Splatter

Splatter, from legendary producer Roger Corman and cult director Joe Dante, stars Corey Feldman (child star of Dante's best film, Gremlins) as rock singer Jonny Splatter, who, in the opening scene, recites a voodoo chant before putting a bullet through his brain—a delightfully gory moment that lives up to the title. It's a promising start, but sadly its rapidly downhill from here.

When several acquaintances of the deceased rock star gather for the reading of his will, they discover to their horror that Jonny has returned from the dead to exact revenge on those who wronged him when he was alive. Clumsily directed by the once great Dante, and featuring weak performances from a cast who are capable of much better (even Feldman), this dreadfully cheap looking and terribly uninspired effort is an embarrassment for all involved. The occasional grisly death scene does little to improve matters.

Splatter was originally conceived as ten-part interactive web experiment, the outcome of each character being decided by the viewers at the end of each episode, which no doubt added a modicum of fun to proceedings; in its non-interactive form, devoid of this novelty, there is very little to get excited about.

Back in the 1950's, before commercials consumed 10 minutes of a half-hour TV show, they knew how to introduce a story, develop the plot, reach and resolve a crisis, and tidy up before rolling the credits. Splatter is not much more than the steaming pile of entrails it attempts to exploit. It even fails as at guts 'n' gore, which is about all it might have had going for it. After 30 minutes, I have to wonder why I bothered sitting through it. There must be a different Roger Corman involved in this train wreck.

In 2009, Netflix pitches the idea of an original interactive web series to Roger Coreman and Joe Dante. It was an early experiment in video streaming instead of Netflix shipping tons of DVDs back and forth. The original intent was to have viewers vote on which character would die in the next 10-15 minute episode.

Netflix only kept three episodes and put them together in a 29 minute short that isn't worth anyone's time. Feldman plays a washed up rockstar who kills himself in order to bait his frienemies to his mansion so he can come back as a ghost demon and murder them. Nothing about this film was original and the production value (even for 2009 low budget horror) is the only thing horrifying about this film.

Had all the plot points to be a good film.

The ONLY good thing in the whole film is seeing Tony Todd (RIP). As he's passed recently I thought I would make my way through his catalogue and had never heard of this one theres a good reason for that the film is 100 percent cheesy and terrible with only the fact Tony is in it that I was able to persevere watching.

Corey's acting is abysmal.

It could have been so good and just when you think it's about to turn itself around that's when it ends.

If you really want to watch it set your standards low, like really LOW!

The only other positive is its only half hour long.

Splatter (2009)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

When you team up producer Roger Corman, writer Richard Christian Matheson and director Joe Dante you expect something much better than this short film, which, sad to say, is downright bad. Rock and roll has been Jonny Splatter (Corey Feldman) kills himself so that he can come back as a zombie-like creature and kill the five people who betrayed him in life. You have the former bandmate, the ex who stole his song, a groupie, a therapist and of course his manager who just happens to be played by Tony Todd. At just 29-minutes you'd think this would at least be somewhat viewable in a "so bad it's good" way but it's not. When you consider the talent involved you can't help but see this thing as a complete disaster that has very little going for it and a whole lot going wrong. You can start with the screenplay, which just throws out on cliché after another and it doesn't do a single fresh thing from start to finish. There are several references to current events or pop culture but this adds nothing. The special effects contain some decent stuff including a melting head that eventually pops as well as a throat being sliced but that's about it. As far as performances go they're really mixed. Fans of Feldman, myself included, will enjoy seeing him here even though the "performance" isn't the great. Todd could do this type of film in his sleep but he's always fun to watch. Erin Way was the one bright spot in the film as she played the groupie very well and certainly stole the film. I'm sure this movie wasn't meant to be taken serious and it wanted to have some sort of cult appeal but you still have to at least try and do something with it. It really seems like this movie was thrown together out of scraps and sadly the end result is very boring.