of fake blood. At least some effort could have been taken with them, bad effects are better than no effects! This may be because this was actually filmed FIFTEEN YEARS before being released by Troma!

The only thing the film has going for it are some humorous performances from the two male leads. The first, that of the farmer Harlan, is pretty funny, and he's a weird guy - he hates his wife but lusts after local prostitutes, he's apparently dim-witted but violent when he wants to be. He also looks a lot like Perry Mason but with a big bushy beard. The other performance is from a bald man with a distinct (and slightly overdone - but hey!) British accent, the cool, calm and collected ringleader. The main comedy highlight here is that he looks the spitting image of Sir Clive Sinclair, renowned Spectrum founder of the 1980s and something of a cult icon for those of us interested in those old ZX computers. In fact I think it was Clive in a rare acting role - but this information needs to be verified.

Also on hand, and obviously to trade on his image as a horror icon, is John Carradine, whose scenes are filmed separately from the rest. Carradine brings the Biblical references to the film and presents it in a series of chapters about man's greed and evil leading to death and destruction. Poor John is looking pretty old here, it was one of his last films and he's obviously reading from an autocue, it's quite sad to see the type of films he was reduced to - although it has to be said some of his earlier efforts weren't much better! Altogether this was something of a missed opportunity, it has the right atmosphere but just not enough violence or action to make it entertaining. Preferably avoid if you can.

This film essentially begins with 4 people robbing a jewelry store of approximate $1 million in stolen merchandise and then finding themselves somewhere deep in Appalachia after their car runs out of gas. To that effect, the leader of the group "Phillip" (Jim Peck) recommends that they hide the car and then find an isolated house where they can hole up for a couple of days until things have cooled off sufficiently for them to refuel the car and head back out on the open roads. A reasonable solution. What he doesn't count on, however, is the problems they will eventually face when they select a house owned by the local moonshiner named "Horlon P. Craven" (George Ellis) and his attractive young wife "Reba Sue Craven" (Ashley Brooks). Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was one of those low-budget comedies that suffered, to a great extent, from bad acting and a very poor overall script. To be sure, both Ashley Brooks and Pepper Thurston (as "Suzanne") definitely improved the overall scenery to a certain degree. No question about that. Unfortunately, it simply wasn't enough to overcome the other obvious faults just mentioned, and I have rated this movie accordingly. Below average.

Demented Death Farm Massacre (1971/86)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

This is yet another low-budget drive-in flick where it's history is a lot more interesting than the actual film. In 1972 a movie called SHANTYTOWN HONEYMOON was made but found very limited distribution so it was forgotten until director Fred Olen Ray bought it and tried to sell it to the video market. No one wanted it unless Ray could get a "star" to appear so he hired John Carradine for a day and filmed the added scenes of him pretty much telling us the story of what happened. It turned out that Carradine filmed these scenes in an hour and since Ray hired him for a full day of work, the low-budget filmmaker decided to take advantage of his star by having him act out other scenes, which would eventually be used in films such as STAR SLAMMER, EVIL SPAWN and JACK-O, which would actually be released nearly seven years after the death of Carradine.

Four jewel thieves make a daring robbery but along the way of their escape they must get rid of their vehicle and take off on foot. They come across a redneck man (George Ellis) and his younger, sexy white trash wife (Ashley Brooks) and take them hostage but the rednecks have their own idea of how things are going to go. Those wanting to see the original film will have a pretty simple time doing so because the newly shot Ray/Carradine footage doesn't last over a couple minutes. We see Carradine at the very start for under a minute and then he pops up briefly throughout the film for about another minute total. Those just watching this for Carradine will probably feel cheated. The "real" movie here isn't that bad and in fact it contains some rather campy, fun moments but sadly even at 80-minutes this thing runs way too long. I'll admit that I found plenty of the redneck humor to be fun and a large part of this is due to the performances by Brooks and Ellis as the redneck couple. Ellis is the old, bearded man who is constantly preaching about sins while at the same time paying a black woman for sex and selling moonshine. I found Ellis to be pretty good at screaming off these Bible quotes and it made me laugh several times. Brooks is certainly easy on the eyes in her little redneck dress and her silly accent just really makes you love her. The four actors playing the thieves all give bad performances but thankfully they're all so over-the-top that you can't help but laugh. I really loved it when they tried to get dramatic or "scary" because of the way they'd carry on was just downright hilarious at times. There are a couple quick nude shots as well as some minor gore including one pitchfork sequence. Fans of the horror genre might get a chuckle out of those scenes but it's those looking for low-budget hicksploitation that are going to be the ones finding this most appealing. The biggest problem with the film is its extended running time plus there are way too many moments where the film stops dead in its tracks as it seems the screenplay just wants to talk and talk and talk without the dialogue ever moving the story along.