slasher

American Scream King Review

May 5, 2012 By Horror Palace 1 Comment

Movie: American Scream King
Year: 2010
Studio: Brain Damage Films
Director: Joel Paul Reisig
Stars: Jordon Hodges, Joel Paul Reisig, Aranzazu Diez, Kristin Mellian
Language: English
Length: 71 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Slasher, Horror/Comedy

Plot: When two sleazy street hoods wind up in possession of a video camera, they decide to make it big by shooting their own horror movie. Not ones to let a lack of funds, actors, or filmmaking experience stand in their way, the psycho duo opts to simply kill young women for real and record the grisly results.

Review: When you pop in an ultra low-budget horror flick, I always get excited. You never know before the movie begins if you have a gem in your hands. Well that feeling fades immediately with American Scream King. This is yet another one that tries the “Grindhouse” feel with black lines and weird squigglies running through the film. What these filmmakers fail to realize is that the 70’s cheap video camera style doesn’t work. You need some spit shine and polish to pull off the dated look, a la Death Stop Holocaust that the Grisly Zone team reviewed on Episode 028.

Off to the story; 2 lowlifes are wanting to make a horror film, they write 3 rules on a chalkboard when coming up with a concept. They state you need “Boobs, a Beast and Blood” and the rest doesn’t matter. While contemplating the effects portion they realize they have no idea what they are doing, so they concoct their ultimate plan of just killing the abductees, in effect, needing no special effects. What transpires is a group of women tied up in a basement (most topless or each one will become topless) while the 2 high school dropouts play little “games” with them.

Because American Scream King is a short movie, thank god, you still have to sit through the 2 leads “trying” to be demented, all the while making a “mock” on the genre I so dearly love. It’s amazing to me that filmmakers enter into the horror genre, have no idea how to make a movie, and can pass this off to us (horror fans) knowing that we will buy them. And we do, we love horror and support indies, but we have got to draw a line somewhere. Even more unbelievable and astonishing is that the writer/director/actor Joel Paul Reisig has his own “How-to Film School” at Be Your Own Hollywood. If you want to produce low-grade schlock that no one will like, and ruin your career, take the course!

Lets keep the ripping going on American Scream King, horrible audio quality, the screaming peaks and distorts making it unbearable, atrocious acting all around, and this one I am adding a “Stupid” factor of a 10. You may be thinking, I am coming in with the lowest possible overall score of a 1, but I always give credit where credit is due; there is one part with a drill that was actually passable (at least they did a little work there), and some of the girls were easy on the eyes.

American Scream King found distribution in February of this year and is available on DVD if you want to see how bad a horror film can be. After the review I shouldn’t have to say it but avoid American Scream King at all cost. It is not worth even a one-time rent.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 05/05/2012
Rating: 2/10
Recommendation: Avoid

Trailer: Watch
DVD: Red Tag Market
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook

Followed Home Review

March 10, 2012 By Horror Palace Leave a Comment

Movie: Followed Home
Year: 2010
Studio: Think Dreamer Productions
Director: Joaquin F. Palma
Language: English
Length: 73 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Slasher

Plot: Young friends on a weekend outing have the misfortune of witnessing a murder…only to be followed home by the killer. Unaware they’re being stalked by a maniac, the traumatized quartet of vacationers try to forget about the carnage…but then, they realize they’ve been followed home. Ever seen something scary and walked away feeling safe? Beware: You may have been…followed home!

Review: I am always excited when a new slasher hits the market, and after the initial scene I was thinking Followed Home had something strong going for it. In typical fashion, in the most clever of slashers, the filmmakers thrust you into the terror with a brutal opening. Followed Home was no exception; an initial stabbing with tension and screaming, but this movie takes a nosedive, and a fast one at that.

We meet 4 friends, Sam (Zachary Ryan Block), a new proprietor of his own website design firm, his girlfriend Lauren (Tammy De Kauwe) and 2 employees. These 4 head out into the mountains for a peaceful romp in a cabin. It’s during these 30 minutes, where you must suffer with the hideously poor dialog and lazy acting. The opening scene girl comes running to their abode which traumatizes them, they then struggle to maintain their own sanity.

Since the audience must suffer through the garbage time of the film, you are praying it can only get better when the hooded madman offs the friends one-by-one. It is quite the opposite; the attack scenes are hilariously bad and the scare scenes are utter failures. Not to mention the lackluster music and sound effects.

I racked my brain to think of some positive things in Followed Home, but I came away with basically zilch. This was one of the most boring slashers I have ever seen in my life. Coming in at a shade over an hour, I struggled whole heartedly to make it to the end. I can’t believe in a genre that is never boring you could botch such a thing.

Followed Home was released on DVD 4 months ago, and I am befuddled on how this got such wide distribution in many notable online retailers. This is bottom of the barrel horror fans. Overall, this is an epic disaster in the slasher genre, avoid it at all costs! Final rating is 1½.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 03/10/2012
Rating: 1½/10
Recommendation: Avoid

Trailer: Watch
DVD: Buy.com
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook

Don’t Let Him In Review

January 14, 2012 By Horror Palace Leave a Comment

Movie: Don’t Let Him In
Year: 2011
Studio: Straightwire Films
Director: Kelly Smith
Language: English
Length: 80 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Slasher

Plot: A fun-filled weekend getaway turns into a real-life nightmare for two couples who find themselves targeted by a serial killer. To make matters worse, the revelation of a dark secret divides the group when they need each other most.

Review: As in all slashers, the tension is ratcheted up from the get-go. You see some deranged man sawing off body parts while another woman is struggling with getting free. From there we jump back in time 2 days earlier.

We meet 2 couples heading out into isolation for a peaceful getaway. One of the ladies (Gemma Harvey) just had a one-night stand with a macho guy (Gordon Alexander), who is actually the younger sister of the other gentleman (Sam Hazeldine). That leaves one character left, Paige (Sophie Linfield), who was the tied up chick from the beginning.

You meet 3 other characters along the way in Don’t Let Him In; a hitchhiker, a sheriff, and a palm reader. This is a small cast, but nothing out of the norm for a low budget slasher. The story unfolds at a quick and steady pace which is always a positive for any movie, plus, you learn about “The Tree Surgeon,” a sadistic serial killer who hangs body parts from tree branches. There is not much down time, and the acting was fine, so at no point are you taken out of the film.

As slashers are my forte, Don’t Let Him In had some decent kills and some scary moments. Even a few back-and-forth twists are thrown in which made it enjoyable. There are some excellent throat slices that the camera focused on, giving gore fans a treat, outside of that, there were no inventive kills or nothing you haven’t seen before. The music and score was sort of a letdown. I would of liked a more chilling and bone-jarring track.

On a whole, Don’t Let Him In is a better than average horror flick from the UK, and one that needs to be seen. The movie was released less than 2 weeks ago on January 3rd of 2012, on DVD, BluRay and even for a 3-day rental at Amazon VOD, and if you have a Roku set-top box, it is available there also. My recommendation is; rent it or stream it, there is plenty there for horror fans to embellish one-time.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 01/14/2012
Rating: 6/10
Recommendation: Rental

Trailer: Watch
DVD: Overstock
BluRay: Amazon
Social Media: Facebook

Night Drive Review

January 5, 2012 By Horror Palace Leave a Comment

Movie: Night Drive
Year: 2011
Studio: The Film Factory
Director: Justin Head
Language: English
Length: 102 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Slasher, Thriller, Animals

Plot: Night Drive is a gritty South African thriller/horror, set against the backdrop of the beautifully romantic African Bush, where an eclectic mix of tourists is left stranded during a night drive. It is only when they realize that they are being hunted by a group of poachers that the terror truly begins.

Review: The opening scene of Night Drive really captivates the imagination. You get glimpses of African tribesmen doing bizarre things with body parts, bullets and this unknown juice that it drank. There are glimpses of gore, bloody machetes, internal organs and hyenas all rolled into one.

After the beginning montage of random things it jumps to a cop somewhere in South Africa. The story unwinds at a slow pace, he is chasing after a drug lord and events happen that cause him to lose his job. From there we are taken to this so-called “Night Drive” where vacationers are taken on a wildlife excursion through the deadly terrain of South Africa, in search of expanding their horizons, with peace, tranquility and the hopes of seeing wild animals.

The story finally starts to unfold about 45-50 minutes in. The basic concept to Night Drive is; poachers are not killing animals but humans, they need fresh, internal body parts to perform their cult-like rituals involving hyenas. After the brutal killings, the bodies are left for the hyenas to munch on.

As you can see by the summary, the story is wild, very hard to follow at times, especially since they go back-and-forth with transitional scenes, and most of the time the camera is not fixed, causing jerkiness during the action scenes. The acting was surprisingly good for a horror movie of this type. The music and sound effects were engaging, not scary, but more of a riveting type. There are many machete scenes, that gets a point right there! But actually, there was only one effective kill scene in this whole movie and it was done extremely well.

The story is the biggest downfall along with the quick cutaways of the most gruesome scenes. There is a handy little twist in the end I enjoyed and never seen coming. I was never bored, but then again I never thoroughly could see what was happening, so we have a mixed bag. I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek it out, but if you come across Night Drive online or at a local movie rental shop, pick it up, I think you will get something out of it.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 01/05/2012
Rating: 5½/10
Recommendation: Rental

Trailer: Watch
DVD: DVD Empire
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook

Hide Review

November 24, 2011 By Horror Palace Leave a Comment

Movie: Hide
Year: 2011
Studio: Brandi Brothers Productions
Director: Jamison Brandi
Language: English
Length: 84 Minutes
Sub-Genre: Slasher

Plot: A high-school cheerleader and her friends become embroiled in a lethal game of hide and seek on Mischief Night, the night before Halloween, even though a statewide curfew has been in effect since a horrific murder just a year before.

Review: I was excited when I popped the DVD in for Hide as it sounded like a current day slasher, and I value the sub-genre highly. It is the category that got me into horror in the first place. But, and this is a big but, Hide simply manages to screw-up the slasher scenario almost on every front.

The whole concept to Hide is one that does work, a masked killer, always a positive, is stalking young teenage girls while prodding them on the phone with obscenities ala Scream. During the final conversations he tells the girls we are going to play Hide and Seek, the popular childhood game. As the charade begins the killer is stalking his victims as he is counting out loud, 1 – 1000, 2 – 1000, 3 – 1000 and so on, until he finds them and ultimately kills them.

As a slasher you expect to see some kills, you see absolutely nothing. Not only that the story goes back-and-forth between many characters in effect losing the tension that slashers bring. The scariness of Hide is basically non-existent. It’s a pity too because some of the characters did have a likability factor but the build-ups were overly drawn out and poorly executed. More negatives include; overused score that got annoying 20 minutes in, then you got a whole hour left with the same music, and the story shifts amongst characters and one of these are filmed in a crappy cinematic style with sepia tones and shaky cam to the point you have no idea what is happening.

Hide is a new DVD release that hit the shelves on the end of October, and I am here to tell you, as a total slasher fan, pass this one by and walk away. The movie is redundant, weak and overall a very poor horror movie. If you are looking for a current day slasher that will scare you, I will throw out a few suggestions for you; Chain Letter and Hatchet 2.

Reviewer: BillChete
Date: 11/24/2011
Rating: 2½/10
Recommendation: Avoid

Trailer: Watch
DVD: Blow It Outa Here
BluRay: N/A
Social Media: Facebook

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