House of the Witchdoctor

The reviews for this certainly made me anticipate it more. As it is, it's not the usual horror flick you'd expect, but because I kept reading about its originality, I was disappointed in where it did go. It just seemed like too simple a set up, not to mention very obvious, since the film clearly doesn't hide that its hiding some secrets and it sort of becomes apparent early on with a glance exchanged between two characters. Still, the film works despite of itself, and the two leading male antagonists are quite good here, and seem to actually be having a lot of fun which helps the film's energy.Overall, nothing all that great or even all that good, but worth it.

The lowdown is... this is an attempt to make a Rob Zombie-style grindhouse horror movie... by someone with absolutely no clue of what makes those films work.

Really, I'll watch some awful horrid garbage and manage to find SOMETHING I liked about it... but I just could not manage that here. Mostly I'm going to blame the writing/directing. Nearly all modern movies look fairly decent... good technology and loads of film school graduates who know how to use it (even if they haven't a clue how to tell a story). The acting... it was hard to tell. A lot of it seemed awfully flat... but the script was so utterly putrid and it's not apparent there was an actual director on set... so... I'm loathe to blame the performers.

Just plain bad... and not even the fun sort of bad.

A group of 5 college-aged kids go to spend the weekend at the house of one of their parents. Before they get there, they stop in town for something to eat. Two of them are confronted by a man who was recently released from prison, along with his demented side-kick. After that scary incident, the group of kids get in the car and continue to their destination. The parents are a bit creepy, but nothing is really thought about it, and the parents leave the house for the evening, leaving the kids alone. Just by chance, the ex-con and his friend are driving by, trying to find a house to rob, when they come across the place where the kids are staying. They break in and the fun begins.

This is a slasher, but not in the typical sense. Usually, a slasher is a movie with an unknown assailant. In this movie, it's very obvious who the killers are. There are the typical slasher props of blood, boobs, butts, gore, 3 rape scenes. Considering that this was low budget, they were a bit graphic, and - like all rapes scenes - were a total turn-off to me. There are also some typical clichés, such as the most commonly used; the phone not working. Another of the clichés is when the victims have the chance - the very definite chance - of killing the badguys, they simply smash them in the face or the nuts or try strangling them instead of using the knife to do the job quickly. All of that gives the badguys the ability to overpower the kids and...well, do their horrific best on them.

I did not like this. The two boyfriends were the most useless people in the entire movie. They make a point of showing how muscular one of them is, but when the badguys break into his room and grab his girlfriend, they don't have any weapon out at that time, and the big, strong boyfriend doesn't even try pouncing on them.

To some extent, this was a movie where the characters - specifically the goodguys - did such stupid things, I had to really laugh. But all-in-all, the movie, especially the ending scene in the basement, was not at all what I thought it would be, nor did I like it.

I gave this a 4-star rating because the acting wasn't that bad, considering it was low budget, and I think one has to consider that when rating these things. The cinematography was pretty good. The storyline...not so much.

Chompcrc here. Man this was not good. The two criminals were so overly portrayed that it was just annoying. The little religious boy storyline was useless, and the twist was cheap and poorly acted by Bill Moseley. I hate to be mean, but he simply cannot act. A cult dressed like they are attending a costume party? What? Not to mention the horribly awkward sex scene, completely unnecessary nudity from the two girls, and totally cliche "it worked after all" ending. Just because you can make a movie, doesn't mean you should.

Most Horror movies nowadays suffer from a complete lack of originality. House of the Witchdoctor doesn't. It's an entertaining, evil little bugger with teeth. And guts. And, of course, it has Bill Moseley.

The storyline is a nice twist on the usual "Five friends spend the wekend and get butchered" theme. There's also some really bad acting, especially the two evil guys display some extremely funny buffoonery, but this, too, is fun to watch. At least if you don't have a problem with trash, cause this is basically a Trash movie with a better budget. I think most Horror fans would enjoy the ride, you get your share of blood and gore, some laughs (a lot of laughs actually) and, um, Bill Moseley. Did I mention that before?

If you like 80s Horror as I do, you might also notice the smell of those days that reeks from this movie. Which is a good thing.