Watch The Taint Right Now Online!

Director Drew Bolduc has informed me his awesome flick The Taint (see full review here) is now available for FREE this week. It really is one fucked up crazy flick. As I wrote in my review....


If you're inner gorehound needs to be fed and if you're inner misogynist needs to be jerked off I highly recommend The Taint. You won't be disappointed by this throwback 80s splatterfest.

 Watch the film below and be mesmerized by exploding dicks!





 The Taint (Full Movie) from Dan Nelson on Vimeo.

The Raid Redemption (Review)

The Raid: Redemption

The Raid: Redemption (2012)

Directed by Gareth Evans

After seeing The Raid, I tweeted this:

@TheRaidUS is the equivalent of seeing a 100 car pile up, head on collisions and fiery mushroom cloud explosions. It's fuckin awesome

It's rare to see an action movie that says, fuck the characters and the plot! We're not going to waste time developing our characters or explaining the plot. Instead, we're going to give you non stop action for well over 100 minutes and it's going to be some of the most insane stuff you have seen in a while.

Remember when you first mesmerized by Tony Jaa in Ong Bak? Well The Raid is Ong Bak on fuckin steroids and fully armed with nuclear explosives. It's bar none the best action movie I've seen in the past decade.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

The plot is simple. SWAT Team are told they have to take out a ruthless crime lord in an old tenement building. The building is heavily guarded by 1-800 Henchmen and house lowlifes, thugs, addicts and pieces of shit. It also has a few good Samaritans who our remaining cops will meet later. All you need to know is humans with lady parts are at a minimum. You're going to see glorious violence in a Just Dance choreography that is pure awesomeness.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

I said it would revolutionize the action movie and I wasn't wrong. You may not know the name Iko Uwais but you will after seeing The Raid. Move over Tony Jaa, your 15 minutes are up. I first saw Uwais in Merantau, Gareth Evans first flick featuring Silat Harimau the Indonesian martial art. I'll admit, it had some stellar action scenes but it was full of boring drab plot and story and had staged action scenes that seem to appear out of nowhere.

But The Raid is floor after floor of non stop Silat in closed quarters, rooms with many breakable objects and ferocity of throwing your enemy against the wall numerous times. Uwais is a skilled tactician playing our hero cop and the synchronized ballet of Silat on Silat violence via endless henchmen are a sight you won't fuckin forget.

The man who steals the show however is Yayan Ruhian who plays Mad Dog. Dude is like the Nate Robinson of the film. He's barely 5'8 from the looks of it but his Silat skills are fuckin stellar. In the penultimate scene, he battles Uwais and his "partner" in well over 15 minutes display of kicks, blocks, punches, blocks and gallery of lightning quick Silat-o-pedia of moves.

And don't get me started by the point blank violence. Holy fuckin shit. Here are things I've never seen before:

• Execution of 4 men via point blank gunshots to the head (and one via hammer)
• Silat battle ending in multiple gunshots to the face
• Machete wielding fight scene
• Rude Awakening neck breakers

I mean check this scene out.

This is a badass flick that destroys all semblance of what action porn should be. It defies the genre by be unrelenting and ferocious. It doesn't apologize, it says FUCK YOU and gives you more of what you want. It has moments of pure suspense and anxiety then delivers one screaming kick after the other.

The Raid Redemption is the one action movie you need to see this year. Gone is Thai action. Indonesia is the king of action and Gareth Evans and Iko Uwais are sitting on the throne.

Nude-ipedia

Puhlease.

Gore-ipedia

Mucho gun trauma
Mucho broken bones trauma
Mucho head, arms, legs trauma

WTF moment

Uwais takes on EVERYBODY!!!!

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

The Raid is out now in limited theaters. It's a must see, no ifs or ands about it. It's the pinnacle of the modern day action flick. It's why it's getting a release here. The Raid may have been overshadowed by that movie with kids killing kids, but leave it up to the adults to give us grown up violence.

Rating:


Check out the trailer.

The Summer of Massacre (Review)

The Summer of Massacre

The Summer of Massacre (2011)

Directed by Joe Castro

Well that sucked.

Back in the day, I would search out for the most fucked up, goriest, splattered fill horror movies out in the underground. I soon stumbled upon German splatter like Ittenbach's Burning Moon or Schnaas Violent Shit trilogy. I would get excited when I'd get my hands on this type of movie because I'd see unrated gore and splatter in all it's 8th generation dubbed glory.

Those movies did it old school. Old school tubes, animal intestines and red faux blood to create those effects. Sure they were balloons filled with red dye and such but it looked awesome. Well those days are long gone unfortunately.

Today we get shit like The Summer of Massacre. A movie whose sole premise is that it holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the Highest Body Count in a slasher film at 155. To get this record it fills 1 hour and 37 minutes with HORRIBLY BAD CGI KILLS. And I don't mean these were Romero like CGI, I mean this is MS Paint bad CGI. It's the equivalent of super transposed 16 bit Genesis graphics on top of the movie. Atari had better graphics than this film.

It's technically an anthology with self contained stories about a mad killer on the loose, some grotesque handicapped kid, killer father back from the dead to torment his son, camp kids killed by mutant firemen and serial killers with a nuke. It's not as cool as it sounds. Bad acting, bad makeup effects, bad stories and utterly fuckin shitty CGI kills. Sliced necks, ankles, necks, etc. Bullet would deaths. A whole level of stupid gross shit. I could list shit but honestly I don't even remember. This is pretty much the worst horror movie I've seen in the last 10 years. And trust me, I've seen a lot of bad ones.

I just can't stand movies who use CGI in their horror these days. I'm an old school guy with a throwback to the grind mentality. I'm pretty sure it's necessary at times but I like seeing the vicious realism of trauma. It's what I grew up watching and I appreciate the effort by the filmmakers when they go this route.

The Summer of Massacre is a crappy induced diarrhea mess of a film. I'd rather have my eyes gouged by hot pokers than see this film again. I'd rather be eaten alive by cannibals and shown by beating heart than see this film again. I'd rather have all my arms and legs chopped off and placed in a wooden box buried alive than see this film again.

The scary part is all those scenes are going to probably be in the sequel in really fuckin bad CGI.

Sonnuva-fuck.

Rating:
0 spinkicks

Check out the trailer below.

Savage County (Review)

Savage County

Savage County (TV 2010)

Directed by David Harris

[this review is from The Jaded Viewer 2 DVD Giveaway Winner Kim K. She suffered through these awful flicks like a real soldier and for that I'm giving her a honorary jaded viewer gold star of awesomeness]

I was warned - these movies won’t be making any "best of" lists. Watching them was a test of will. I have a short attention span. I'm rating them not by spinkicks, but by how many failed attempts it took me to actually sit down with the movie long enough to watch until the end.

"Savage County"

David Harris is a first time director & this was a low budget, direct-to-video production. I have a soft spot for new artists trying to get an edge in, even if I’m not a fan; and judging by their Facebook page, he does have a following, which he is clearly catering toward. If you’re an 11-15 year old who is new to the horror genre & enjoyed the web series this was a spin-off from - you could potentially love this movie. It is the training bra of horror.

The plot follows a group of high school students about to graduate as they road trip out into the countryside one last time. When a prank goes wrong, the kids accidentally kill the eldest of a family of creepy homicidal hillbillies. Creepy hillbillies get pissed. Storyline marches forward into a watered down version of some of the most familiar (and successful) horror themes we know and love. (See: Deliverance, Texas Chainsaw, Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn, House of 1000 Corpses etc etc)

‘Recycled’ doesn’t necessarily resign a movie to a fate of suckage. When you’re playing to human fear, there are only so many threads to explore. Filmmakers in the genre build on and borrow from each other almost as a rule. But you’d better add something original to make it stick in people’s heads if you’re going that route. The fact that one of the hillbillies vaguely resembles Willie Nelson is not enough for me

As for the kids, we’ve got a small group of token everything out in this cornfield. The jocks, the cheerleader, the “good girl”, the punky loner, the nerd, the black kid. All of these stereotypes hung out together in your school too, right? There is one particularly useless girl back at base, whose sole job seems to be talking into a webcam and cueing awful music. The movie keeps awkwardly cutting back to her and it was precisely these moments that made me wonder if I needed to take another break.

The plot unfolds. Kids freak out after the accidental murder. Split up. Make one stupid decision after another. Cops get involved. Oops - cops are sided with the hillbillies. Hillbillies torture and pick off kids. The script remains one dimensional, and ends predictably while still leaving loose ends (I fear a sequel’s in the works); yet for a tween slasher-flick, it delivers what is expected and is certainly not the worst ever made. Though it did leave me feeling mildly lobotomized.

I rate this movie: 3 failed attempts.

Check out the trailer. I doubt you'll last :30 secs before you stop watching.

Dream Home (Review)

Dream Home

Dream Home (2011 - USA)

Directed by Ho-Cheung Pang

I take pride in watching Category III Hong Kong flicks. I loved the Anthony Wong driven The Ebola Syndrome and Dr. Lamb, video nasties that were fucked up beyond recognition. So it's been a while since I've seen a Cat 3 HK flick but having seen Dream Home litter a few best of 2011 lists, I knew I had to seek this beauty out.

And what did it do? It slaughtered a few of the other flicks from my 10 story top 10 list and moved right into the building (see what I did there?) Dream Home is an uber slasher exploitation film that not only will make inner gorehounds FAP but make the intellectual cinephile think and FAP as well. Rarely does a Cat 3 make you think. Usually you think you're gonna watch some vicious kills and see some boobies. But with a stellar performance by Josie Ho and director Ho-Cheung Pang satirizing the desire for the have nots to have at any costs, it's a tour de kill slasher film of 2011.

Dream Home does suffer with issues with realism, the kills are somewhat comic bookey and there is a serious issue with the use of flashbacks that may confuse some viewers. A subplot of affairs and pacing issues also hurts the film a bit as does the super strength of our uber killer. But all that aside, Cat 3 HK flicks have always had a bit of slapstick and oddness about them that makes them mesmerizing to watch.

Dream Home is my dream movie. Fuck yeah.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Cheng Li-sheung is a young, upwardly mobile professional finally ready to invest in her first home. But when the deal falls through, she is forced to keep her dream alive - even if it means keeping her would-be neighbors dead.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

Let's break this down movie down by different sections of an apartment building.

The Lobby

Cheing Lai (Josie Ho) works as a telemarketer for a bank around 2007. She's a regular office drone leading a typical life (working 2 other jobs, taking care of her father and brother, being a mistress and whoring it...you know typical shit). However, she has a dream. She wants to live in an apartment looking over the ocean bay of Hong Kong. Despite her lack of funds to buy this apartment she is willing to do anything to make her dream come true.

It's not everyday a movie opens with some suffocation via plastic bag and plastic handcuff restraints. With Dream Home, you get sucked in and the movie starts to establish a pattern of Cheing Lai going to slasher school while we also get flashbacks of her life as a child which establish her motivations for what happens in the present.

The Living Room

Soon we start seeing our girl in action as she slaughters her would be neighbors all in one night. The odd part of this is I usually root for the slasher and was kinda mystified by my lack of cheering as it seems silly to kill your potential neighbors to bring the price down of an apartment. But the slaughter is magnificio! Our first kill scenes revolve around a pregnant woman who is brilliantly suffocated via suction (you gotta see this shit...fuckin crazy...see below)

....and the old reliable ocular trauma makes a cameo. But as the movie went on, Cheing Lai showed she was vulnerable, getting wounded in the midst of her battles and though we shouldn't empathize with a cold blooded killer, I was hoping she'd be OK.

Maybe it's because she's a woman but oh have Cat 3 flicks changed. Cheing Lai rivals Anthony Wong's throne of being the hardcore of hardcore slashers.

The Kitchen

I mentioned previously the movie employs ill timed flashbacks. First with Cheing Lai as a little girl whose family has to deal with being forcibly removed from their apartment by Triads working for greedy developers. Later she sees the plight of her family and the tole of her dad being sick and not being covered by health insurance.

The flashbacks show up without any notice and sometimes I got lost in where I was. Early on years were subtitled in but it's a bit confusing as one can't tell where we are with the story. I'll say the flashbacks do give you a glimpse of our slashereta's motivations of why this apartment by the sea is so important. Sure it's not justification to kill people but for a crazy insano like Cheing Lai, I guess it is.

The Bedroom

Ahh the bedroom, because that's where the good action all takes place. Cheing Lai's best kills when she home invades a group of Chinese hipsters, whores and drug dealer. The movie climaxes in the kill scenes here with a variety of creative kills ranging from intestine spillage, toilet trauma, glass beaker neck stabbings and wood to mouth Fangoria approved slaughter. And some J. Bobbitt. Because's what's a slasher movie without a penis trauma right?

It's a testament to non CGI-ness of it all. Cheing Lai also gets some luck to get out of the mess she's been in as the cops want to bust in and stop the madness. It's this ridiculousness that makes Dream Home a little fantastic. Can a dude still smoke a joint while his intestines are all over the floor? Dream Home says yes.

The Patio

With all this fuckin awesome slaughter, the movie poses a few ideas about why our mistress of slasher-dom does what she does. The movie satirizes what one is willing to do to buy her own home which in turns plays out the notion of how the housing crisis evolved. Sure Cheing Lai goes the fuckin beserk route to get the price down by the real estate agent by murdering a bunch of people in the building but in retrospect the working class, even the poor are willing to do what it takes to own their own home thus taking those shady deals from the Fannie Mays and other home brokerage companies. Should they have known better? Of course. But somebody should have told them it was wrong. These companies didn't.

As the flashbacks indicate, the HK government seemed to conspire with the mob and real estate developers to remove poor people from their homes in order to replace them with luxury high rises. It seems we can then conclude that the movie was implying that the working class wanted what was originally theirs. Cheing Lai is the embodiment of that.

The movie ends in irony and it's pretty obvious that nobody will live happily ever after. But what Dream Home establishes is a why in the midst of the chaos. The slasher genocides these people for her own selfish reasons but in a way the movie wants us to ignore that she's killed innocent people and empathize with her working class background.

Dream Home is intelligently designed to be an effective satire and an uber bloody and gory slasher which is to say, not an easy thing to do. Ho drives the movie, her performance yings to a woman who has lived harshly than yangs to her being a vicious, cold blooded motherfuckin killer.

I have not seen a HK Cat 3 movie that's left an impact this much like Dream Home. I think I've grown as a horror fan in that I'm not easily glamoured by wicked gore or spectacular splatter anymore. I expect my wickedly gory and spectacular splatter slasher flicks to say something about the world I live in.

Dream Home does just that.


Nude-ipedia

Whores show boobies
Simulated sex and BJs
I love Cat 3 nudity!

Gore-ipedia

See my descriptions above
So much awesomeness and creative kills, it should go into the Hall of Fame

WTF moment

The whore gets floor boarded

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Dream Home came out in Hong Kong in 2010 but was released in NA and EU in 2011. It's available on DVD via IFC Midnight. Rarely does one see a Cat 3 film and say that it's thought provoking. Usually I go and say that shit was hilariously fucked up. I can proudly say that it's both!

Rating:


Check out the trailer.

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (Insano Steve Review)

[this review brought to you by Insano Steve, who after a long hiatus was forced at gunpoint to write his thoughts after seeing Tox Six's The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence]

Rather than give a full review of Human Centipede 2, I thought I'd go through some things that I liked about the movie, and some that I didn't. In honor of the centipede, I broke it down into 10 good and 10 bad things.

Good

1. The gore and special effects are excellent. Much more so than the original.
2. The killer is a fat slob, who is mute, asthmatic, and retarded. Unconventional!
3. The shameless flashbacks to the first part were (un) intentionally hilarious.
4. A character from the first part miraculously returns!
5. More feces than you will ever see, or would want to see.
6. Lacking medical knowledge, our new "doctor" uses household tools.
7. Watching a lady, who didn't know better, leave the theater in disgust.
8. An actual centipede attacks and maims an old woman. Symbolism!
9. Gratuitous prenatal infant trauma. And postnatal trauma.
10. The use of laxatives as a plot catalyst!
    

Bad

1. The whole movie is in black and white. It mutes the effect of the blood/guts.
2. There's no actual plot. No attempt to explain. No attempt to attempt.
3. Like 10 scenes of the fat slob using an inhaler. He has asthma. OK, we get it.
4. Seeing the fat slob wearing a thong walk around the house. Not good times.
5. Sorry, but seeing a room drenched in blood and feces needs to be in color!
6. The acting was horrible. Even when you consider the low expectations.
7. A little shit eating really goes a long way.
8. I'm starting to think that maybe this isn't all "100% medically accurate".
9. All of the boring non-centipede related murders.
10. Black and white might've been an attempt at art. This shit ain't art. This shit is shit.
    

And there you have it, a movie that delivers all the over the top decadence you hoped for. And literally nothing more than that. Grading on a curve....

Rating:
1/2

Here are more photos via UGO.com

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (Review)

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

Directed by Tom Six

Sometimes your poop comes in pellet form, other times you need to set up a level 10 quarantine. It's these rather crude analogies that I've conjured up that equate themselves to the original and sequel for The Human Centipede . After eating a burrito, sometimes you fear the worst and sometimes that trip to the bathroom turns out not as bad as you thought it would be. That's what I thought of Tom Six's original.

The Human Centipede 2 is not a good film by any means but its like a newborn's dirty diaper....you get a hell of a surprise. Devoid of any decent plot, a psychopath that is a couple of deadly sins incarnate (think sloth) and 100% medically inaccurate, its a film that is a big "FUCK YOU" by Tom Six for anybody who claimed the original didn't go over the edge. I wrote in my original review: "I'd like to have seen it go over the edge and go into the realm of uncharted super duper uber fuckedupness"

Well Tom Six does exactly that. He should have taken elements from the original and mix in the fuckedupness in this film. But instead he goes waaaaay over the top in an artsy fartsy black and white splatter film and chooses to not give one single fuck about characters, plot and an antagonist we can fear or even be remotely memorable.

Sure the Human Centipede 2 makes 2 Girls, 1 Cup look like a Disney film, but at what cost?

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Martin is a mentally disturbed loner who lives with his mother in a bleak housing project. He works the night shift as a security guard in an equally grim and foreboding underground parking complex. To escape his dreary existence, Martin loses himself in the fantasy world of the cult horror film The Human Centipede (First Sequence), fetishizing the meticulous surgical skills of the gifted Dr. Heiter, whose knowledge of the human gastrointestinal system inspires Martin to attempt the unthinkable.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

The beauty of the original was the ridiculousness of Dr. Heiter and his obsessiveness to create a human centipede. Dieter Laser's performance was incredible and his "Feed her!" line will be uttered by horror fans for years to come. But our main sociopath, a mute and obese Brit named Martin is such a disappointment, one can only think that this is what Tom Six thinks of the hardcore horror fan. This fat penguin man, who is obsessed with Six's original film decides to go and make a 12 man centipede where the lovely Ashlynn Yennie will form the head (she's like the black Lion in this fucked up Voltron).

Working at a parking garage, his victims come in all forms from happily married couple, drunk party girls, a pregnant woman, random hooligans and a few other unfortunates that Martin encounters. He's a victim of sexual abuse via his father and his mom begs to have their angry neighbor "kill them both". The family doctor is as degenerate as Martin and makes an appearance as a ro-beast.

The movie is as predictable as your run of the mill slasher. Martin watches the original, jerks off, feeds his pet centipede (yes you read that right he has a pet centipede) stalks his victims and kills. Lather, rinse and repeat. It's the same old shit for like an hour. Six decides this meta-verse is him being crazy fuckin clever (he's not). That's not to say our mute Martin doesn't make a few intentional ha ha's. His excited cheering during the "feed her!" scene as he rewatches the classic and a few phone calls from a casting agent give us winks to the audience's knowledge of part 1. Martin is a walking grotesque, a child with a loaded gun that enjoys inflicting harm for his obsession. He's his own Dr. Frankenstein and squeals with glee as he shapes his very own human centipede but the only thing WE the audience care about is seeing his creation.

And that's why you have to watch an hour of this film to see it. And it's like seeing a Rorschach test made of human feces. Your only reason for sitting through this film is to see the fuckin full sequence. 3 was not enough for us. We want 6...no we want 9...how about 12!

Where the original had Dr. Heiter use a clean sterile environment and had medical precision for his experiment, Martin uses a dirty, filthy abandoned warehouse complete with rusty tools for his operation. And here comes the Gore-ipedia. Sliced knee tendons, really bad dental surgery, tongue trauma, staple gun frenzy and a lot of duck tape. The splatter and gore are at its peak and they are making gorehounds rejoice. It's not until we get to Martin's own "Feed her!" scene do we get to fuckedupness levels of fuckedupness. It's LITERALLY shit in motion. Even Martin's comeuppance at the end is a level of the surreal and definitely 100% medically IN-accurate.

The Human Centipede 2 is a competitive horror viewing contest. The original was easy to stomach, participants easily digested everything they took in. But HC2 is seeing a dude eat beyond his capacity and then vomit it all up. Do you really want to see that shit?

I'm not buying into any theory that HC2 has some underlying meaning in it. I firmly believe Tom Six was responding to all of us who LOVED the original or HATED it but both sides agreed it didn't go over the line of what it was advertised to be. But this time he delivers a disgusting, gore soaked and diarrhea of a film that has none of the awesomeness of what made the original so memorable.

All that's left to do after watching The Human Centipede 2 is to flush the toilet.

Nude-ipedia

A few boobs and ass via our victims
Martin's shirtless obesity made me throw up in my mouth a little

Gore-ipedia

See above labeled Gore-ipedia

WTF moment

Martin's comeuppance

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

I'm giving HC2 2 spinkicks. It's not a good movie like I said but it's got scenes that I'll admit leave a damn fucked up imprint in your mind. I did laugh a few times because of the ridiculousness of it all but those LOLs were few and far in between. I had HC2 as the #1 Remaining Best of the Rest Horror Movies of 2011. What can I say? I got caught up in the hype.

The Human Centipede 2 is being distributed by IFC Films and will get a theatrical release on October 7th.

The Vitals

• Facebook Page
  

Rating:
Check out the trailer below.

Sweatshop (Review)

Sweatshop

Sweatshop (2009)

Directed by Stacy Davidson

"It's always the quiet ones that cut your dick off while you're not looking"

-Token black guy DJ

It's rare to see a film that takes the slasher formula and hammers in the gore relentlessly. If there is one thing that nails this down, it's Sweatshop, a splatter soaked gore-o-thon that gives us sex, beats and a big fuckin sledgehammer.

Director Stacy Davidson and writer Ted Geoghegan clearly went for the jugular in this film. I'll get to the gore in a second but the cast of characters who we'll get to meet are the anti-Hollywood Hollister/American Eagle bunch of white people. They're ravers/punk rockers/crustycore motley crew sorta bunch and kudos to the costume department for making them all stand out in their own way.

A few plot points are scattered around, a few LOLs dabbled in but the gorehounds will rejoice when "The Beast" and his banshee she-demons get their kill on. It's the gore and splatter that drives Sweatshop, make no doubt about it. It's not reinventing the slasher genre but it's making sure the definition is being 100% adhered to.

Sweatshop's The Beast is a slasher even Thor would be scared of.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

A group of friends break into an abandoned factory in order to throw a impromptu party; unaware that it is not as empty as they originally believed.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

I review every slasher flickwith my handy jaded viewer slasher checklist. Below is a list of what we here at the jaded viewer deem as full of chunky gooiness when it comes to the ingredients of a solid slasher-palooza.

Does Sweatshop achieve everything on this list?

1.) Does the movie have..... a mysterious, insanely strong, ridiculed as a child, deformed, inbred redneck slasher?

Check. The Beast's backstory is never told, we don't even know why he wants to kill these glow stick motherfuckers. He's got a pimp fur coat and a welding mask and his fuckin large...like Butterbean large. I'm going to assume he's an inbred redneck as that's what I always assume.

2.) Gratuitous, over the top, super fleshy nudity?

Definite check. The raver-tastic Krystal Freeman who plays Lolli shows us her lovely lovelies (that's boobs) and it's mucho fantastico. Top it off with a sex scene with a fat guy and..... ::shivers::

3.) Stereotypical teenage caricatures who die gruesome and horrific over the top deaths?

Check. Clearly there's a final girl in here somewhere. We have Charlie, the greedy raver in charge, Scottyboy the mohawk sex fiend, Wade the hillbilly, Jade the malicious vixen, Lolli the slut, Miko the other slut and a token black DJ.

4.) No Plot?

Check. Kids have a rave in an abandoned warehouse where a Thor envy slasher kills them. What more you want?

5.) Kills by our slasher that make you go "Fuck yeah!"

Check. I'll say that they went old school with this one.

6.) Gore, lots of it. Like serious decapitation, dismemberment, impalement, hammer frenzy steroid rages and blood shooting out at various penetration wounds, limbs a flailing and mindless splatter and mayhem?

Check. Top notch over the top gore in this one. Severed heads via a hedge clipper, sliced heads via machetes, entrails and intestines ripped out and many many many splatter inducing, modified sledge hammer wallops that result in pancake ravers. Ocular trauma, penis trauma, hand trauma, neck trauma...there be a whole shitload of fuckin trauma in this.

7.) Geeky leader who takes charge of the hapless group as they try to escape who befriends a hot girl who knows about the "legend" (there's always a legend no one believes)

Nope. Nothing. Nada. Nobody really takes charge. Everybody fends for themselves. Bunch of savages in this town.

8.) Funny yet ill timed dialogue but also various quips and one liners that are funny only the first time around (yet somehow funny again when you buy the DVD and only when you're stoned)

There are a few jokes that made me chuckle but overall it's the final rave scene at the end where The Beast goes exterminator on the raver "roaches" that had me laughing.

9.) Gratuitous cameos by actors who have portrayed horror legends (Candyman, Freddy Kreuger and Jason Voorhees) that make you flash a metal sign and do the Beavis and Butthead pseudo head nodding.

Nope.

10.) Wildly ambiguous ending that can be used to warrant a sequel?

Check.

************************************************************

Sweatshop isn't the most creative slasher movie but it's the most bloodiest one I've seen in a while. It's got its gimmicks (ravers doing ravy things) and a masked slasher with a weapon that would make Jason Voorhees jealous. The characters are your standard cardboard cutouts of not white teen suburbia but cutouts of what we think ravers dress and act like. I mean they had them drinking and smoking weed...but not doing meth or taking E? WTF?

By the end of the first hour, the body count is quite high and your waiting to see what the hell will happen in the final 30. And I'll admit it doesn't disappoint. It's a crazy gore soaked ending.

I've always said that if you have gratuitous nudity, some semi interesting characters and a formidable killing machine, you've made a decent slasher film in my book.

You may not have expected it, but Sweatshop cuts off a good solid dick.

Gore-ipedia

See checklist item #6

Nude-ipedia

Gratuitous nudity at its most gratuitous

WTF moment

That hammer is seriously pimped out

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Sweatshop is being distributed via Screen Media Films and was released on DVD September 13th. Sarah Jahier of Fatally Yours has a quote on the DVD box (which peaked my interest in watching this) and a Bloody Disgusting and Dread Central gave good reviews.

The Vitals

• The official site
• Like Sweatshop on Facebook!
• Follow Sweatshop on Twitter!
  

Rating:
1/2


Check out the trailer.

3 Slices of Life (Review)

3 Slices of Life

Slices of Life (2011)

Directed by Anthony G. Sumner

As noted a few weeks back, I questioned whether or not the horror anthology was seeing a resurgence. One of those films that showed evidence of this was Anthony Sumner's 3 Slices of Life which from the cover art and the trailer made it seem like the "IT" film to see in the indie horror circuit. Would it replace Trick R Treat as the reigning horror anthology in the last 5 years?

Now having watched the film, I can safely say Trick R Treat has nothing to worry about. Slices of Life has a solid anthology structure working in an amnesia girl working at a motel bridge while throwing in the titular slices of life. Those being Work Life, Home Life and Sex Life. Clearly if this movie was going to kick ass, 2 of the 3 stories would have to be awesome.

And that's where we fall short. Only 1 story, Sex Life drew my attention to stellar as the other two were mediocre at best. Sometimes that's how it goes. Slices of Life shows flashes of creativity covered in DIY blood and CGI cleverness, but gets ultimately doomed by the predictable stories and inconsistent pacing. I really wanted to like this flick but the more I thought I'd see an edgy piece of indie wickedness, the more it delivered old Twilight Zone-ish plots and old Tales from the Crypt goofiness.

Much of it reminded me of a Drew Daywalt short but without his ingenuity. The premise clearly peaked my expectations to high but somehow the story never followed through. In a nutshell, your slices are a zombie short, a ghost story and a creature feature. The creature feature is the only one that made the inner gorehound in me squeal with delight.

So let's explore all 3 in a breakdown.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

Sexual Parasites, Disembowelment, Zombies, Serial Killers, Demon Children, Violent Vixens, Rabid Office Workers and Angry Embryos all spring to life from the flesh covered sketch books featured in Anthony G. Sumner's (Gallery of Fear) SLICES OF LIFE.

Mira (Kaylee Williams) awakens in front of a seedy roadside motel with amnesia. She searches for clues to her identity in the pages of three bound sketchbooks, in which each book represents a different aspect of everyday life, maybe her life.

WORK LIFE A lowly clerk at a nano technology firm unleashes a deadly virus at the office headquarters, giving new meaning to the term corporate zombie.

HOME LIFE As local girls begin to disappear, a young pregnant woman is haunted by visions of evil demonic children hell bent on stealing her unborn fetus.

SEX LIFE A young brother and sister on the run from a sexually abusive home life, take refuge in a countryside Victorian manor- only to discover the monsters hidden in this house have been looking for a new home. Convinced that the characters from these books are roaming around the motel, Mira's reality begins to crumble. Are these visions real or is she going insane? Desperate, Mira turns to the motel caretakers (Marv Blauvelt and Helene Alter-Dyche), only to discover the true evil bound in the flesh covered books and the destiny they hold for her.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

First up the glue of the anthology revolves around Mira, an amnesiac who works in a motel. With a weirdo owner lady and a handyman, she mans the front desk and reads up on the mysterious slices of life books that appear before her.

It's an interesting glue that holds your attention. The setting of a motel is a bit creepy and Kaylee Williams gives off a positive vibe. The fact that the film drops off paranormal creepiness to give you each short was a bit overboard. The best anthologies are the one's that keep yourself grounded in a "real world" focus. You know each story is gonna be oddly horrific and the balance of semi realism might have helped here. But I digress. Here's a review of each segment.

WORK LIFE: W.O.R.M.

From the plot above, it's basically Office Space meets Shaun of the Dead. The unnoticed lonely office salaryman unleashes an e-mail virus zombie apocalypse. I was hoping this would be the horror comedy portion of the anthology and at times it is. A few raunchy jokes via a sex Internet cam site seemed to be on the right track but it slowly descends into a straightforward zombie snoozefest.

If this was trying to be the comedy portion, it clearly failed on both the horror and the comedy of the segment. It's not a bad thing to copy the recent classics. Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, were a few flicks to copy from that worked the zombie comedy well. I would have love to see The Office meets Romero. We know there is going to be heavy duty fuckedupness later, getting the audience to laugh is one way to set them up.

HOME LIFE: Amber Alert

AKA the ghost story of 3 Slices of Life. If there was a segment to go all shaky cam POV this would be it. I liked the fact we followed Vonda, black pregnant woman who starts seeing evil demonic missing children. It's kinda cool to follow a black couple having a Paranormal Activity experience. But somehow this premise is boring and eventually pointless. The "scares" are weak and repetitive. CGI ghost faces, shadows and regurgitated jump scares never even made me wince.

The supposed twist didn't even register a yawn in my book. There are many things a ghost or supernatural story is suppose to do. It's suppose to be dark, devious and deadly. But there was none of that. I felt like it was a total missed opportunity to jolt the audience with some POV scariness.

SEX LIFE: Pink Snapper

Your creature feature segment is part crime grime part Teeth. If you've seen Teeth, you know what I'm talking about. As clearly as you can see yourself in the mirror you can see the twist coming a mile away but Sex Life had all the elements of a solid short. You've got a brother and sister getaway, an old man with a mysterious agenda and a kidnapping or prison victim. Throw in some superb gore and splatter and a wicked ending and it equals applause.

Deneen Melody as Susan, who escapes from the sexual advances of a creepy uncle flees with her brother where they encounter an old man who they found unconscious. Leading them to a super religious house they find a kidnap victim Elizabeth (Judith Lesser) (who's also on the cover of the DVD) and that's where the twists and turns all end in a splatterific conclusion.

Sure it's predictable and full of one dimensional characters, but it works in my opinion. The practical creature gore and effects are brilliant as is the buckets of blood that drip from the walls in the epic conclusion.

The entire film COULD and I stress could have been awesome. A horror comedy that relaxes the viewer, a ghost story that gets them edgy and a creature feature that gives you the sexual willies. But the first 2 never really got into the final story and by the end, you're not expecting much. Slices of Life is an unfired firework, ready to explode but nobody lit the fuse. Instead we're given sparklers and told "Have a good time kids!".

My expectations were super high for Slices of Life and I'm clearly disappointed that I'm waving my sparklers instead of firing off M80s. Sumner and Tinycore Pictures are talented filmmakers with an ambitious film that gets stuck on neutral. They are real indie horror filmmakers and for that I'm super proud of the work they did here.

All I ask is more bottle rockets, more firecracker belts and M80 that will blow us all away.

Gore-ipedia

Gunshot to the face
Slice and dice
Vayjayjay trauma
Intestinal fortitude
Smash to the face
Decomposing awesomeness

Nude-ipedia

The boobs via the mirror in the bathroom

WTF moment

The Pink Snapper comes to life

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

The DVD has some cool stuff in it including a Sumner short called "Jitters" which I found to be Drew Daywalt-ish. Feature commentary, interviews with the ladies of Slices of Life and some VDX behind the scenes were also interesting.

There will be more horror anthologies to come and Slices of Life has some moments. It's your decision to choose whether or not you want to see all of them. I gave it 2 spinkicks as I liked the overall premise and the last segment. It's sorta a 1 1/2 spinkick or 2 to me. I'm going with the latter.

The Vitals

• The Official Site
• Facebook Page
• Twitter Page

Rating:



Here is the trailer.

Top 5 Slice and Dice Dismemberment Death Scenes

Umm this is kinda self explanatory. Slice and Dice deaths. Nuff said.

5.) Resident Evil

Lasers are awesome!

4.) Final Destintion 2

Death sure is creative!




3.) Cube

One of the first slice and dices I ever saw.





2.) Ghost Ship

It's all about the body count here and seeing rich people sliced and diced makes me happy.




1.) Underworld

It takes him like 30 seconds to fall apart!






Bonus Video!

Here's a few more that include the one's above. I especially like the Slither one with the intestines coming out.

The Shortround: The Deadneks Trilogy of Blood (Review)

If you have an indie short, our motto at the jaded viewer is we'll review it. So our latest edition of The Shortround is a grindhouse short via Ruckus Productions called The Deadneks - Trilogy of Blood. Featuring the psychobilly sickos The Deadneks, we get a full blown exploitation homage as 3 city girls wind up in Bumfuck Hillbilly USA.

Here be the plot:

When a trio of sexy city gals picks up a broken-down hillbilly in the backwoods of Virginia – the three kittens get A LOT more than they bargained for when they accept the drifter’s invitation to a down-home barbecue. What these lovely ladies don’t know just may hurt ‘em – when they find that the menu of this hayseed hoe-down isn’t the standard ‘burgers and dogs’…

the jaded viewer says: Shot on a claimed budget of $62, Trilogy of Blood is a 27 minute long Deadneks music video with a Herschel Gordon Lewis grindhouse homage blended in. Ruckus Productions spared no expense (well maybe expenses for beer, Spencer Gifts decaped arms and blood and more beer) to give us a look and feel of an exploitation film circa the 70s. The tagline says it all:

SEE the BLOOD! FEEL the TERROR! HEAR the PSYCHOBILLY SICKNESS!!!! Experience the sensory TRIPLE-SKULL-FUCK that is…TRILOGY OF BLOOD!!!!!!!!

Damn that's alot of exclamation points.

Add in the grainy staticky footage and some Gordon Lewis homages from 2000 Maniacs to Blood Feast and you got a nice decent short with 3 performances by The Deadneks whose punk rock style is a blend of The Misfits, The Cramps and Reverend Horton Heat. I haven't heard psychobilly punk in a while since my early punk rock days and it was nice to hear some good tunes while seeing ocular trauma, smashed heads and cannibal rednecks. We even get a horrific chubby fuck, incest makeout session and a boink-o-thon on a tractor trailer.

I've never seen that before.

Trilogy of Terror is grindhouse schlock with a killer soundtrack that horror and punk rock fans should check it out. I'm not saying it's the best the grindhouse has to offer but it's got all the basics and cliches and offers nothing more, nothing less.

Boobs, blood, beer and rock and roll. If that's your poison, check it out.

The Vitals

• Fun Fact: Brenna Roth (daughter of David Lee Roth) stars as one of the girls
• Picked to be part of the Underground Horror Fest II taking place in March of 2011
• 2010 Horrorfind Weekend and Fright Night Filmfest selection
• Official Site
• Facebook Page

Check out the trailer!

Bleading Lady (Review)

Bleading Lady aka Star Vehicle

Bleading Lady aka Star Vehicle (2011)

Directed by Ryan Nicholson

Let's just be real.

If you know of Ryan Nicholson's previous Plotdigger films, the last 2 being Gutterballs and Hanger, you've come to either be on the side of "his films are fuckin awesome" or "what a piece of shit these films are".

Ironically I'm still on the fence. I praised Gutterballs for being a brilliant exploitation masterpiece while destroying Hanger for being to gross and boring. I figure Star Vehicle (renamed Bleading Lady) would be my tiebreaker in the Nicholson filmography.

Well it turned out it didn't break the tie.

Bleading Lady has elements of the good shit I expected. Over the top gore, gratuitous nudity and self aware cleverisms. It also has the elements of what I hated. It's got serious pacing issues, horrible dialogue and minutes of nothingness.

Bleading Lady ends up being a the equievelant of seeing an ugly naked girl getting her armed disemembered. Your like "ewwwwwwwwww" and then "fuckin A!!! That was awesome!". So how did we all end up here?

Boring Plot-O-Matic

"Star Vehicle" follows the downward spiral of movie driver Donald Cardini, a self-professed movie buff with a penchant for explosive violence when provoked. Driving the stars of low-budget movies, along with their fragile egos, to and from locations in the middle of nowhere, pushes Don's buttons in all of the wrong directions.

When Luke, the young and self-absorbed writer/director challenges Don's authority, murder and mayhem ensues. The movie's Scream Queen' starlet, Riversa Red, to her dismay finds herself the target of Don's obsession. With his encyclopedic knowledge of her "body" and body of work, Don worms his way onto Riversa's good side, no easy task. Not knowing whether to fear or friend Don, Riversa finds herself at the center of a cyclone with Luke and Don both vying for her attention. A mysterious Hotel Bellboy and an unknown "watcher in the woods" lend themselves to the growing suspense as the cast and crew hold-up at Forest Grove Lodge...

Awesome Review-O-Matic

It's clear that from the outset we're getting a full on horror film from Ryan Nicholson. It's clear we're getting a little horror movie within a horror movie ala Scream to get our share of boobs, gore and in jokes. Our main dude Don (Dan Ellis) is the driver of the "star vehicle" and his passenger the lovely Reversa Red (Sidney Faraguna). We meet a few others along the way from the scumbag director, the Nicholson easter egg from the makeup artist, some scream queen noobs, another fellow driver and a lodge bellboy.

Don is a horror buff with knowledge of who's who. He adores Ms. Red and is her biggest fan. From bashing a friend's head he is an overprotective father to the scream queen. The movie intersplices scenes from the movie they are making and it at times I was a little more interested in that movie than the movie that was unfolding.

As we trudge along we get the inside of life within an indie horror movie. Making fun of an indie horror movie in an indie horror movie is surreal. Reversa converses with Don on her exploits and having done a "full frontal" nudity scene. He goes all "your talented then these whores" route while Reversa defends how these actresses get into the business. Some of this is interesting take on the inner workings of indie horror.

We even get to see Don break the 4th wall half an hour in as aside from an intro of kills, we see shit. He narrates "I know you are saying to yourself: 'let us get on with the blood!'" and so the movie does. Nicholson knows what we want and I LOL-ed from that bit of 'logue.

With every Nicholon film we do get full on boobs and buckets of blood. The boobs are solid Grade A boobage and the splatter is top notch. Sliced throats, crowbar trauma, severe OJ-ish stabbing will make every gorehound a happy happy boy. It's over the top and it's hilarious in that happy sickening sorta way.

But with all this horror happiness, we get the ugly girl portions of the film. At 70 or so minutes, there is so much emptiness in a lot of scenes that I rang up a decent score on Angry Birds waiting for something to happen. It just felt like 60% of the movie was filler with double talk conversations and our director being a douchebag. Reversa Red is our final girl but does nothing to make us care about her either.

Which leads to the dialogue of the whole film. Some of it was completely incomprehensuble. You know they are over acting and hamming it up in the movie within the movie but when we see the behind the scenes, it's still as bad. What the fuck? And that damn 80s cheesy soundtrack started to get on my nerves as well.

As we go along it seems Reversa's got a stalker and Don's gonna have to be the knight in shining armour. This leads to some slaughter and some tension between him and the director. The body count piles up and as we get to the end Don's making his own horror movie.

The ending is completely out of leftfield. Hell I think it's out of the 20 yard line. Come to think of it, I had no idea what sport I was watching. The movie spun out of control and ended up being one long scene of boring.

Bleading Lady pushes a standard horror film into overdrive with it's mish mash of horror caricatures and inside jokes. The gratuitous is solid in nudity and gore. But as it's racing towards the finish, it crashes into a tree and like an over cliched action movie, the gas tank ignites and blows up the entire car.

It has the smashing homage awesomeness of Gutterballs but the stupidness of Hanger and ends up with the standard 2 spinkicks from the jaded viewer. Like I said before, it's an ugly girl getting her arm chopped off. Somehow its ugly and cool at the same time. But I expected more. I expected a hot naked girl getting beheaded in full slo mo glory.

Weren't we all?

Gore-ipedia

Throat slashing
Slice and dice
Crowbar trauma
Stab and jab

Nude-ipedia

Full frontal boobs
Top and bottom full frontal nudity

WTF moment

I predicted the twist 10 minutes in. I was like WTF! It can't be that obvious can it?

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Bleading Lady comes out on DVD March 29th from Breaking Glass pictures via their Vicious Circle Films label. If you have to watch every Plotdigger and Ryan Nicholson film, than you'll need to watch this flick. If your a noob to RN, start off with Gutterballs because it has all the stuff your looking for and more.

The movie was filmed in Maple Ridge and Vancouver Canada.

The Vitals

• Bleading Lady via Breaking Glass Pictures
• The official site

Rating:

Check out the trailer.