Nikos the Impaler

You've got to admire Andreas Schnaas: despite no discernible talent for film-making, he's been churning out low-budget gore movies since 1987. I first experienced his bargain basement horror 15 years ago with the abominable 'Zombie 90' , and I recently picked up 'Nikos the Impaler' in the hope that maybe he had improved somewhat over the last decade and a half. No prizes for guessing that he hasn't!

This tale of a bloodthirsty 11th century barbarian brought to life in present day New York features some of the worst direction, editing and acting it has ever been my misfortune to witness. Schnaas and his team seem to have no idea how to piece a film together, but somehow, despite this (or because of this), 'Nikos' turned out to be fairly entertaining—a case of a film being made bearable due to its utter crapness. Of course it doesn't hurt that Schnaas loads his film with joke-shop gore and includes a gratuitous shower scene for the blokes (albeit one featuring a skanky woman with bad tattoos).

Schnaas's first film to be made in America, 'Nikos' starts off slowly, and the first half an hour is a real chore to sit through. After that, the blood starts to flow and fans of no-budget gore-fests will love the OTT death scenes. The unrealistic no-frills splatter FX come thick and fast and are good for a laugh, if nothing else.

Nikos, the big bad Romanian who is resurrected when blood is accidentally splashed on his mask at a museum/gallery, slices and dices his way through the cast, splashing blood and body parts all over the place. After slaughtering the people in the gallery, he continues his killing spree on the streets of the Big Apple, wasting the occupants of a cinema, the staff of a gym and finally some people in a video shop. At this point the movie goes completely bonkers, and Schnaas throws in some ninjas, a vampire and Hitler for good measure!

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well, for a while it is, but the lack of a decent plot and any evidence of technical ability from the makers ensures that proceedings become tedious before long. There's only so many inept beheadings you can take before you start longing for the end credits to roll instead.

Prepare to laugh like you've never laughed before, people. Andreas Schnaas is the new Ed Wood! He can barely line up a shot, and whoever edits for him acts like he just bought his first iMac and is trying to puzzle his way through iMovie without reading the manual or even the onscreen tutorial. This is absolutely glorious cheese, a one-movie festival of filmmaking ineptitude, with performances that wouldn't pass muster in a high school play. The gore scenes will have you rolling on the floor in such convulsions of hilarity that EMS might have to be called in to feed you oxygen. When Nikos is brought back to life and promptly hacks off the head of the grandmotherly museum curator (with a totally "plywood spray-painted silver" sword), I thought I'd wake up the whole block with my laughter. This movie is fecal beyond the dreams of proctologists, but I swear, if you want to have an MST3K movie party at your place one night, your guests won't need to get wasted or toke up to appreciate this comedy of errors!

Actual worth as a film: 0/10 "Cracking up all your friends at a party" value: 10/10

Wow, I'm rather amazed I've seen a lot of bad horror movies in my life, but this one is probably the worst yet. I haven't seen any of Andreas Schnaas' other movie, but from what I've read this is his best movie. So I might just have to see the rest to see if it's really possible to make anything worse then this one. The acting was crappy, not really the biggest surprise this is after all a low-budget B-movie. But usually B-movie know how to make fun/interesting killing. This is not the case in Nikos. Basically Nikos is just a crappy Jason-clone who walks around killing people with his big-ass broadsword. and that's all he does! A guy walking around killing people with a big sword can actually make a decent movie, if the killer does it in new and interesting ways. Nikos doesn't do that, he just lobs of people's heads (with a few exceptions not may though).

I wouldn't recommend this money to my worst enemy, no one should be made to watch this movie, it's simply too crappy.

My questions is-How much were people paid to give positive reviews for this piece of crap? Maybe they were sent free screener copies of film and they felt obligated to say nice things about it? I say this because I was fooled by the reviews and I went out and bought this piece of garbage. I was expecting a semi professional film at least but I was wrong! This thing is nothing more then a glorified home video and a really poor one at that.

The gore was maybe the worst, most amateur looking work that I've ever seen in a film. The acting was horrid. Everything about this movie was terrible! I mean, if this is the director's best work, then I can't imagine how bad his other films had to be. How can any film be worse then this thing?!

Do yourself a favor. Take my word for it, this movie is awful! Not so bad it's good or anything like that, it's just plain awful. A complete waste of time and money. AVOID IT.

The tag line on the DVD box says it all: "The Big Apple Gets A New Immigrant And A Very Big Problem." Oh so true. Unfortunately, that immigrant isn't the barbaric Romanian Impaler, it's the lame-ass German director. Geez. If your only interest is cheap but plentiful gore, and strippers taking showers, then director Andreas Schnaas delivers. If you want a story or acting or any of the other crafts associated with motion picture story telling, you must go elsewhere. It's easy to see why his films are also known as Violent Sh*t. His list of actors makes me think that he cast the film at a horror convention. Nothing wrong with that. Sadly, he gives few of these Grade-Z horror movie veterans anything to do. Joe Zaso, in particular, is wasted as a romantic lead.

The most interesting thing about the film is the commentary track by the director. Listening to it, you come to the distinct conclusion that he felt he made a good film. Now that's hilarious.