Jack-O

A bad horror flick requires certain components. A nice shot of a pair of breasts, with no relevance to the plot. A beheading, preferably one where the head rolls to someone who is in love with the recently deceased. An innocent loser who doesn't actually die in the movie, but you wish they would. At least one famous actor in a small and likely irrelevant role. A utility worker of similar individual who gets gored while one of the "stars" looks on. If you agree, Jack-o is the film for you. If not, rent Free Willy or something. If you feel plot is important, you're in the wrong genre, I'm afraid. Great for Halloween if you want to kill a few hours.

A while back, my friend and I went to get a horror film of ghetto proportions, and found this gem in our local video store. We could not have been more delighted! This movie is the absolute best to make fun of, and just have a good clean laugh at! The acting is quite possibly worse than an elementary Christmas show (personal favorites: The pure "terror" when the little boy is being buried alive and the wife of the man in old times who goes off to kill Jack-O). The producers of this movie blew their budget on the opening lightening sequence, making the other effects laughably fake. If you're looking for a horror movie, keep moving on. But if you want to have some good fun laughing at and making fun of a movie so bad that the participants must hang their heads in shame to know it resides on their resumes? You have found it.

I bought Jack-O a number of months ago at a Blockbuster video sale, and at the time I wasn't expecting anything outstanding from it. Upon watching it, I realized I not only got less than I could have ever bargained for, but a whole lot more as well. It seems, strange, I know. And it is. But it's perfectly fitting when you consider that the utter weirdness that is "Jack-O"

The movie follows a young boy named Shawn Kelly. Somehow, thru ancestral ties, he is marked for death at the hands of a demented, scythe wielding Pumpkin man. This pumpkin man was killed by Shawn's Great-grandfather-uncle-cousin-etc, and now that the villain has been resurrected, Shawn's death is apparently crucial to his hell-bred mission of vengeance. Anyway, much "horror" ensues as Jack-O hacks his way thru various neighbors before battling Shawn to the finish.

I'm not so much here to discuss the plot as I am to determine who may find any worth in this movie. I can honestly tell you that Jack-O is one of the most poorly made movies in the history of time. The acting is deadpan (except when it should be), the script is apparently a 1st grade group project, and the production budget must not have exceeded $150. Some of the most laughable death scenes are carried out in this anti-thriller, and they're all the more humorous when you realize director Steve Latshaw actually seems serious in his movie-making.

And yet I heartily enjoyed the film. I can call it a terrible horror movie, yes. But I can also say I had a great time watching it with my friends, and have watched it several times since that fateful first viewing. Many people (including some of my friends) will find this movie intolerable and needlessly time-consuming, and that's understandable. If you're like me and enjoy ridiculously bad horror movies that take themselves seriously, you'll find Jack-O an instant classic, which is also understandable.

That's why it's so hard to rate this movie. If I were rating Jack-O's quality as a film, I wouldn't give it anything. In fact, the studio would owe me stars. Yet if I were rating it's on the basis of pure enjoyment, I'd give it an 8 or a 9. I'll give it a 4, so to be somewhere in the middle. I recommend everyone go out, rent this, and form their own conclusion.

Ok...so one rainy night at blockbuster I found that all of the new release movies were out so I took a stroll down the horror aisle and somehow picked this heap of crap up.

I dare you to watch this movie and not become infuriated when the father says his lines....

I bought this out of curiosity. How did John Carradine (who died in 1988) and Cameron Mitchell (who died in 1994) make appearances in a film released in 1995? Thanks to the miracle of unused film can footage that's probably been sitting on a shelf somewhere for ten years, that's how! You can tell because the film stock used to shoot their scenes doesn't match the film used for shooting "Jack-O." The curse of Ed Wood lives on. The good thing for both Carradine and Mitchell is that this is exactly the kind of movie you'd expect to find on both of their filmographies. Same goes for Scream Queens Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Dawn Wildsmith.

The setting is Oakmoor Crossing on Halloween, and some kind of curse is released when dumb, beer-guzzling teens disrupt a grave. The result: a hulking killer with a scythe and a big plastic pumpkin on his head! He (it?) goes after the wholesome Kelly family for revenge (and kills others who get in his way). The father opens a Haunted Garage for the neighborhood kiddies. The son (Ryan Latshaw, son of the director) has one continuous, perplexed facial expression for all his scenes and one hilariously badly acted dramatic scene lying in a grave. At least he's a kid. The mother's eyes about pop out of her head while she strains to read her dialogue. There is also an annoying woman who shows up to explain things who seems to be trying to phonetically pronounce all of her dialogue.

So what about the name actors? You see Stevens, Wildsmith and Mitchell briefly on a TV screen (they're used to pad out the time). Linnea has a bigger role as a babysitter, and she does exactly what she can with it. Her enthusiastic performance helps a little bit. There's also one out-of-nowhere laugh when an ultra-conservative couple who watch a Rush Limbaugh clone on TV bite it. The woman slips on a rug and stabs a toaster with a knife. She's electrocuted and the end result looks like a flame-broiled Muppet.

All and all, pretty entertaining stuff! I wasn't bored!