The first of Canons *unofficial* ‘Ninja’ Trilogy, ‘Enter the Ninja’ is a BIZZARE watch if nothing else. The plot, revolving around a recently trained ‘White’ Ninja returning to a poor village to catch up with friends, only to discover that said friends are in the middle of awful intimidation tactics by a group of landgrabbers who want to run them and their charity services out of the country or worse, make sure the only land they’re GOING to be occupying is six feet under.

Our lead ninja sends several friendly messages to the baddies (I.E beating the crap out of them) that the land isnt for sale. But when the group find out our charity workers have a Ninja on their side, they decide to get a Ninja themselves…One whos all too familiar to the White Ninja.

Honestly, there isnt a whole lot to say about this one. The script feels like a Kids interpretation of an adult Ninja movie. and as such in places it can get very disorienting. Everything is SUPER blunt, all the characters are extreme charicatures of the usual architypes, the plot is super basic, bluntly cut with hard transitions between acts and an emphasis on fighting over plot. What emotional elements are present in the film are really rough, lack nuance and feel like they were dropped in to help break up the fighting and nothing else.

Honestly? I really enjoyed the tone and vibe this thing gave off in being SO rudamentary that it ends up downright silly in places. Its not a bad movie in that sense. But I did feel it was about 10 minutes too long and at times, a little TOO basic in storytelling. Like…I feel confident if it wasnt for the gore, that I could show this to VERY young kids and theyd have NO trouble figuring out what was going on.

Directions pretty basic too; Everything is working pretty much as it should…which is fine. But they never really go above and beyond just keeping the ship afloat. The films really lacking in a clear and stylish vision for how this story is to play out, as such it at times plays almost as a parody of Asian Ninja movies from the time (If your film feels like it was edited by Godfrey Ho at multiple points, I dont know if that means you failed or passed the brief…)

Direction of the cast is, if intentional, decent. As mentioned, most of the cast give seriously over the top hammy performances across the board which is arguably one of the biggest reasons to check this film out. they use set space and props pretty decently and while I dont know if all this was intentional, it did create and entertaining sense of energy that probably wouldnt have been there had the director matched his direction of the crews energy.

I also have to mention that the fight choreography is kind of dull as well, we have a mixture of soft contact play and weaponry work which is handled alright, but the total lack of any kind of creative flare from a cine perspective basically makes all the fights look kind of slow and uninteresting. they dont nearly do enough with the cine and direction to really sell these fights as being over the top and cool. Which I found rather dissapointing.

The cine is fine too, theres a couple of nice shots and some decent location work, the lighting in places is a bit extra which was nice to see. but so much of the film is just slightly washed out undersaturated ‘on location’ sequences that it quickly starts to look and feel a lot drabber than the poster would have you believe. Composition of shots is a little touch and go across the runtime, but i’d say there is more good than bad here…even if it is a little uninspired.

Oh…and the soundtracks passably okay, very 80s and not much else. Not an essential work…but it does the job. Almost the entire film is ADR’d though which…im not sure if that was intentional as an homage to the ADR work on a lot of the redubbed martial arts movies coming out of Hong Kong at the time, or if it was a budget thing…But it did help make the film feel more authentic.

All in all? While the production on the whole is VERY middle of the road, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed this one as a big slab of 80s cheese. the performances were the biggest draw for me with some great lines delivered with scene chewing vigor. Is this an essential watch for the martial arts genre? No. definitely not. not in my opinion at least…But I can recommend checking this one out if you’re getting into the genre, have seen a few and want to see something thats ‘from’ the genre, but clearly not ‘of’ the genre. Its the ‘Big Mac’ of Martial arts movies, and I appreciate it for that.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/enter-the-ninja/

Another film that can be added to the pile of ‘Movies that Wish they were “Maniac” but arnt.’ “Video Murders” is a pretty by the numbers little slasher flick in which a sociopathic serial killer stalks sex workers and strangles them to death on camera for his own diabolical requirements.

And thats about as in depth as it gets. the script is your bog standard ‘Killer goes out killing, cops are 1 step behind until they arnt’ type fodder. Theres a slightly decent upturn towards the end as our killer forms something of a bond with his final victim. But its all too little too late and honestly, by the halfway point I was long into clock watching.

There just isnt a whole lot here, the titular ‘video murders’ are WAY too few and far between. and while the film could have absolutley been improved with some more SOV sequences. a fuzzy video themed intro and outro is about as involved as it gets in the video scene.

The characters are all kind of middle of the road, the killer isnt particualrly interesting and the script doesnt really go into much depth around who these people are or why we should care about them, in the 3rd act the killer is given THE most generic motive a slasher film can really offer…and thats about as far as it goes.

The direction is pretty fine enough, I didnt notice anything TOO agregious barring maybe 1 or 2 instances where it looks like the film ran out literally on the cut mark leading to a few white flashes here and there. the sound quality in places is a little ropey (probably due to poor mic placement on set) but hey. This thing does about the best it can visually (hence the star rating)

The cine is quite impressive in terms of it’s sequence building. Shots are crisp, clean and theres enough B Roll to ensure that sequences float along nicely. However; theres little in the way of experimentation and the B-roll that is present sometimes feels a little thrown together.

It also has to be said that the pacing in this film is dire. theres a chase scene towards the end of the film that goes on for WAY too long, and sequences of our killer trying to find women in bars are frankly painful and lack any kind of solid focus. it’s a real task to sit through to me.

The soundtracks cheap, but interesting as we get low budget synth scoring for most of the movie, but it rearranges classical compositions quite well and it has a somewhat demented quality that I think suits the film nicely.

Throw in a cast who really fail to land any kind of impression, barring our killer who in the closing minutes gives a hamtastic finale. and what your left with is a very generic slasher film, thats quite impressive given its budget and resources. But is just too bland for me to really truely love it. It’s not one I could recommend. If you like ‘Maniac’ as a movie, you’ll probably get on with this one fine enough, but it just smacks of ‘imitation’ and really feels like it isnt certain of standing on its own. It’ll be a while before I come back to this one.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/video-murders/

Silent Night Deadly Night 2. A film that seemingly only had contempt for its audience from its conception. Exactly why the film has ended up the way it has is up for a lot of debate, but from what i’ve been able to find, it looks like the producers basically wanted to re-release the original “Silent Night Deadly Night” in 1987 but with some newly shot additional footage bolted onto it to help sell it to audiences as some kind of “Extended cut” or “Special Edition”.

Similar to how Uli Llomel made “Boogeyman 2” by basically just bolting on some police interrogation footage to the original “Boogie Man” However; the screenwriters accidentally ended up writing a bit more material than was required. There wasnt enough for an entirely new movie…But there was enough to justify altering the idea from it being just a re-release of Silent Night Deadly Night with additional shots, to it instead becoming a new movie which was HEAVILY propped up with footage from the original Silent Night Deadly Night.

And the word HEAVILY there is doing a HELL of a lot of lifting. In essence what they’ve effectively done here is created a film that’s about a third to a half made up of footage from the original Silent Night Deadly Night with linking narrations and additional newly shot footage making up about a half to two thirds of this thing. And its here that the problems really kind of begin, but before that. Let’s get into the plot of this thing.

So the film takes place 4 years after the events of the original “Silent Night Deadly Night”. The film opens with Ricky (Billys younger brother) in some kind of prison/mental health facility where he’s clearly not playing with a full deck and is about to talk to his latest Psychiatrist Dr. Bloom, Ricky scoffs at this during the introductions as he’s already seen 12 Psychiatrists before Dr. Bloom and doesnt think anything is going to be any different this time. Nonetheless Dr.Bloom Asks Ricky about his childhood and Ricky begins to recount the events of the first movie, occasionally interrupting the film to add additional *fluffy* narrative links and to help build up Rickys character as a very angry, cold and demented character who wants to punish anyone who he deems to be…Naughty…

Now, what was the plot of the original Silent Night Deadly Night…ahh yes! I remember it as if it were yesterday! *Flashback waves as we go back to my original review*

So! That makes up about 40 minutes of the runtime and the rest of the film follows the story of what happened to Ricky. It’s revealed that after the incident at the orphanage the place got closed down and the children were all rehomed into foster care, Ricky ended up living with a family called “The Rosenbergs” a decent bunch who apparently don’t celebrate christmas, and for a time, things were going pretty well. That is until one day while Ricky is out shopping with his step mum, where he sees two nuns walking down the street. This triggers flashbacks which his mum dismisses, but when the nuns walk into a store and start messing with some red fabric, the flashbacks become all too vivid and Ricky effectively ends up seizing up in the street. His Step mum only figures out what’s going on WAY too late to do anything about it, so a couple of days later, the Rosenbergs go back to the orphanage to ask what exactly has gone on in Ricky’s past.

The Nuns reassure the Rosenbergs and tell them that, with love and support these episodes will be minimal and *should* Hopefully in time, subside completely. At which point, we then jump forwards another five years to when Rickys stepfather passes way, this seems like a bit of a traumatic turning point for Ricky. He decides to manage his grief by taking walks along the backroads around his home town, sometimes for hours at a time.

Its here that things start heating up a bit, as; while out walking one day, Ricky spots a young couple having a picnic in a clearing and decides to people watch for a bit. While hanging out, the feller; Eddie, decides hes a bit horny and basically tries to “Initiate” with his partner. When she refuses, he basically tries to rape her. When she fends him off, he gets pissed off and goes to get a beer from his truck. Which just so happens to be Red. the combination of Ricky seeing this combined with the red truck tips him over the edge and he ends up repeatedly running over Eddite with his own truck. The Doctor is surprised to learn of these incidents as they’ve never been documented before, but Ricky seems nonplussed about the whole thing. Later; The doc decides to ask Ricky about Jennifer. And this brings us more or less in line to the present day.

Jennifer was Rickys Girlfriend for a time, the pair met when Ricky was knocked off his motorbike by Jennifer and the pair quickly bonded. It transpires that Jennifer was Rickys first *proper* girlfriend and the person he lost his Virginity too. And he assumed that Jennifer was a virgin too. This however was not the case as, after a few months into dating, Ricky takes Jennifer to the movies to watch…Silent…night deadly night…hmm…anyway! Theres a loudmouthed asshole in the screening, so Ricky goes to “Deal” with him and while hes away Jennifer bumps into “Chip” an old flame who apparently treated Jennifer very badly. When Ricky returns Chip disappears to go watch the movie, but a short time later while wandering around town both Ricky and Jennifer bump into Chip again who dunks on Ricky for being a bit lame and also calls out Jennifer for having low standards and for screwing Chip in the back of his car.

Incensed. Ricky electrocutes chip with a car battery, and then when Jennifer freaks out and tries to run away from Ricky he garrots her with a car antenna before making a cop shoot himself. Ricky takes the cops gun…yadda yadda yadda…GARBAGE DAY…and after shooting several people and blowing up a rather strange car. More cops turn up and Ricky is sectioned and committed. And you’d think that was the movie…but NO! Because when we come back from that flashback, it’s revealed that Ricky has strangled Dr. Bloom with his own Reel to reel tape and escaped the facility! Leaving it down to a random detective and Sister Margret (eh?) to find Ricky before he finds a now heavily debilitated Mother Superior and gives her the old Axe to the face treatment!

In a film that honestly feels like it really shouldn’t exist, but somehow does. Will the police find Ricky in time, Will Ricky finally decide who’s naughty and who’s nice! and…How was Ricky able to tell Dr. Bloom oddly specific details about what Billy got up to in the first movie when Billy was the only person to actually see these events? Non of this and more will be answered if you take a look at Silent Night Deadly Night 2…sort of.

And given that at least 30-40 minutes of this film is either footage from the first Silent Night Deadly Night OR part of an ultra long extended credits sequence it got me thinking about my thoughts on the script from the original film *Flashback waves start* Yeh sod that, Im not doing that for the whole review, lifes too short. So the first film was a more than solid Christmas slasher, arguably not AS good as movies like “Black Christmas” or “Christmas Evil”, but solidly written, slightly campy in places and heavy enough on the gore to hold attention without it just feeling like a film going through the motions. This film however is pretty much entirely defined by a rather large issue of communication between the screenwriters and the people actively directing on set.

Y’see, The character of Ricky in this was kind of poorly defined. The Screenwriters and Eric Freeman the guy who plays Ricky, wanted the character to be cold and calculating, a harder more muted performance. The director and producer though were much more sold on a more bombastic performance, something in the same field as Freddy Kruger. And because of this disconnect, Eric had to try to do both. And this in effect absolutely defines and ruins the film in equal measures. Had they written a bombastic character, it may have come across as a bit fake because they’d be playing to that expectation, had they fully committed to playing it cold, it probably would just be seen as a bit of an oddity of a production. But the results here are just SO tonally bizarre that the film’s able to carry itself to meme status as a work of infamy.

Ignoring the fact that a decent chunk of this film is made up of another film, the new material is a bit lacking honestly, what ACTUALLY happens in this movie outside of the re-run stuff? Ricky gets adopted, scared by nuns, his stepdad dies, he kills a couple weirdos, falls in love, kills someone in a jealous rage, gets his heart broke and then kills half a dozen other people leading to a showdown with the Mother Superior…someone who, Ricky really didnt even have that much of a dealing with when all is said and done honestly.

In fact; thats pretty much this scripts biggest problem, it feels like it wants to tell the story of Ricky AND Billy, but because Billys gone, rather than settle for that loss, they’ve just given Billys lines to Ricky and then carried on with business as usual. The Scripts plagued with moments where Ricky recounts incidents that ONLY Billy was ever witness to, there are moments Ricky recounts and claims to have remembered where, not only could he have not seen what had happened, but he was like; 2 years old. So he wouldnt understand the context, retain the memories or anything like that. Even the ending with the showdown with the Mother Superior doesnt make that much sense in terms of how this films played out. Had they chosen to play it out as Ricky getting retribution for his brothers murder, then maybe it could have been a bit better accepted as an ending for this. But it isnt, they just decide Ricky hates the Mother Superior for her ruthless punishments…something that Ricky, as far as BOTH films are considered, never really went through.

That would be problematic enough, but even if you took Ricky’s supposed “Motivations” out of the equation and just decided to focus on whats explained in this film, there isnt really a lot on display…Ricky basically just sort of awkwardly bumbles from killing to killing and the final act pay off isnt worth the paper its written on because its all artificial tension. Theres basically a 10 minute story here thats been padded out to 25 minutes by using a couple of vignettes and running scenes well past the length required to tell what little plot there is.

The pacing is all over the place, mostly because this is a movie and a half thats been slammed together to try and make one coherent picture and tonally the two sides really don’t work together well. The old stuff was slightly campy, but largely trying to just be a solid enough slasher film, this thing has 50 thousand volts up it and is keeping things as camp as possible to the point that it neglects the gorier slasher elements of the first film in order to just be goofy and a bit absurdist. These two films don’t feel like they occupy the same universe. With only the final confrontation scene being in ANY way something that I feel could have happened in the original Silent Night Deadly Night. I can put part of this down to the fact that all of this additional footage was shot in a madcap 10 day shoot, so I appreciate that commitment to stylization between the two films may have been a bit thin, but even then…

And the dialogue, jesus christ…its SO basic, it really does feel like the screenwriters wrote this on a case of budweiser over a long weekend. Nothing is given any more detail than a surface level interpretation and EVERYTHING is told to us, they “show” nothing. Ricky only speaks in pseudo profound short bursts and when he does speak its usually just to say shit like “Im starting to like this film” or “Red car…very good.” i’d have preferred him to be mute honestly other than maybe his “Garbage Day” line…in fact…yeh. That would have made the film ten times better, have him say NOTHING for the full runtime and then literally out of nowhere make his one and only line “GARBAGE DAY” that would have won me back over. But yeh…its super stilted dialogue that doesnt really go anywhere, says surprisingly little and while they nail SOME aspects of “Show don’t tell” they really miss it where it counts most of the time.

To be constructive. I think, had the film ended at the point where Ricky escapes the facility. That probably would have both made the most sense AND been the more satisfying way to close. Ending things a bit open with the possibility that Ricky is still out there to this day may not necessarily have been the greatest closer in the world, but it would have at least felt like an appropriate ending for the character, but having the extra scene where he “Santas up” and goes on the rampage…while a bit more explosive a finale makes almost NO sense within the function of the rest of the film and really just left me shrugging.

The film was written by Michael Hicky, Paul Caimi and was also written and directed by Lee Harry. Both Michael and Paul have 2 credits, both for this film and the original. And thats it. Lee has 3 writing and directing credits. This was his first of the three and i’d arguably say it was his most memorable and infamous. He generally specialises in editing movie trailers.

And that would explain a lot, as on the direction front, while the cast direction is somewhat fumbled. The broad direction within a production sense is actually not too bad on these newly shot bits. Scenes generally have a coherency, the padding is fairly obvious but overlooking moments where its clear that studio intervention has taken place, there is a definite professional veneer to the technical work on hand here, and Id say Harry brings a VERY distinct vision forward that most definitely contrasts the style and feel of the original film which I totally understand may cause split room thinking. I personally didn’t *completely* get on with the jarring change in tone between the two films. I’d have rather JUST had a Ricky movie than the 45 min/35 min split we get here, but I can see how some people could just fall in love with the weirdness this film has going for it.

Thats not to let Direction of the cast get off lightly though, even with the communication issues on set around how cast members should perform and what their motivations are, its still a pretty poor showing. With the cast seemingly just being encouraged to look vaguely near the camera, stand perfectly still unless told otherwise and to read their lines AS WRITTEN and NOTHING else. And the most bizarre thing of it all is, given HOW OTT they make Eric in this, everyone else is totally muted. Which if anything just makes Eric look EVEN WEIRDER and makes everyone else look like they literally couldnt be arsed to be there. It’s such a weird choice and I feel it completely lends to the films infamy

Given the mixed direction, the cine is actually pretty solid. I feel thats the benefit of having a director on board who also works in editing is, he knows what shots are going to be needed in order to have something to work with in the edit. And here, it doesnt disappoint. We have a VERY wide variety of shot types on display composition ranges from passable to decent and sequences have been constructed utilising relatively quick cuts that DO help to show more than tell where they can. I mean, its a pain that the script “tells” anyway, but at least from a cine perspective I cant complain about how they choose to show things.

Theres a wide variety of shot types on display, my personal favourite probably being the Garbage day scene where they utilise a VERY long front facing tracking shot of Eric walking down his neighbourhood shooting people. But there’s also pans, dutch angles and other funky and interesting experimentation used throughout. It really gives off the vibe that this was a somewhat stressful set to be on, but one that wasn’t afraid to at least TRY to have a bit of fun with what it was doing. So I’d say it’s probably my 2nd favourite thing about this film.

Performances are a total flop. Eric Freeman is literally the best part of this movie, and hes only good because he commits SO wholeheartedly to whatever the hell the crew wanted him to do on a scene by scene basis that hes just utterly mesmerising to watch. Do I think he gives a good, realistic performance? Absolutely not. But do I think he’s entertaining in that performance and positively daffy duck? Yes. yes I do, and I think he’s MORE than earned his place on the board of respected bad performances in hollywood who at least tried to give the crew what they wanted.

The rest of the cast? Its a wonder they’re awake. The big issue with making most of the new parts of the film flashbacks is that it means no one actor or character outside of Eric really gets enough screen time to set ANY kind of impression other than passable or weird. And that’s basically the whole movie, actors either being just about acceptable on the performance front, or looking/feeling like they’ve just stepped out of Robocop.

And finally; the soundtrack and this films strongest element is arguably its top notch scoring. Seriously; if we’re taking calls for ‘films with scores they don’t deserve’ this has GOT to be up there. Its a creepy but relatively powerful slasher horror scoring at it’s most menacing and while it could be possibly be called a touch generic, and I could see an argument for it. At worst it’s well made generic scoring and at best it’s totally underlooked. A real winner to me, I’d say it gets my thumbs up. And it’d be one i’d quite like to own on vinyl!

Silent Night Deadly Night 2 didnt get released in the UK until November 2020. And the reason a release got stalled for this is quite possibly for the most “Silent Night Deadly Night 2” reason you could possibly believe. So bearing in mind the BBFC didnt have to ban the original “Silent night deadly night” they just told the film makers at the time that unless they made significant cuts to the footage, the film wouldnt be granted a certification and would effectively be banned. So the film makers just, didnt bother to cut the film and it just never came out in the uk. WELL.

Silent Night Deadly Night 2 almost purposefully chopped down the first film by about 50% but STILL left in those problematic scenes. So when it was submitted to the BBFC in 1987, they were basically handed the same note again saying make significant cuts or we just wont give the film a certificate. So the film makers just didnt bother releasing the film in the UK again. it was never formally banned, because they were warned off it in advance. That stayed in place until 101 films submitted both films for a bluray release and they were passed uncut and released as a special edition set in November of that year. They now also have separate solo releases that are pretty decently priced! Extras on this set are plentiful, the best for my money being a short film called “Eric Today” where we catch up with Eric Freemen in character as Ricky to see what he’s been up to since 1987! Which was nice in and of itself! So i’d say this set was definitely worth the money!

Silent Night Deadly Night 2 issss…a problematic film. I hesitate even really to call it a film as its really more of a “Best of” with a couple of short films stapled to it. I don’t think it holds together as well as the original Silent Night Deadly Night. and , if Im being honest. I think it works better as a series of moments than a film itself. Like…as a thing you can watch with friends and get some quotable lines from, this is brilliant fun. But as an actual film? Something to sit and analyse? Yeahhhh its not too good. With a score and cine that tries its best, its just that script, the performances and the mixed direction that lets this thing down ultimately, I still honestly think it would have worked better as a standalone film, I don’t think they needed to drag the first film into it at all…but I can totally see why this film has the cult following it does too…worth watching at least once. I’d say if you havent seen this one before, check it out. Though your milage may vary.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/silent-night-deadly-night-part-2/

So not content with the pain and suffering I inflicted on myself last year with “A Karate Christmas Miracle” the Ken Del Vecchio Christmas film that was half made up of aimless talking sequences and half made up of recycled footage from an older movie Ken made about a mass shooting at a cinema…seriously…I decided once I left therapy to see if things would pick up with the Sideways sequel 2020’s “A Wrestling Christmas Miracle” spoiler alert; im back in therapy.

The films a sideways sequel in the same way that Shock Treatment is to Rocky Horror, we have a lot of actors returning to play VERY similar roles, but just with different names and slightly different behaviours. And if you think that gives this film a bit of a chance to break free from the format of the previous duff entry. Well…you couldnt be more wrong.

For a starters, I don’t really know who the main character in this film is…I mean; I know which character the film WANTS me to think is the main character. But the fact of the matter is that Mario Del Vecchio who plays Kace Gabriel in this, while given top billing, a centre spot on the poster AND the films main plot, is unmistakably absent or only really present here in a minimal capacity. Maybe he opted for a reduced role in this, maybe he had school. Who knows?

The long and short of it is Mario plays Kace, quite possibly the worlds greatest child wrestler. He’s son to the Legendary “Ajax” Gabriel (OF COURSE played by Ken Del Vecchio) and literally after about 3-5 minutes of HEAVILY censored wrestling footage with Kase, thats literally just home movie footage (im not kidding, Mario in real life is ACTUALLY a decent wrestler and the footage was from some of his matches at school, shot by Ken and presumably, because he didnt bother to get release forms for the other parents/staff or kids he’s had to block censor most of the footage barring his son) Kase goes on the news (Bit weird…but okay) to announce he’s stepping back from wrestling for 40 days for a VERY important reason.

He says that he’s been given a “Sign” that if he can write, direct, shoot and edit “The funniest movie in the world” in the 40 days leading up to christmas then his best friend Charlie who’s currently in a deep coma will wake up and thus christmas will be saved. AND! As if to make for even MORE yuk yuks, Kase is getting his dad in to help him make the movie! (For clarification; his dads played as a bit of a Jabroni) Now…you’d think with a setup like that, that THAT would be the movie. Kase and his dad making a goofy movie and all the mishaps and fun that can come from the pitfalls of film production on a deadline…BUT NO!

Because not content in wrongfooting us into believing that this was going to be some kind of christian wrestling movie only to then reveal itself to be a “Kid makes a movie” film…it then wrongfoots us AGAIN by then showing us a weird scene in a hospital which is then revealed to be a scene from Kases finished movie and that most of the 40 days has passed at this point and the films finished and ready to go! The only thing left to do is the film needs to have some backups made because it only exists on a lone hard drive in a finished form. [YOU FOOL!]

After a pep talk Ajax reveals that he’s going to be out in the Congo until AT LEAST Christmas day as he’s agreed to head out for a special event on Christmas Eve where he intends to wrestle an Elephant…yeh I don’t know either. SO! Ajax puts his brother in law Ronald in charge of making backup copies of the movie ready for the big premier and for safe keeping. [YOU FOOL!!!]

Its at this point we’re introduced to Kitty and Chuck, two “bad” actors who starred in Kases film who are low on funds and likely to lose their house if they don’t think of a plan to get some scratch. So. what do they decide to do? Well; they realise that Kaces family are probably quite well off and it is christmas so they hatch a plan to break into Ronalds car and steal all their presents, Why this involves them dressing up as the grinch and cindy lou hoo…mmm…I don’t have time to analyse their sexual deviencies…

But! They pull it off! Getting away with the gifts AND unexpectedly; Kaces Hard drive! And as soon as they realise what they have they make the decision to hold it ransom to Kases family in exchange for around a million dollars. But thats not all! to hedge their bets they also get in touch with a local distribution company, with the aim to sell the rights for the film to the company and live big off the earnings.

And…the rest of the movie from this point on could basically be summarised as Kitty and Chuck being BEYOND irritating as they repeatedly call Kases mum to arrange handover of the ransom money which, for one reason or another keeps being delayed or pushed back, Kase gets a little bit concerned about his lost movie but largely spends time with his comatosed friend telling him plot lines of the film, and Kitty and Chuck hang around cafes, bars and theatres openly plotting what to do with the footage. All the while we’re treated to largely incoherent and inconsistent clips from Kaces movie AND theres an even weirder subplot where it transpires that Ajax is a secret agent and has led a coup against the communist leader of that region of the congo and installed a puppet democracy. He also didnt get chance to wrestle the elephant because, and I quote “He was probably a scared commie.”

In a film that underran SO badly it has 12 minutes of end credits, Will Kase get his christmas wish? Will Kitty and Chuck manage to sell the film and move to mexico. And…why is this film so inherently riddled with anti-communist propaganda? Seriously; its like if you went to a hot dog eating contest and found out it was actually a christian recruitment drive. Anyway; all this and more will perplex and bamboozle you into tapping out, when you watch…A wrestling Christmas Miracle.

And I don’t really know what I expected with this film. Like; if ever there was a moment where I “touched the stove” burnt myself, and then went “Mmm…but was it REALLY hot?” it was this movie. For starters, the script is pretty much just a re-run of the original film, just without the weird Dollar store “Twin Peaks” overtones. Whichever way you cut it the film at it’s core is still just “A kid has to do a special thing leading up to christmas in order to ensure a miracle happens” which is hardly a constructive stretch from the original.
What baffles me the most about the script for this film is they had 2 completely OPEN goals to work with in terms of what the actual plot for it could have been.

Even if you didnt want to make a movie based on the title and marketing of your film, they still could have run with “A kid has 40 days to make the funniest movie in the world to wake his friend up from a coma” there would have been some nice scope for character development between Kase and his dad, you could have had some great comedy moments of everything that can go wrong on a film set combined with the idea of a meathead wrestler and his son trying to get to grips with the subtle nuance of shot composition or blocking and all the pratfalls that could happen with that disconnect., there’s even scope for more emotional developments as the deadline for the film to be completed gets closer.

It can’t even be argued that they went with the weird repetitious bollocks we ended up with because of budget, because they actually rented out some kind of hospital set to shoot the movie within the movie AND they hired Gilbert Godtfried. THEY LITERALLY could have just, shot more and made Kases movie the movie! And it probably would have been more consistent and interesting than what we ultimately ended up with.

The act structure for this thing is almost non existent, taking out the 12 minutes of credits leaves us with a 65 minute feature where the first act is 10 minutes, the 3rd act is 15 and the 2nd act is a bloated 40 minute mess of whatever the editors could scrape off the floor. I cant find proof that a script for this movie even exists, and im MORE than inclined to believe that large chunks of this film were improvised because the dialogue is fumbly, stiff and has a vibe of “what would people THINK is funny or interesting?” about it. There are lines that make almost no sense.

In the opening of the film for example Ajax is watching Kases movie and comments that theres a lot of “Bleeps” in the film which Kase puts down to there being bad language in the script he didnt know he wasnt allowed to include. Now; there are multiple problems with that opening sequence. Chief amongst them being, their arnt that many bleeps in the scene that gets raised…we’re talking 1, maybe 2 tops. But MORE crucially; while they censor words like “Castration” and “Prostitute” that really DON’T need bleeping they DON’T censor words like (and apologies in advance) “Midget”. AND Ken for a more than decent chunk of the films runtime plays a “comedy wheelchair bound deaf guy”…who just sort of…flails about and makes vaguely sign language based symbols…y’know, for a laugh! Jesus christ…

They spend a frankly obscene amount of the movie trying to make the “Whats with all the bleeping?” gag a thing…despite the fact that…there just isnt that much bleeping going on, and anyone whose seen a television in the last 50 years will surely know what a censor bleep is without having to be overtly informed of that?

Though that may be giving the characters WAY too much credit here as the script writes them as border idiots. Kitty and Chuck are basically playing children. They lack a grasp of basic adult understandings and largely screech, squark and “idiot” their way through there scenes in a BEYOND annoying way. Ajax is written almost like he has an on/off switch. One minute hes a loving and considerate father and husband, the next he’s fuckin’ “Grape Ape” just shouting and being weirdly melodramatic. Kase has a couple of weird ticks but is largely muted…mainly just parroting things other cast members said 10 minutes ago, and Ronald appears to literally only be in this movie to pull comedy faces and make wailing noises as and when things happen.

Theres just, so much odd stuff to unpack with this movie…like the strange anti-communist rhetoric that just keeps being drip fed into the movie throughout the runtime. Like…mentioning it once or twice as a bit of a joke, fine. But the film gets weirdly “into” the idea that Ken Del Vecchio’s character is some kind of great liberator who manages to free a left wing country from the clutches of socialism…all the while not really doing all that much to show how “Actually great” the US is…I mean…how good can a country be when two bumbling idiots can break into your car, and hold a movie they find in there to ransom for a million dollars, while claiming they now own the rights to the movie, and NOT ONLY does noone question this, but the police are also helpless (see: too lazy) to intervene?…yeh…sounds like a hoot.

Then There’s the end of the film itself. So at the end of the film, and spoilers from here on out, Kase gets the movie back and plays it for Charlie…who doesn’t wake up…Kase is a little downbeat, but for some BIZARRE reason decides the best thing to do with his comatosed friend who for some reason isnt in a hospital, is to get him in a headlock…which SOMEHOW wakes Charlie up from his coma and saves the day…now. Overlooking the fact that his friend, if he WAS in a coma, wouldn’t just be chilling at home in his bed with no support (then again, this is the american healthcare system we’re dealing with) why on EARTH would Kase think it was appropriate to do wrestling moves on his comatosed friend?

Why did the scriptwriters essentially waste 50 minutes of my time on the “We have to make a movie to save my friend” sub plot, only to then essentially airlock it at the last minute? They say that a films enjoyment can be had in it’s journey, not just strictly it’s resolution…but if the films actively shite throughout and then disappoint’s on the ending as well ON PURPOSE. Where does that leave me honestly? I’ll tell you, watching “A Wrestling Christmas Miracle” apparently…

And thats not even mentioning the film within a film which runs infrequently across the whole runtime. And I’ll be honest I have no idea on exactly whats going on in those sections. It just seems to be an almost absurdist surrealist nightmare piece about a nurse whose sentenced to work in a hospital where everyones a bit daffy orrr…something? There arnt really any jokes in those sections of the film, just weird happenings like a guy pummeling a cherry pie sat on a bed, or a court session being held in a hospital reception…I don’t know what vibe they were going for. But given this came from the mind of a child “in film” i’d have more questions than answers honestly.

Ultimately; what we have here is a script thats incoherent and inconsistent with non existent pacing, poor act structuring, terrible dialogue that feels unnaturally stilted and unconfidently improvised. That has weird right leaning hyper fixations that it just CAN NOT get rid of and not only fails to sell itself to its audience on the premise it’s supposedly built on, but cant even sell itself to its audience on the premise it wrongfoots you on.

The Script was written by Ken Del Vecchio and Buddy Fitzpatrick who both play Ajax and Chuck respectively in the movie, we’ve covered both Ken and Buddy previously in my “Karate Christmas Miracle” review but, as of the time of writing this is their last written/produced credit to date! So, I really hope they come back this christmas with another “Miracle” film to turn this duology into a trilogy! Stepping up to the plate to direct this time, we have Chris T. Anthony, Chris has 2 directing credits, his first being a short film from 2013 and his last being this film. He’s really more of a cinematographer honestly; in that field he has 11 credits and still seems to be fairly active to this day.

On the direction front…well; its a bit better than “A Karate Christmas Miracle” My big issue with the original was that the vast majority of the film looked like it was shot freehand, on the fly and barring a few notable exceptions it just looked like someone making a film for fun, with friends, which is fine if you don’t plan on making it a studio based release and charging people actual money for the privilege of watching the thing. If you DO charge for that and you arnt an SOV film from the 80s or 90s…then im only going to rain down with violence and hellstorm at the audacity of charging money for an unprofessional and barely coherent product.

A Wrestling Christmas Miracle, barring the opening and closing wrestling scenes themselves which is most definitely just home movie footage. Feels at least a little bit more professional by contrast. A lot of the scenes are clearly somewhat planned and while it does have a bit of a whiff of the “Gun for hire” about it in terms of strong and clear visions, it at least does have a few interesting choices in scene structure, set construction and location work. Its not overly reliant stock footage, on weird CGI effects or odd colour grades or other weirdness. Don’t get me wrong! it still does *loosely* play with those elements a bit. But by contrast to “Karate” It’s generic as balls!. it’s at least moving in the right direction in terms of making a product that I could believe was sold for actual real world money. But it’s still not great.

Now direction of the cast. THAT. is something entirely different. With the script being SO unwieldy and messy I genuinely don’t know how much of what im seeing is improvised and how much is the dialogue as written and performed. If im going off my gut instinct. Id say there was a lot more improvisation than initially planned. And the only reason I say that is because my gut is really giving me the vibe that this film was cast directed by basically telling the performers to feel the delivery out, and inevitably things would get a bit silly, and then it creates a bit of a feedback loop where everyone THINKS they’re the most hilarious people in the world…but what is actually translated is some of the most irritating performances put to digital. But more on that later. The cast do seem to work with there set spaces and locations reasonably well given what they’ve got to work with. And I think the director manoeuvres the cast through those spaces quite well. But in terms of getting the right performance for the tone of this film. I absolutely do not believe they achieved that goal effectively…in my opinion.

On the cine front, this film actually kind of performs a miracle. Almost every set is decked to the nines in christmas related fodder, trees, tinsel, wreaths you name it. theres even people singing christmas carols on and off throughout. And yet SOMEHOW, this is probably one of the least christmassy movies I think i’ve seen to date. There are a few reasons for this, the total lack of snow is probably the biggest issue, its hard to make your film look christmassy when theres intermittent shots of vibrant green front yards and largely blue skies on display.

But I think the biggest issue is around the colour grading for this film, I’ve mentioned before that colours and grading in your christmas film are incredibly important to setting the mood and tone of the movie, and it’s not that hard to follow really to get semi decent results. The rule of thumb is, when your outside you want the film to look as cold as possible, you want to utilise cool colours in set design and grade as cool as possible, because you want the weather outside to look frightful, conversely when your shooting indoors you want to give the grade a warmth, something more towards the orange, yellow and red side of the specturm that plays against the more festive reds and greens of christmas decorations. Something that makes that fire look so delightful. It’s basic, but cool external shots make people subconciously think of winter, it makes them cold and gets them feeling a bit more christmassy. And equally making internals more warmer on the grade gives people that feeling of being snuggled up in their warm house at christmas.

You can play around with those elements however you like to play with your audience, for example a cooler grade on internal shots in a christmas film could be used to highlight a particularly depressing moment in the film or a warm external grade could be used in flashbacks to show “the olden days of christmasses past”.

This film doesn’t really care for film 101 as a rule. All the internal shots are graded white. Not cool, not warm. White. Which leaves the audience subconsciously directionless. What are they supposed to feel when the grade is basically just shrugging at them? As a result of the muted grade and several HEAVY shallow depth of field shots, all the christmas decoration just kind of blends into the background and become indistinct. It might as well not be there for how defined it is within the shot. And because of that and several location shots throughout the film that totally lack anything festive it just really killed the idea that this was in any way a Christmas movie.

Shot composition is *largely* acceptable. There was nothing glaring that came to my mind in terms of poor composition or line crossing. But there was nothing particularly inspired either. Framing at times could maybe be a little off, with head and shoulder shots sometimes being just a smidge too low or too high for the frame. To be honest, its all kind of unremarkable. I’ve seen worse, but i’ve DEFINITELY seen better. Its an improvement on the original by a tiny margin, but it still has a long way to go to be “good”.

Performance wise, well…we have most of the cast from “A Karate Christmas Miracle” back here for this one and my opinions on them from that review haven’t really changed. The only thing I need to say is that Buddy Fitzpatrick and Julie McCullough as Kitty and Chuck respectively are exquisite agony to me. I think had they played their characters with just a hint more nuance and self awareness they probably could have stuck the landing as “The right kind of stupid” unfortunately; their performances really feel like they were just egged on to go as over the top as they could in playing how much of an idiot they could be and its just insufferable. It really takes the movie down a peg for me…and it wasnt exaclty high flying to begin with.

The new cast in this picture are few and far between. With even the movies big star Gilbert Godtfried just looking…tired, for the 50 seconds he’s on screen. But honestly? when I say that the best actors in this film are just about acceptable, the average performance in this is poor and the worst performances are unbearable. I hope that sets the tone for you as to exactly what you’re getting into.

And finally; the soundtrack. It’s all stock tracks, thats it. Literally they’ve bought half a dozen christmas tracks from a library site and just drenched the film in them. Sometimes it’s passable, other times its painful, the instance that sticks in my mind is where they have Charlies mum singing a christmas carol and they dub in a stock track version of the carol shes singing…only they’re both playing in different keys, so it sounds awful. Its a generic score thats bland, uninteresting and just plane yucky.

And equally it’d be amiss of me to say the audio quality throughout is a mixed bag too. Some scenes have crisp audio that sounds more than decent, other sequences have audio thats echoey, unbalanced and sounds tinny. I presume its because they couldnt place a mic in some of the wider shots without it being on screen. But i’d rather some half decent ADR than poor on set audio honestly…

A Wrestling Christmas Miracle was released in 2020 by Justice for All productions I own the DVD version, im sure there has to be a bluray copy floating out there but for the life of me I cant find one after having a look around online. Extras are ultra limited, a trailer for the film is about as good as it gets. And it is available on streaming services if your morbidly curious…but honestly; i’d say save your time.

While I do think there are some areas where “A Wrestling Christmas Miracle” outperforms “A Karate Christmas Miracle” those elements are narrow and few and far between. While the cine I would argue is at least a slither more professional and the direction is maybe a smidge tighter. It has more than its fair share of issues, with a soundtrack that literally could have come from the youtube audio library, a total lack of life and definition in the colour grading and editing, direction that, at best is functional and at worst grating. And a script that is just awful in my opinion, with dated references, poor pacing, a bloated and rushed act structure, poor dialogue and a drifting, aimless vision that fails to satisfy, vastly under delivers on what it promises and has a sharp and hard ending that, while not quite as blunt as “Karates” ending is still pretty tone deaf.

I had a pretty bad time with this one, its ultimately just a quite boring film. Definitely one to use to test your metal if your looking for a genuinely bad and not enjoyable experience, its mercifully short which is about the only good thing going for it, but yeh. You guys can do so much better this christmas season, DEFINITELY one to avoid.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/a-wrestling-christmas-miracle/

Welp! As regular viewers may be aware, and…do keep this to yourself, but…i’m quite the fan of looking into the world of obscure and forgotten movies. From “Alien Species” to “Riverbend”, while I don’t ACTIVELY seek out films that no one’s ever heard of, when they’re quite literally dropped in front of me I’m definitely not one to refuse. And today’s film is a perfect example of this, though I do rather think I may well have actually hit a bit of a brick wall with this one. So buckle up because…well…this ones looking to be a bit shorter than usual.

“Santas Pocket Watch” (apparently known in some parts of the world as “Santas time piece”) exists…and thats really about the beginning and end of what I can give you in terms of the history on this thing. Seriously, the credits list for this film is tiny, and beyond the fact that it was released to the public, I can’t find ANY concrete information on it past a title,BBFC certification and runtime. Adding to the headache, the director is also the writer, lead animator AND editor and as far as I can tell this is literally his only credit and his animation studio did nothing else before or after this release. the only other information about who this mystery creator could be being a slide at the end of the feature listing a company that helped fund the creation of the short which no longer exists and has almost NO online presence outside of acknowledging that they gave him money to make this at one point.

So; “Santas pocket watch” is a 21 minute short film presented with leading narration from actor Willy Rushton, the plot follows Sam a young boy who’s big wish this christmas is to meet Santa. After his mother tells him to go to bed on Christmas eve, Sam sneaks back downstairs and stays up with the hope of actually trying to meet the big guy himself! Santa meanwhile has his elves loading up his slay ready for the big global trip while also mentioning that a massive party is going to take place when he gets back to celebrate another christmas well delivered! And the elves are delighted.

Santa heads out and starts his run, he gets to Sams house and Sam is amazed to be able to see the man. Thinking quickly he climbs into Santas sack hoping that he’ll take Sam to the north pole. Santa heads back to his sleigh and leaves unknowingly with Sam in tow, theres a complication and the sleigh crashes, hurling Sam into a tree. Santa spots Sam hanging about and isn’t mad that Sam basically stowed away, instead; he offers to take Sam to the north pole for a guided tour of the workshop AND he invites him to the big christmas party! And thats exactly what happens! Sam goes back to the north pole with Santa, helps the elves prepare for the party and then, they have an absolute ball eating rich food and laughing and joking, they all open presents and when Sam and Santa realise that Sams presents are all back at his house, Santa gives Sam his trusty pocket watch as an extra gift and a memento of his visit to the north pole!

After all that fun, Sam falls asleep on Santa’s lap and wakes up back at his house, only, he realises that he still has Santa’s pocket watch! He heads back to bed but not before some carollers sing us out as we sweep out into the heavens. And thats the WHOLE movie. All 21 minutes of it..well..barring 3 or 4 slides worth of end credits. Told you this one was going to be short!

Script wise, well…there honestly isnt a lot to say, it’s not so much a 3 act structure, more a 2 act structure with a resolution stapled onto it. It’s concise to the point of malnourishment. It tells a story and I think the story it DOES tell is fine, but this thing REALLY doesnt overstay its welcome and I think it’d probably have benefitted from being just a little bit longer and having just a little bit more room to breath. In fact; the fact that it’s SO underwritten I actually found quite charming and quaint in places because, at the beginning of the film everyones SO excited about the big christmas party thats going to happen and the film REALLY bigs up that this is going to be something REALLY impressive, so in my mind I was thinking, music, toys, games, noise, party food crazy fun times for all. So, when the big crazy christmas party turns out to be jelly and christmas pudding, some carol singing and a present opening session where everyone gets ONE gift and is BEYOND grateful for it. It kind of melted my heart a little bit.

It reminded me of pre-internet christmas, of days where you wouldnt know what you wanted for christmas until you saw it in a shop or a shopping catalogue. A time when christmas (in the UK at least) was inexplicably tied to tat and schmaltz, cheap and cheerful. Where some nice food, a good present and some light entertainment WAS christmas day, and it wasnt about piles of presents, a larder that could feed a small 3rd world country and making the house look like a christmas card. You’d just napalm the front room with the most flammable tinsel you could find, hang some weird shit off the ceiling and call it a day! And in finding a film that was able to so effortlessly capture that feeling, as a brit…well, I found it rather lovely.

Im by NO means saying this should be a christmas staple you understand, I think most will find this thing deathly dull. But to me? It’s small points that,in the moment were JUUUUST unique enough to endear me to it. Like the Elves all having unique names and characteristics like “Conk” the elf who has a big nose, Pockets; the elf who’s animators couldnt be bothered to move his arms or Socks; the elf who wears a sock on his head. Its little details like the fact santa has a reindeer called Garry Baldi (after the biscuit) who loves eating cherrys. Or the extended, but charming carolling sequences.

In almost every sense, it’s not trying to be flashy or grand or even really attention seeking, this to me is a script thats just more than happy to do its own thing in a quiet little part of the animation sphere and I kind of have to respect that.Given this is a film with very little plot it’s got a breakneck pace, the dialogue feels relatively naturalistic and given the biggest peril in this thing is Sam almost falling out of a tree, its incredibly gentle as a work.

In fact, all I can really say against the film is, it maybe would have been a bit nicer had the party been a bit more of a party rather than just an evening meal with some presents being opened. And I also feel the ending is a little underwhelming, it maybe would have been nice to see what happened at the workshop after Santa got back from dropping Sam off or Sams actual christmas day or maybe even had there been some kind of outro monologue wishing people a merry christmas in the same way they do an intro monologue to set the scene. I just felt the closing moments of this were a bit abrupt and probably could have been a bit better reinforced…but otherwise. While only probably enjoyable to a VERY small audience. I came away from this with a feeling of nostalgia that I haven’t felt since the mid 90s. Which I found tremendously comforting.

This entire thing (from what I can find online) seems to have been more or less created by a Mr. Pete Parsons. Pete has been seemingly confused on IMDB with two other Pete Parsons one a senior representative of video game company Bungie and the other a video game composer. I tried my absolute DAMNDEST to try and find ANY information on Pete that I could. But I couldn’t find a single thing related to him outside of this project.

The closest I got in terms of a match after a while of looking was a Pete Parsons that DID turn up who would have been about 18 years old at the time that this was made but he lived in australia and predominantly worked in ceramics…and he died in 1993. It is ENTIRELY possible that THIS Pete Parsons did some kind of studying in the UK, made a short animation piece and then decided it wasn’t for him and went back to Australia to work in ceramics. But I find it unlikely. That being said, given the only other options I could find online were an 80+ year old professor of greek history and a 94 year old Dead gastroenterologist, i’m fairly convinced the world may never get to meet the REAL Pete Parsons.

The art direction here is, I thought rather charming, they’ve gone for a bit of an odd contrast of making backgrounds fairly minimalist, but giving forgrounds some quite nice additional details. Im not going to lie when I booted this up for the first time I was fully expecting 8 frames a second and things only moving if they absolutely had to, but surprisingly the animation is pleasant, decently fluid and theres a nice amount of moving detail throughout, which really caught me off guard. It’s VERY much a representative of that kind of era of animation that spawned shows like “Roobarb and Custard” or “Henry’s cat” its a similar field…just…on a budget.

The characters have decent animation on expression and, while again; I don’t want to big this thing up too much as it really is VERY basic in terms of what it wants to do. It would be amiss of me not to say that, given how many absolutely trashy animated christmas specials I’ve sat through over the years, it’s nice to just…see something that gets the basic elements of visual storytelling comfortably right.

The framing of the animation is also pretty nicely handled, composition of the sequences are functional, but pleasant enough, it’s a rather lacking production really and it ties back in to what I was saying about the script in the sense that, had the script chosen to do more, they maybe could have gotten a bit more creative with how we move through the animation. That being said there’s a nice transition into the end credits that I thought was quite interesting and this short does have the odd flourish of creativity in terms of how it gets us from scene to scene. so…I’d honestly say it was just above passable…just.

Performance wise, We have Willy Rushton providing narration and voices for all our characters and this man gives…just…a total hug of a performance, he’s warm, charismatic, curmudgeonly in places. He’s just an absolute delight, and the fact he actually bothered to put that bit more effort into actually emoting the characters was just a really nice touch. Again; i’ve seen WAY too many animated specials where cast members just sound bored or aloof. Willy here though is positively charming and is probably the best thing about this special all together.

And finally! The soundtrack! And it’s a quite nice acoustic, border orchestral stringy type arrangement with a distinct festive twist! Apart from half a dozen “Special thanks” credits that literally just name people on first name terms only, the only other credit attached to this special is Stephen Caudel and this was his only credit. I think he honestly does a quite lovely job, the music is *mostly* woven into the animation punctuating key moments wonderfully. It’s a bit odd to see what would be considered a “modern” christmas special utilising largely classical and folk style compositions. But I feel it works fine enough here. If I had to grumble I’d say there are some moments where they don’t add a score to the background and it can leave the film feeling a little hollow…but then; I put that more down to the fact that as a modern cinema go’er we’ve kind of been compelled towards treating silence in film as being something meaningful. So when it turns up just because they forgot to dub any sound in, or they didn’t feel it was essential…well; it comes across as a bit off.

I have no idea when “Santa’s pocket watch” was first put out into the world largely because I can’t nail down what decade it was even produced in. having looked into it, I feel fairly confident it was released at some point in the 70’s, the BBFC has it listed as 1970 Which I feel may be a tad earlier than expected but looking at some of the various releases this film had It does ultimately feel like as good a guess as any… I can confirm it DEFINITELY was broadcast on television in the 80’s most likely on BBC2 as the BBC Genome project has it listed as being repeated around christmas in 1989 and 1990. Because theres no copyright notice at the end of the film theres no definitive way to date it and the only hint included in the short is a passing reference to “Elton John Glasses” which isn’t the “help” you’d think it would be because Elton John’s first solo album and tours started in April 1970 so it could be any time after that honestly. what I CAN tell you is that its had multiple VHS releases over the years in 1989, 1990, 1991 and it’s last VHS release was as late as 2001 which is the copy I own. The earliest copy I can find came from 1988 and was released by “Abbey Home Entertainment” on their children’s “Tempo Video” line.

Bizarrely it’s also had multiple DVD releases in both the UK and US between 2001 and as late as 2016! Most of these releases don’t even have distributor information available so nailing down exactly who’s put what out and when is proving to be BEYOND difficult. The only one that I can properly nail down is a US release from a company called “Front Row Entertainment” who put their copy of the film out on DVD at the EXACT same time that my VHS copy from “Just Entertainment” got released in the UK. given that almost all of these releases are literally just the 20 minute short dumped on Tape or disc. I find it amazing they charged full RRP for this thing…that being said, its been re-released more than “We wish you a turtle christmas” and “Alpha’s magical christmas” combined. So it clearly must have developed something of a following and honesty; having seen it now…I can kind of see the appeal.

Santa’s pocket watch isnt for everyone. Its specifically built for a very niche audience and I feel it really wouldnt sit well with anyone under 25 just purely for how inane and basic it really honestly is. That being said, for anyone over 30, this is a short but sweet time corridor to a much MUCH simpler time and while it is ultra basic and honestly only barely has enough going for it to constitute it being classified as a film. I’d be lying if I said I didnt kind of just enjoy this sweet little movie doing its own slightly odd thing in the corner. Im glad I’ve seen this film, I cant recommend it. Not to a general population. But if you’ve liked what you’ve seen and heard in this unusually short review…I’d say maybe try and dig a copy out, it’s quite cheap online and I think I may well hang on to my VHS copy for a time yet…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/santas-pocket-watch/

1978’s I Spit On Your Grave (Originally known as “Day of the Woman”) is a film thats name proceeds it in terms of infamy, the poster child of the rape revenge subgenre, the film has spent the better half of nearly 50 years battling with the censors, film critics and both mens AND womens movements, with accusations of misogyny, sexism and male gaze style titlation run rife across it’s history. So much so that it ultimately (and pretty inevitably) ran afoul of the video nasties list. Even to this day the most recent cut of this film to receive a release in the UK had over a minute of footage cut from the final release (a privilege thats usually only reserved for live animal cruelty) with several shots having to be reframed to make the rape scenes more acceptable for the BBFC to pass.

Most infamously, Siskel and Ebert used the film as a prime example in a series of talks on “Women in Danger” with the critics going so far as to call the work “A Vile Bag Of Garbage” Not that they were particularly on the pulse when it came to horror and exploitation but, anyway…

The film came about as a result of the films Writer and Director Meir Zarchi discovering a woman who had just been brutally beaten and raped crawling out of some bushes while he was taking his daughter to an event. After dropping his daughter off Zarchi and a friend went to the womans aid, but rather than taking her to a hospital, they instead took her to a police station, thinking that, if they could get a report filed they’d have a better chance of catching the culprit while events were still fresh.

This unfortunately turned out not to be the case and instead of being proactive in helping the poor woman, they were all instead held for hours until an officer could see them, and when an officer finally did turn up he was incredibly incompitent, adamant to do things as standard by the book in spite of the womans injuries and refusing to be helpful unless the woman could answer his questions, which was going to be difficult as she had a broken jaw.

Eventually after causing a LOT of emotional distress the cop eventually let Meir take the woman to a hospital, but the combined experience of witnessing such an evil act alongside the coldness of the system designed to protect people from incidents like this stuck with him, to the point that he penned and shot “Day of the Woman” in 1978, releasing it to a limited drive in audience. When takings were low, Meir pulled the film from circulation and sat on it until 1980 when it was picked up by exploitation distributor Jerry Gross, who retitled the film “I spit on your grave” after a 50’s film noir title, releasing it to a much larger audience.

Meir to this day hates the retitling, but in many ways, without Jerrys involvement, the film probably wouldnt be held in nearly as much infamy and notability as it is today. And i’m just gonna say this up front, I was not looking forward to checking this film out, so much so that I actually went out of my way to try and find the longest possible publicly available copy (my version clocks in at just shy of 1 hour and 42 minutes) so that I could watch it, write about it, and then forget about it. Im REALLY not a big fan of “Torture porn” style movies. Films where the whole reason the movie exists is because 20-50 minutes of the run time is just footage of women slowly being tortured to death, repeatedly raped or molested or worse. I don’t really see any entertainment in that, it’s upsetting and really isnt my scene, it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable honestly.

With this film being a nasty however, Im kind of taking one for the team with this one. So please note that im coming into this with the pre-set bias of not liking movies like this. Also; I usually try to use footage from the movie to back up my beliefs or thoughts. I cant really do that with this film though…not in the typical way… most of the cast are completely naked for most of the runtime and 25 minutes of the film is just one rape after another. so there will be points where im going to have to get a bit creative because…I don’t really wanna show that stuff, you don’t need to see that stuff and youtube sure as shit wont LET me show that stuff. So; with that out of the way…

The film follows Jennifer, a young woman from New York whos a specialist writer for women’s magazines. She largely writes steamy short stories, but this summer? Shes packing up and heading out of town to a remote cabin for the summer to work on her dream project, her first full novel. Before getting there, she stops off at a local gas station to top up before the final stretch and while there, she gets talking to the owner of the station and him and the owners friends are…maybe a little too polite, in wanting to know what shes in town for, where shes staying and whats going on, all of which Jennifer is happy to tell them.

Jennifer heads off, arrives at the cabin and puts an order in for some food while getting settled in, after a time the foods delivered by an intellectually disabled bagboy by the name of Matthew, who really takes a shine to Jennifer, she playfully asks if Matthew wants to be her boyfriend, which absolutely delights him and he heads away back to the gas station to go tell his friends about the woman on the lake, but they already know.

Some time passes and we get a rather gross sequence where the guys are night fishing, talking about hooking up, beautiful women and the fact that Matthews a virgin, when they ask what kind of girl Matthew would like to have sex with, Matthew replies that someone like Jennifer would be perfect for him. The next day Jennifer’s out in a hammock by the lake writing notes for her novel when 2 of the guys ride past her whooping and hollering and generally being as loud and intimidating as possible which distracts and unsettles Jennifer. Later that night they also surround the house making noises and generally trying to make her feel uncomfortable.

This all leads to the most infamous part of the movie, While out on the lake relaxing, the guys turn up again in their boat, grab onto the shoring rope from Jennifer’s Canoe, and drag her miles away from the cabin and force her boat to the shore. What follows is a grizzly, horrific and unflinching 25 minute sequence in which Jennifer is chased through the woods, stripped, beaten and raped repeatedly while the guys try to make out all this raping is so that Matthew can have sex with the woman he wants as his “First time”. All the while, while this is going on, Jennifer desperately tries to make it back to her cabin. After a while the guys leave her to make her way back, only for it to turn out that, instead of leaving her alone, they’ve instead gone back to her cabin. When she returns they rape her again twice more beat her severely all while mocking and ridiculing her, and as a final act of degradation they read her “Steamy novel” out loud in the most patronising voice possible, ridicule it before destroying it and showering the ripped remains all over Jennifers semi conscious body.

They then leave, but not before telling Matthew that he needs to go back into the cabin and kill Jennifer. Matthew REALLY doesnt want to, but the guys make him do it, so he heads inside. But rather than killing her, he instead coats the knife in her blood before running out to tell the guys he’s done it.

Two weeks pass. Jennifer manages to survive and slowly begins recovery, she starts to piece her novel back together but is fundamentally changed by the events that happened to her. Meanwhile the guys begin to get a bit nervous about getting caught for what they did to her, their main concern is that noones been to check the house in a couple of weeks and by this point, given its summertime, the body is going to start reeking which’ll draw the attention of anyone and everyone for miles around. Matthew tries to reassure the group that he DEFINITELY killed her and that he put the body in the basement to keep it cool and to reduce decomposition. But to be safe, the guys organise a recon mission to just…make sure she’s definitely dead and to properly get rid of the body. When they ride the boat past the house though…who do they see sitting in a hammock outside the house clear as day? Jennifer.

They immediately go back and kick Mattews arse and basically disown him, while they begin to plan how best to take out Jennifer for good this time. Jennifer meanwhile visits a church to ask forgiveness for what shes about to do. And what shes about to do is 40 minutes or so of ruthless vengeance on these men, we’re talking mutilations, hangings and full blown cock removals. In a fiery 3rd act that…well I both can’t spoil it here BECAUSE its so graphic, nor do I want to spoil it here because it’s kind of the main thrust of the movie. But if you are curious, you may want to check out, I spit on your Grave.

And I’ve got to say, while Im really not a big fan of movies like this, I Spit On Your Grave is probably the film i’ve most been able to tolerate out of these kinds of movie. Films like “The New York Ripper” are much too senseless and rely solely on the shock, gore and misogyny to sell the movie. This film is simplistic in it’s delivery (almost to it’s detriment) but it at least gives us Jennifer, a character to side with and someone we’re supposed to root for through the movies runtime as she gets her revenge on the people who’ve destroyed her.

Meir has gone on record as saying he wanted to make a film where, regardless of gender, you could side with Jennifer, and that he really wanted to try and create a story where the male characters in NO way could be seen as redeemable. He really wanted to make certain the rapists couldn’t be idolised or sided with. The men in this are pigs, and he absolutely wanted to make sure that there was NO doubt as to just how barbaric and savage they are.

Which makes the broader “This is an attack on women” comments made by Ebert and some of the censorship advocates of the day all the more ridiculous. One can only assume they sat through the first 50 minutes and left before the revenge portion of this rape/revenge film. Now…I suppose it could be argued that killing the men makes Jennifer no better than the rapists…an eye for an eye leaves the world blind and all that…but here Jennifer’s actions I feel are justified. She’s isolated, alone and being terrorised by men who have brutalised and abused her, the police cant help her, the town cant help her. Shes alone, and decides to take the law into her own hands. Thats my own standpoint though and I do see a valid argument to be made against that…but…I’d struggle really to see how that would A: make the movie better and B: be a hill you’d want to die on.

When it comes to the depictions of rape in this film (given it’s LITERALLY 25 minutes of the runtime) im conflicted. On the one hand I firmly believe that showing this IS important for the film. It needs to be graphic, grizzly and in your face because thats the thrust of this script. To shy away from it does a great discourtesy to anyone who’s ever experienced these kinds of events. And while I appreciate that some victims of sexual abuse will absolutely not want to see their worst moments translated onto screen in pixel perfect clarity. There will also be SA victims for whom this kind of movie will be incredibly cathartic. An acknowledgement of their pain or suffering in a society that would rather hush it away. So to me? While I personally don’t want to see something like that, I do firmly believe in it’s right to exist as a work. Especially given the more taboo nature of it’s subject. I feel like, while it may not help everyone, it may just help some people open up about their own experiences.

In terms of structuring, im kind of in two minds, on the one hand the broad plot of the film is INCREDIBLY simple. We have a 25(ish) minute set up to the rape scenes, a 25 minute rape scene and a roughly 40 minute revenge 3rd act. On the one hand the simplicity means this is a VERY easily digestible film. It’s not something that necessarily NEEDS a hyper detailed analysis. Because the morality of the film is so strongly coded into the script that even on an instinctual innate level you KNOW who the bad people are, who the good people are and exactly what is right and wrong. It’s so basic, that honestly I would worry if you watched this film and came away thinking “Well, BOTH sides here had an argument to make”

But because the scripts so simple and because so much time is given to the actual rape and revenge plotlines, it did rather leave me feeling like a middle step had been left out. Jennifer doesnt really have a “Snap” moment, there isnt a point where the film lets us as viewers know that shes taking the law into her own hands other than the church scene, but by that point her minds already made up. Instead we see her beaten and bruised, we see her healing up, we see her healed, we see her at the church asking for forgiveness and then she just goes out massacring. I feel like just a little bit more character development in that 10 or so minute window to really drive home to the viewer that Jennifer has hardened up as a persona and that shit is about to get nasty would have really given the film a strong jumping off point from the 2nd act into the 3rd.

But, other than that. I don’t really have anything negative to say about the script honestly, dialogue is kept to a minimum, plot is largely driven through showing rather than telling, what dialogue there is, is incredibly well handled, fluid and mostly sounds believable Meir does a fantastic job of writing believable characters and incredibly harrowing situations that, even in the year 2022 left me flinching at just how graphic and unpleasant it could be in places. There isnt honestly much more to say, he’s crafted a story from his own personal experiences that are beyond eye opening, and for some people thats too much…which I completely understand. Banning or censoring it is a bit much mind…but I can certainly see how someone could watch this and want to shy away from it.

As mentioned the script was written and directed by Meir Zarchi he has 3 directing credits and 5 writing credits with his last credit for both being in 2019 when he stepped in to write a sequel to this movie “I spit on your grave Deja Vu” with his only other notable credit being a movie called “Don’t Mess with My Sister” made in 1985.

From a direction front, Id say it was *mostly* solid. When Meir is working to his strengths he produces some downright terrifying work, with the rape scenes in particular being very intensly directed and as a result creating some of the most powerful visuals of that decade. It’s honestly horrifying to sit through and the fact so much of it is unbroken for that 25 minute window and SO unflinching, it’s definitely uncomfortable viewing. Contrasting that though there are points in this that just don’t quite hold up as well as they could, prolonged sequences of Jennifer settling into the cabin or driving arnt exactly conducive to the story and do drag a little bit.

Equally direction of the cast is a bit of a split problem too with some parts being incredibly well stage managed in terms of guiding the cast through the scene (again, Jennifers performance through the rape sequence and how she was guided through the revenge portions of the film are definite highlights) where I think the direction falls down is with how the cast were guided to perform during the rape scenes themselves.

Now I need to make it clear the cine isnt at fault here (more on that later) but in terms of how Mier has instructed the actors in this on how to perform during the fake sex scenes, well…I found it kind of rediculous. You’ve got Camille Keaton there acting her absolute heart out to really communicate the savagery of whats happening to her, and then you’ve got one of two performances from the men, either literally lying on top of her just kind of…wiggling about and pulling the goofiest faces i’ve ever seen. OR they’re full on violently lunging from left to right screaming, not moaning or grunting or even seemingly enjoying it, but SCREAMING at the top of their lungs in such a way that sounded more like a pained dying animal than anything else. They’re way too over the top and it did throw me a bit because these are some of the most gutwrentching scenes the film can throw at the audience and witht the male actors throwing out a physical performance like that, well…it really did pull me out of it somewhat in places.

Outside of that though, I think Meir mostly does a good job, characters use the set space well, theres plenty of room for a little improvisation and he seems to have gotten out of the film exactly what he was looking for, so in that regard i’d mark it as a well handled, but imperfect piece.

The cine is about the same, for the most part it’s nothing short of extraordinary with the rape scenes in particular getting up close with quick cuts, fast editing and a real sense of loss of control being shown through the cine and editing. The slower moments are given room to breath and the location work is fantastic with plenty of wides and mid wides to help sell just how isolated Jennifer is from the city she knows so well.

Theres some nice subtleties in the cine that I thought was solid, the one that jumped out to me was probably the murder of Matthew, in the sequence Jennifer tries to seduce matthew by leading him down to the river, making love to him and mid sex throwing a noose around his neck and hanging him. At the start of the scene her gown is white and clean symbolism for a clean conscience and good intent. But after the murder we see her in the same gown now spattered with mud. A symbolic gesture of the crime she committed and a nice subliminal visual cue to the audience that this is not the same free thinking easygoing author from New York that we were introduced to. And there are loads of these little micro symbolic moments dotted throughout the film to help the audience visually realise whats going on without just flat out telling us.

The only places I can say it kind of does fall down is largely singular instances where the framing isn’t quite right, they’ve maybe tried to experiment with a shot and not quite pulled it off. It’s just little things that do somewhat take the polish off it, theres the occasional SFX shot that doesn’t quite land as intended, on their own, they’d be negligible, but quite a few of these “One off” moments where things just aren’t quite right do crop up across the runtime and it did somewhat take it down a peg or two for me. For the most part it’s a solid work, but I think it just needed a little bit more polish to well and truly get it over the line.

Performance wise. The whole film lives and dies by Camille Keaton, had she even been an IOTA less than she gives the whole thing would have completely failed to land and fallen apart within the hour. And she does a BEYOND stunning job in the role of Jennifer, showing a wide range of acting talent that really is a step above most of the schlock i’ve covered on this channel. Her talents simply weren’t recognised by the academy, but what she does in this films 100 or so minute runtime is nothing short of extraordinary and I really feel she hasn’t been valued enough for that. She’s sublime.

Credit also has to go to Eron Tabor, Anthony Nichols and Gunter Kleemen as Andy, Stanley and Johnny the antagonists through this films runtime. Who give performances that are lechy, uncomfortable, gross, repugnant, vile, cold and manipulative. They go above and beyond to make their characters as unpleasant and upsetting as possible. The scenes where they’re confronted by Jennifer and almost immediately try to sell their friends out to save their own skins are wonderfully handled and they really made me hate them, so they must have been doing something right. I also appreciate their solidarity with Camille in that they all mutually agreed to also perform naked in the film alongside her when they originally were not scripted to in order to save embarrassment

In fact the only performance I didn’t really get on with is Richard Pace as Matthew…a big chunk of it can be down to the writing, Matthews character is intellectually disabled and as such Richard chooses to play it a very particular way, the director maybe could have tried to shape the performance a bit better, but it contrasts against the other guys in a way that I didnt really get on with, it left an unpleasant taste in my mouth and the fact he looks a bit like a young chevy chase only made the scenes he was in even more bizarre to me. I cant really see how he could have played that role any differently…but honestly…I don’t even really think the role needed to exist in the first place.

And finally, the soundtrack! There is none! Meir listened to several scores while editing the film but ultimately decided that non would be suitable and that. Was. PERFECT. The entire film is just ambient noise, what you WOULD hear if you were there and it absolutely helps take this film to the next level as the film opens with the noise and hustle of the city before settling into a terrifically unsettling silence with only nature filling in the blanks. It creates a terrific sense of isolation, that noones coming to help Jennifer and that she’s effectively on her own. It makes the rape scene even more powerful as you hear every slap, kick smack and whimper. And it makes the revenge sequences all the more intense as you feel the tensions rising without an artificial musical accompaniment trying to sell the film to you. I think with a score this would have been ruined. It’d have ruined the pressure cooker atmosphere and made a lot of the film just feel corny. The silence sells this thing. And I love it for that.

As mentioned I spit on your grave was initially released in 1978 under the title “Day of the woman” before being pulled due to low returns. It would be retitled “I spit on your grave” and re-released to a wider audience in 1980 where it finally found it’s cult following. A VHS release followed in the early 1980s under Astra Video after the BBFC refused to grant it a theatrical certificate, at the time a film would need a theatrical certification to play in theatres, but anyone could put it out on tape with no requirement to consult the BBFC. Inevitably it ended up as a section 1 video nasty due to it’s grim and unflinching brutalisation and sexual assault content. Which for the BBFC was pretty much a cardinal sin, they could be lenient on most things. But Animal cruelty and torture or abuse of women are two things that, even to this day they’re still VERY uncomfortable with.

So! The film remained banned in the UK until 2001 when a heavily cut version removing approximately 7 minutes of footage and reframing some of the rape scenes was released by anchor bay, in the time since then the last release this film had was a bluray in 2020 which reduced the amounts of cuts from 7 minutes to 1 minute and 41 seconds. Yes even in 2020 they’re STILL not happy for this film to be seen uncut. That being said, in 2020 they still outright banned “Love Camp 7”…so…ugh.

I went into “I Spit on Your Grave” not exactly expecting a good time, I was envisioning some kind of mindless and gross hour and 40 fetishistic look at sexual assault that really wouldnt be my cup of tea. But what I found was a simplistic but meaningful film that absolutely didn’t take it’s subject matter on face value and really tried to instil just how cold and purposefully malicious the worst of toxic masculinity can be. As we witness, 4 men effectively degrade a woman to the state of nothing more than an object to be used and then pay with their lives for their inhumanity. It’s a difficult watch even in 2022, a mostly well made film that I cant outright recommend, purely because of how harrowing it really can be in places. If you have a strong constitution i’d say check it out but just bear in mind this isn’t quite the “shock and awe” exploitation fare that this film gets chalked up as. So do be prepared.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/i-spit-on-your-grave/

Camp Blood 2 is the long awaited horror sequel to 1999’s Camp Blood. And by “Awaited” I mean 3 people were vaguely interested in seeing more of the “CBU” (camp blood universe) AND BY “Long” I mean about 6-8 months. Thats because Camp Blood 2 was *technically* being ironed out before the original Camp Blood had even finished filming. With Camp blood getting a release in early mid 2000, They LITERALLY were working on franchising the series before an assembly cut of the original even existed. And that STILL is just…blowing my mind. It does kind of make you think what kind of people were working on this film when they already had a “Multi film” roadmap on the cards before the first was even finished…

Anyway! Given my original thoughts on “Camp Blood” were that I thought it was (in my opinion) a reletively boring watch with poor technical ability, WAY too much padding and a chronic case of the “In References” I didnt exactly have the highest hopes for “Camp Blood 2”. Frankly given how low the bar was set with the original “Camp Blood” One did find ones self wondering how it could POSSIBLY get any worse. Well; What we have here with “Camp Blood 2” is a film that, in some regards is actually a bit better than the original, but in some regards is actually quite a bit worse.

The plot of the film is Astoundingly simplistic and about as generic as they come for a post 90’s horror film. Taking a page out of the Scream franchise the film picks up about 12 months after the events of the original Camp Blood, Trisha is still in an insane asylum after the events of the first movie where her and her friends went on a camping trip and ended up on the receiving end of a killer clown from folk legend. Trisha was able to reveal the killer to be non other than their woodland guide “Harris” however, when the cops turned up they could only find a ton of dead bodies and Trisha covered in blood holding a clown mask and the murder weapon.

The original film left it a little bit open ended as to whether Trisha was the only survivor of Harris or whether she was actually the killer and had had some kind of mental breakdown. But the sequel opens making it EXTREMELY clear that Trisha was not the killer in the first movie. Which actually kind of undercuts one of the only okayish things I thought about the first film…

Anyway; a year after the event Trisha is still struggling and has recurring dreams that shes being chased through the woods by the killer clown. Things are about to change pace however when she receives a visitor in the form of Worth Milligan a film maker who’s been researching the events of “Camp Blood” and wants to make a movie of the events with Trisha on board as an executive producer…basically she’ll get to work on the scripts, casting, how events played out. The whole thing. Milligan is FAR from sincere though trying to sell her on the idea of getting involved by citing the success of “The Blair Witch Project” as a reason he wants to make the movie.

Trisha is rightfully concerned that this might just end up being a cheap exploitation style cash in on her friends deaths, so she initially walks away saying she’ll consider it, but after arriving back at her “Cell” she has a flashback to the events of the first movie and decides that working with Millington might actually help her get over her trauma, and…well…anythings got to be better than being trapped for life in someones 1980s livingroom.

So! With that, Trisha requests an meeting with Milligan and heads out to L.A. to meet him while he’s in the process of casting for the movie. And it’s hear that we get the first feelings that things arnt quite as “Professional” as Milligan had promised. For a starters the casting is being held by Milligan and his assistant, whos a chronic alcoholic and is drinking during the casting and doesnt seem to know how to operate the camera used for the casting call.

All female applicants are ogled and when Trisha arrives at the office shes almost immediately jumped on by our alcoholic assistant in a clown mask while holding a machete. Which…given her PTSD for this, was DEFINITELY the worst way they could have opened discussions on her helping with the shoot. In either case these discussions are fairly short, in fact. Thinking about it, I don’t think Trisha ever actually agrees to take part. She just turns up, gets jumped by one of the crew and then is somehow suddenly involved in the movie.

After the ‘Incident’ Trisha asks to step outside to get some air and it’s here she meets Adrian, a young woman here to apply for a role in the movie who has a nice chat with Trisha, gives her her last cigarette before heading inside. Unfortunately; just as shes going in for the casting call, Worth tells her that the films been fully cast and that the last actress in just got the last available role leaving Adrian devastated.

That night however after a full frontal nudity shower (not for this movie…please…) the actress worth hired is mysteriously murdered. So! The next day when the cast get together for introductions and to run through their roles, when that cast member is a no show Worth tells Trisha to go through some mugshots and cast a replacement…well; of course she goes for Adrian. While heading out to go call her though, Trisha is AGAIN attacked by a clown killer. Who chases her all around the casting building until she gets back to the casting room. At which point it’s revealed to be the SAME alcoholic crew member AGAIN. Clearly illustrating that this is a film for people with the memory span of a goldfish.

So with the cast and crew all arranged Worth piles everyone into a mini van and they all head out to the woods to start filming. In a move that…well, it’s pretty baffling. Worth failed to tell the cast or crew that they were actually heading out to film at the ACTUAL site of the camp blood murders. Trisha is naturally quiter triggered at the thought that they’re about to recreate her fiance and friends murders at the site where it actually happened. But Worth says he’s doing this for convenience and authenticity. Why settle for a site thats *like* the place where the murders happened when the ACTUAL place the murders happened is right on their doorstep!

So! They head into the woods, set up. And it doesnt take long for mysterious happenings to…happen. People start disappearing, the actors begin to feel uncomfortable around Trisha who may or may not be responsible for the disappearances and tensions begin to rise after Milligan threatens to send Trisha back to the asylum if she doesnt cooperate with his vision of the film. Which; in turn leads to some very exploitative and nasty tensions between him and the cast and crew. As the bodies pile high in the last 15 minutes, Will Trisha get closure for the camp blood murders? Will Worth get to make his movie? And will this movie break the world record for the number of times the previous film will be shown, referenced or basically played back in full!? All this and more will be answered if you watch; Camp blood 2.
And to be honest; the quick caption review for this thing should really start and stop at “This is a great “Value” movie, it’s a terrible sequel.” and what I mean by that is, it’s great value in the sense that if you buy ‘Camp Blood 2’ you don’t need to buy or watch ‘Camp Blood’ because they tell you, beat for beat the FULL plot from beginning to end about 5 or 6 times over and over again across the runtime of this movie. Complete with about 20-30 minutes of flashback clips from the original Camp Blood as well! And the original Camp Blood was only about an hour and 10 long to begin with!

It suffers from similar problems to Silent Night Deadly Night 2 where a not insignificant chunk of the runtime is dedicated to talking about or showing footage from the original film. And while that kind of worked with Silent Night 2 because…”GARBAGE DAY” here? There is NO such eccentricities. Strip away the scenes of people recounting the original movie and the flashback sequences and your left with about 40 minutes of border mind numbing running around and fluffy dialogue designed to pad the film out till its LITERALLY just about long enough to dump on DVD without anyone demanding their money back.

Its just such a generic idea for a script. It genuinely feels like the writer/director saw the opening of Scream 2 where its revealed the events of the first film got made into a movie and went “Hey!…imagine if an ACTUAL killer got onto the set and killed the cast for real!” Like they had an idea for a decent enough 20-30 minute short film that was tied to the original Camp blood. But then realised they couldnt really bolt it onto the original film without it feeling a bit wonky, nor could they release it as a 20-30 minute mini movie without losing the ability to distribute it or make money off it. So they just Crammed a load of footage from the first movie into it and added a few more runaround scenes till it got *just* over the line to sell it as its own movie.

Theres so little here to talk about regarding the script, mainly because so much of this is either people arguing or recycled footage. To the point that there isnt really anything fresh to latch onto in a positive way. There isnt really a solid 3 act structure. Just a series of scenes that feel a bit like “Well…if we have the budget we could maybe try to do this?” happening one after another right up to the end credits…I could split this film into “Before they go to the woods” and “When they get to the woods” but to be honest all that changes in the characters between those two locations is they get more angry when they get to the woods as they realise the movies been missold to them and people start disappearing.

The pacing is all out of whack because we have to keep stopping and starting to talk about points from the first movie, there are TONS of weird plot point moments that don’t really get picked up properly like, how could someone like Worth afford to get Trisha out of an insane asylum to have her advise on the film, while at the same time only being able to afford 2 crew members, one of which is a stoner who threatens to kill everyone and the other being an alcoholic who, on any other plaine of reality would have been off the set for “Inappropriate behaviour” before they’d even left the casting room.

It just feels like someone trying to write what they *think* an audience would accept as a bad movie set…when in reality REAL bad sets involve a LOT more people and get particularly emotionally malicious. Its incredibly annoying to sit through as someone who has been on many bad sets, when you see things like Worth saying and doing stuff that would have resulted in full blown walkouts happening before they’d even loaded tape into the camera.

Theres just, so many little things that are problematic, the fact that theres very little character development. I mean, This was a chance to give Trisha the strong female lead comeback arc that probably would have made this movie ten times more interesting, but instead shes still a mentally collpased individual when the film starts, and shes if anything even worse by the time the film finishes. That wouldnt be so much of a problem if that wasnt EXACTLY how she was in the last movie. It would have at least been interesting to let her change her tone on how she deals with this grief. Im not saying she has to have a “Strong badass female” retribution arc like Laurie Strode of Barbara in the Night of the living dead remake. But just…ANY kind of development beyond “Shes exactly the same as she was in the last movie, but now WAY more jumpy!” would have been nice.

And this is a problem that not only effects Trisha, the rest of the cast don’t grow or develop really either. They’re all quite narcissistic actors who, if anything only get more narcissistic as the film goes on until they’re inevitably bumped off.

Add in an underwhelming ending that tries SO hard to tie itself into the first movie with a reveal that…was SO obvious it hurt, and you’ve just got a terrifically underwhelming script that has a nugget or two of a good idea buried DEEP inside it but is ultimately NOT what this needed to be as a sequel. It needed to take the first film a build on it. It needed to be definitively better, to have shown growth and improvement. As it stands its happy to settle with “More of the same” with a generous helping of self referencing. And in doing that it has rather sealed its fate.

Returning on writing and directing duties for this one is Brad Sykes, I already took a deep dive into his work as part of my review for Camp Blood. But what I will say at this point is that I hadnt realised when I started covering this series that theres actually TWO camp blood 3’s…In 2005 Brad Sykes once again picked up a camera to shoot “Camp Blood 3: Within the Woods” a proposed closing part to a camp blood trilogy that bizarrely…even though its written AND directed by Brad Sykes ISNT considered as an official entry in the “Official” series line. The other is included in my Camp Blood collectors Set and is known as “Camp Blood 3: First Slaughter” released in 2014 written and directed by two people not really associated with ANYTHING to do with the previous movies…I don’t know which one i’ll cover next…first person to tell me in the comments will get their wish granted… See you there.

On the direction front, I will give Brad credit, I feel theres some improvement. It’s only minor, but there is a noticeable “Tightening up” on structure and vision here, we have clear establishing shots of the locations used in places, some sequences appear to have had more thought put to them such as using different filters to differentiate when we’re dealing with the cameras used to shoot this movie and the cameras used to shoot the movie within the movie. Sequences seem a little bit more thought through, not necessarily on shot type but on what Sykes wants to put across in his movie vs what the characters could just…flat out tell us.

That isnt to say though that this is now a “Good” film from a direction standpoint. We still have problems with sequences containing shots that don’t really need to be there, the amount of padding is something a good director would be able to turn into something vaguely meaningful, but here its just lacking that solid hand on steerage, and the cast, while *slightly* better directed than the first film still seem fairly lost. They don’t give confident performances and, while I will give them credit for using their surroundings a bit more here than the last lot, they still don’t really feel all that confident about HOW to go about utilising the set space.

It also doesnt help that this film kind of gets a bit leery in places, now I know a lot of people come to horror for T&A, Im not going to fight that, but there are ways to shoot said T&A to make it look sexy or interesting. To pull your audience in with an allure of titilation. Here it feels less alluring and more “Exhibit A”. I cant show any examples here (for obvious reasons), but theres a shower scene in this movie that goes on WAY longer than i’d have liked and the way Brads decided to shoot the thing REALY made me look around to make sure noone could see me watching this thing. It didnt feel sexy, it felt like I was committing a felony.

The whole thing honestly is a bit of a mixed bag and given that Brad was the writer AND director here I would have thought he would have been able to make a rational and clean cut decision as to whether to leave out scenes from the script that struggled to translate well to the screen. Unfortunately it looks like he shot pretty much beat for beat and even if some things DIDNT work out too great he just powered on regardless and as a result it ends in an uneven film thats, probably a bit better than the first to me in terms of direction…but only just.

As for the cine? Don’t you worry! It’s just as bad as ever. Im not kidding this thing looks EXACTLY like the previous movie only with a slightly higher budget. And when I say “Slightly higher budget” I mean they’ve been able to afford a slightly higher quality clown mask, they’ve replaced poorly made signs with slightly better quality poorly made signs, the titles and credits are bigger and cleaner than the original, and while I will say that the sequences here are a little bit more sturdy when compared to the cine of the original, its also a lot LOT safer than the original.

The original had chases down dirt roads, a couple of fights in a river, and aftershots of people being roasted alive. This movie has NOTHING like that. Its all just sequences of people wandering around the woods or backrooms and thats it. Sequences are acceptable, with basic cuts and transitions covering things off without being too offensive. And while in some regards safer sequences reduce the risk of things not quite working or worse going horribly wrong, the downside of playing it safe is that safe sequences…are REALLY bloody boring.

Now I will give them credit here where credits due, there are at least a couple of sequences where they use coloured lighting which…I mean, its here for no particular reason, but i’ll give it to them. Thats a step up from the low/no lighting they had in the first film. And the effects shots here got a REAL big boost you actually get some pretty nice gore shots here that are handled within the cine and sequences rather well! In fact I’d go as far as to say the gore scenes in Camp Blood 2 ARE the best thing about camp blood 2!

That is however somewhat deminished by the same recurring issues that plagued the first film, shots arnt levelled off and are regularly wonky, the edits either cut too soon or too late which can pull you out of the moment, there a weird ghosting effect that plagues a lot of the footage and no consideration was given to sun placement meaning some shots have a great big bright fucker in the background that doesnt half make the shot look ugly. And as if matters couldnt get any worse…remember in my original Camp blood review when I said some shots had this weird trim running around the edge of the frame? Like it looked like the camera was in a camera bag looking through a translucent window or something? well..THE BAGS FUCKING BACK! I thought it was an error that was missed when they made the first film! But NOPE! Apparently it was intentional as they sure as shit don’t bother to fix that issue in part 2! I just…Im at a loss with this thing.

Performance wise…Jennifer Ritchkoff as Trisha is the best performer here. If im being honest…she isnt great. But she has a more than decent bash at playing a scream queen. A bash I think she does acceptably. Given she now has a history thanks to the first film I feel it gives her the scope here to at least work with whats established rather than clinging to existing horror stereotypes like she did in the last film. That being said though Im still trying to decide if I think her performance has gotten better since the last movie or whether all the other cast being slightly WORSE than the last bunch has just kind of…made her more presentable.

Because my GOD the rest of the cast in this thing are insufferable. My main criticism from the last batch of cast members were they were a little too reliant on the horror character archetypes and their performances were just above porn acting…how I long for for those days. As we now have characters who are playing to “typical actor” stereotypes and we’re just…full on into porn level acting. Lines are delivered completely unbelievably, quite often with almost no feeling and even the more interesting sequences or scenes where revelations happen are played down SO much as to be almost muted. Its a bad lot. And the only good thing I can really say is, at least the padding and clips from the first film offer as a distraction from the shoddy acting on display here…in my opinion at least.

And finally; the soundtrack. And if my ears don’t decieve me. I am…99.9% sure that this is just the original camp blood score re-run over this movie. There may be 1 or 2 new tracks in the mix to help give a sense of distinction. But, im pretty convinced they literally just recycled the previous films score and shoved it onto this thing. So given that I wasnt impressed with it when it was used for the first time in the original “Camp Blood” I sure as hell don’t like it now that they’re being so cheap that they’re just reusing the old score over again.

Equally; as an aside too, they didnt bother to get any atmos recordings for the locations they shot at, meaning the set audio veers WILDELY all over the place. Generally when you shoot a movie you get “Room tone” (basically 5 minutes or so of the rooms natural silence) so that you have better control over actor dialogue and other sounds in post…they didnt bother. So this film jumps all over the place going from loud to almost muted with no balancing on background OR foreground noise. Its just a total mess.

Camp Blood 2 was released on VHS and DVD by Spectrum films in the US in the year 2000, it would also later recieve a DVD release in the UK in 2002 by Film 2000, it would have a couple of releases over the 2000’s in various “Multi film” packs typically alongside the original Camp Blood. It was released as a drive in double feature Bluray alongside “Camp Blood” with a 3d conversion of all things from Sterling Entertainment in 2011.this same disc would ultimately end up in the “Complete camp blood” collection which is the version I own as of 2021. And you’ll be totally unsurprised to hear that the version included on this set is basically the DVD version dumped onto a bluray disc complete with tape faults and sound drop outs present in the original DVD release.

Im not even sure if this has been upscaled. It looks pixellated and murky and just..not particularly great at all, theres no extras barring a load of trailers for other movies that the distribution company have shot in 3d…some boutique labels release their movies with a certain reverence. Y’know. They’ll treat these physical releases as a kind of shrine to the films existence. There’ll be commentaries, documentaries, trailers, making of’s all kinds of things that make you think “Oh wow! This film has a living breathing history behind it!” this release has more adverts for 3d conversion technology on it than it does extras about the movies included on this release…I just…I have NO idea what they were thinking with this set. Its a poor presentation…

Ultimately; if you liked camp blood and wanted more of the same. Here it is! It’s barely a movie honestly and stops just short of basically being a clip show. The only capacity with which I can recommend Camp Blood 2 is that it’ll save you time on watching the original Camp Blood. AND theres some slightly decent effects shots in this, which the first one didnt really have. Other than that it’s a tired. BORING movie that wasted 75 minutes of my time, and one I wholeheartedly recommend you avoid alongside the original. It did almost nothing but jerk itself off over how great it thought the first movie was and that seldom makes for an enjoyable time… Don’t get me wrong! If I want to watch a camp blood movie, this will be the one I watch. But in many ways…thats the problem.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/camp-blood-2/

I’d heard about Nukie over 10 years ago when Brad “The Cinema Snob” Jones bluntly and forthrightly declared “Nukie” to be THE worst movie he’d ever seen…not one of the worst, THE. worst…and that guys seen some shit in his time. So I took his word for it. A few years later Red Letter Media began hoarding copies of it and being incredibly coy around exactly what their stance on the film was. I took this as a decent sign that this film was something special. Something that would REALLY test my metal. And…as GOD is my witness…I sat through this entire movie. And all I could really think as the credits rolled was “Welp…That was 95 minutes.”

Y’see; what we have here with Nukie can only be described as a time sink, it’s about 95 minutes of barely incoherent and repetitive nothingness just sort of…oozing out of the screen one happenstance after another. I don’t know if I’m blowing some big cottage industry secret here when I say that no. Nukie isnt that bad, “Lets Ruin Dads Day” is bad, “Nutbag” is bad, “Camp Blood” is bad. Nukie is not bad. It’s fucking boring!…but it’s not bad. Because of this, explaining the plot is going to be a bit more condensed than usual, mainly because theres SO much repetition that I might as well just write one scene and then copy paste it a few times if I wanna go down the “Full breakdown” route. So heres the basic gist.

Nukie opens in possibly the most underwhelming way imaginable…with this obviously being an E.T knock off, generally the idea is you warm your cast up to the aliens, maybe set the scene first then slowly reveal and introduce them. NOT HERE! Instead we just flat out introduce Nukie and Miko, two brothers who’re just palling around and having a ball in the one place that hasnt been corrupted by capitalism…SPACE!. The pair get a little too wild and free and accidentally fly too close to the planet earth, getting pulled in by the planets gravity and losing track of each other in the process, Miko ends up crash landing in America and Nukie ends up wiping out in central africa.

Due to the amount of radiation the pair give off while in “flying mode” their presence sets off every aviation and federal agency alarm going and almost immediately Miko is captured by the authorities and taken to a laboratory who want to experiment on him to find out more about extraterrestrial life. Nukie meanwhile wakes up in a savannah and spends a frankly obscene amount of time wandering around the plaines shouting Mikos name and trying to talk to Giraffes and Zebras. While this is going on the scientists tranquillise Miko and begin their experimentation, Nukie tries to telepathically connect with Miko, but Miko is drugged up and incredibly weak and doesn’t know where he is.

After a time Miko is well enough to tell Nukie that he’s in America…But Nukie doesnt know where or what an America is!, so he cant really do anything, instead he complains that he doesnt like the dark, tries to sleep and then complains that he doesnt like the sun. meanwhile the scientists have locked on to Nukies radiation signal and they decide to put one of their best scientists on the case, Dr. Eric Harvey with the mission of seeing if any alien tech crashed to earth and to try and capture Nukie and bring him back.

We then cut back to Nukie who is STILL wandering around this fucking Savannah, and he briefly meets two young twin boys called Tucki and Tiko. Things don’t quite go to plan however as they’re instantly terrified of the sentient little woeful looking bollock (and understandably so!) While Nukie is mid introduction, the pair flee and make each other promise to never speak of the encounter again. So! Nuki pillocks about in the savannah for a bit more, Miko gets tortured by the malicious and border sociopathic Dr. Glynn, Nukie falls asleep again, we BRIEFLY get introduced to a nun by the name of Sister Anne who tells us that Dr. Eric is on his way (we havent actually seen him up to this point) Nukie wakes up and immediately starts bumbling about AGAIN. And we have at least 1 solid minute where Miko just shouts “NUKIIIEEEEEEEEE” over and over again. And I need to make it clear right here, that this is what the writer and director THOUGHT would be an acceptable first act for a childrens movie…Im not kidding, that’s the first 30ish minutes of this movie.

Mercifully a BIT more happens in the 2nd act…but only a little bit more mind…As, for some reason that the film doesn’t entirely explain, Nukie ends up buried alive and his rising out of the dirt (and possibly him hearing Mikos pained screams) triggers a freak storm to blow through a nearby missionary station and a small African village. And if youuuuuuuuuuuuu can believe it, this is going to pretty much be the main thrust of the film from here on in. So in relatively quick succession, it’s revealed that Sister Anne and her security partner have a pet Chimpanzee that can telepathically communicate and is a bit of an annoying arsehole THEN it’s revealed that despite not being able to talk to Rhinos, Giraffes and Zebras, Nukie CAN telepathically communicate with Monkeys. He meets a troupe of monkeys just…doing their thing. And after speaking to them for a bit about trying to find “America” the Monkeys suggest that Nukie visit “Charlie” Sister Annes Chimp in the nearby village.

Shortly after this, two hunters from the village try to kill Nukie, and he responds by paralyzing one of them. The other hunter drags his friend back to the village but noone can help. Meanwhile, after a frankly obscene amount of time Dr. Eric FINALLY touches down at the village and is almost immediately told to head home by Sister Anne, it’s later revealed that the village has got a bit of a crisis of faith going on at the minute, the sister arrived and managed to convert the village from their old traditions of sacrifice to christianity and with some recent plights hitting the village, along with the recent freak storms and paralyzed hunters, she REALLY doesnt want some American flyboy dropping in to tell the village potentially lethal aliens are wandering about the plains.

While this is going on, Nukie makes it to the village and links in with Charlie…who doesnt tell him anything new and is an annoying arsehole. The pair destroy a storeroom and Nukie flees the scene, eventually meeting back up with the twins again, who are being attacked by a Lioness. Nukie knocks the Lioness out cold and the boys once again try to run away. But this time, they kind of accept that Nukie’s probably actually kind of alright. And…as an aside because I need to fit this bit in somewhere, after the lioness attack, we then cut back to Miko who just flat out walks out of his testing chamber, goes up to the scientists super advanced computer and just starts screwing around with it, The computer plays a hypnosis programme that knocks Miko out as apparently…its an evil supercomputer for some reason?

Anyway; there then follows a BEYOND long winded sequence in which Nukie uses a radio to call back to the village where Charlie picks up and fills him in on the situation, the pair swap information and…well…long story short Nukie steals Dr. Erics Helicopter, nearly destroys the village with it, before crashing it just outside and fleeing the scene. Miko meanwhile wakes up from his hypnosis and just. Rewires the evil computer to instead make it his best friend. And it works. The pair trade some information and the next day when the scientists come in to check on things, they find Miko asleep at the computer and the machine talking about the joys of friendship and love.

After a time, Nukie heads back to the village to try to apologise for destroying the expensive helicopter and almost immediately gets jumped by the village, an elongated comedy chase scene ensues in which Nukie and the twins are captured. At this point too theres a brief scene where one of the scientists called Pamela begs Dr Glynn to stop the experiments which gets met with a rather blunt “hmm…no.” and then! It’s sacrifice time! As Nukie is sent to be “Wicker manned” and the twins, who are being tried for having hung around with a supposed “Demon” are cast out of the village for what they’ve done. Leading to a confrontation between the leader of the village and Sister Anne who’s appalled with the situation and debates the leader over moral choices.

After only a short time of being kicked out of the village, the twins see a bright light in the sky which turns out to be Nukie! Yes somehow he escaped being roasted alive and to celebrate he gives the boys a toasty fire and they all swap stories about their lives before bed. Nukie also reveals that he’s got to find Miko soon as, if he doesnt, he’ll become too weak to leave the planet. It’s at this point Nukie decides to give us an inexplicable extended dance break. He then drugs the children and falls asleep himself.

While Nukie heads back to the village AGAIN to cause carnage, Miko continues to develop the super computer, who renames itself “Eddie” and confesses his feelings for Pamela and after a HELL of a lot of seizure inducing footage, the lead scientist and possible boss of the company comes in and asks what on EARTH is going on. And Miko and Eddie basically lobotomise the lead scientist, turning him from a moody miser into a fun time happy clown of a man…oh, and that’s permanent by the way!

It’s here that we find ourselves on to the 3rd act, as one of the twins gets bitten by a poisonous king cobra and Eric and the Corporal head out to rescue the twins on the orders of Sister Anne, a race against time ensues to get the them back to the village for treatment. And when the Corporal manages to find and tranq Nukie and the sister begins to suspect foul play, the twins are left to find each other, free Nukie, defeat the corporal, clear their names, get Nukie to America, find Miko, shut down the evil scientists and get the pair off this hell hole of a rock. I’m not kidding, it’s almost like they forgot their movie had to have a point right up until around 20 minutes off the end. In a frankly fractious finale where they, rather than trying to resolve the narrative thread at a reasonable rate instead go for the “cramming shrapnel pieces of plot right into a tightest closing point of this thing and hoping they can cram enough to pass with the audience”. Will Nukie and Miko be reunited?, will Dr Eric actually have a point? And will the twins get their names cleared? If you enjoy watching paint dry, then you‘ll love finding out when watching…Nukie.

And my god this script is like a tapeworm. It just goes ON and ON and ON with very little pleasure to be had for anyone involved with it. I can quite honestly say that this is one of the most broken scripts I’ve sat through…quite possibly ever. Right off the bat, the scene ordering is a total mess, key examples being the ENTIRE of Dr. Erics plotline, which is totally bewildering. They mention he’s involved near the opening of the film, there’s a glimpse of his helicopter about 20-30 minutes in, and then seemingly he arrives, looks around a bit, speaks to sister Anne, gets his Helicopter destroyed, fixes his Helicopter, leaves, comes back, leaves again, comes back again and then leaves again. That’s it. That’s his whole plot, he’s supposed to be our alien napper for the movie and he spends more time fixing his Helicopter than he does looking for Nukie!

Situations will regularly be spoken about out loud by the cast and then replayed beat for beat in literally the next scene, but the way the scenes play out make it look like the latter scene is fresh information to the audience. Like; There’s TONS of examples of characters physically saying “Well I sure hope this thing doesnt happen!” followed immediately in the next scene with the same characters saying “Oh no! That thing we don’t want to happen is happening! We didnt want this to happen!” as if it’s the first time they’ve said it.

The amount of repetition is a joke, when I say that the first 30 minutes of this film is Miko getting tortured in a lab and Nukie pissing about in a field with accompanying dialogue which is AT LEAST 60% Just Nukie and Miko shouting each others names over and over again. I’m not exaggerating…that’s the movie, and even in the 2nd and 3rd act when more elements get introduced…that’s STILL fundamentally the movie in a nutshell, pissing about in a field or a lab shouting each other’s names. And because it’s so repetitive and structurally unstable, even the weird and interesting bits like the talking chimpanzee, the helicopter crash, the weird Nukie Dance sequence, the bit where he teaches one of the twins to fly. All that nonsense just gets drained of it’s bizarreness almost entirely, because you cant focus on the weirdness because your too busy trying to figure out which way is “up” with this thing.

What I will say is they have at least managed to stick to a rigid 3 act structure. Those gear changes clunk rather tonedeafly, but there is an unmistakable shift in tone when this thing transitions between its acts. But…honestly; even with the act structure, this is still a movie that’s pretty much entirely made up of padding with about 12 minutes of movie sprinkled in throughout…it’s almost completely aimless. You could honestly take the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes, slam them together and you wouldn’t lose a single bit of the main story as a result. Its incoherent to the point that I had to rewind, pause, and even read up externally on exactly what was *supposed* to be happening in this thing, it’s that messy. And this noxious combination of incoherence and boredom left me with a film that struggled to hold my interest and when it did pull me in, struggled even harder to keep it.

On a closing note, the dialogue too is just ATROCIOUS. As mentioned at LEAST 60% of the dialogue is just Nukie and Miko either shouting each others names or chatting absolute bollocks to each other. And the rest of the script reads like someone threw a slice of emmental cheese at a dictionary and then wrote down the words that showed up in the holes. It’s inconsistent,stilted and filled with lines that shouldnt have made it out of the draft edit. In many cases entire conversations happen in this that add NOTHING to the thrust of the main plot and are just…BEYOND confusing.

This is in my opinion, without hyperbole,one of the worst scripts I’ve ever covered on the channel, if not THE worst script I’ve covered on the channel. Not because it’s enjoyably bad, not because it’s insufferably bad. It won’t test your metal, it won’t make you laugh, it’s just a clear example of someone out of the depth, doing something they’re clearly not comfortable doing. And as a result its beneath amateurish,It’s convoluted, long winded, boring, drab and dull and genuinely not worth the 95(ish) minutes you need to sit through it to find that out.

The script was written by Ben Taylor and co written and co directed by Sias Odendaal. Sias came up with the initial plot beats and Ben then took that pitch and expanded it into the full screenplay. Ben has 17 writing credits with his last being in 2006 and unsurprisingly you’ll be stunned to learn this was Ben’s first feature writing credit. Which, does explain a lot…(he had a single writing credit for 1 episode of a kids TV show prior to this) I’d say this is probably his most infamous credit, but he also seems quite well known for a movie called “In the Flesh”.

As for Sias? He has 6 directing credits, mostly for films that, other than a title, have ZERO information attached to them…like, literally; the title and the year is all we have. Nukie was his final directing credit and he hasn’t been seen in the industry since 1996. The film was also co-directed by Michael Pakleppa, he has 8 directing credits and, to be honest, Nukie is probably his best known work from what I can see…

On the direction front, im going to approach this from three different criteria, It’s ability to standout as a work that has these directors unique marks, their ability to take all of the technical elements of this film and tie them together effectively, AND the ability to help guide the cast through the film and deliver a great performance that works with the technical elements in a wonderful form of synergy.

In terms of it being a standout work that’s defined by its creators. I don’t even have to pause to think about it, this film is about as distinct as it can possibly be, it’s completely and totally unhinged, and I am by NO means saying that this is a creatively astute work, honestly it’s an absolute mess. But, there would be NO mistaking this as anything other than “Nukie” (a genre unto itself). So in that regard, I’d give it a somewhat sarcastic soft pass. In terms of their ability to tie all the technical elements together effectively, it’s a BIG fail in my opinion. NOTHING holds together on this movie, they had 7 editors working on this thing at any one time in order to try and get it finished and it STILL ended up being an incoherent wreck. The soundtrack doesnt compliment the visuals, the audio quality is inaudible at times and the editing doesn’t work with the cine or cast direction resulting in a totally knotted production that’s just ludicrous honestly.

I suppose a broad way to answer this is “Does it work as a kids film?” given that thats literally it’s reason to exist. It must surely at least maintain a spirit and flow that this is supposed to be a gentle, and maybe even amusing film for children to enjoy?…well no, it starts off with strong intentions, but at some point along the way while shooting this movie, the idea that it was a kids film just kind of…got lost and instead it seemingly just became about shooting the script verbatim, for better or worse. With mostly catastrophic results.

Finally; is the direction able to at least enthuse the best out of the performers? Well..given the main cast members here include a rubber bollock who’s mouth cant move, a group of scientists who seem to have basically been all given one characters dialogue to fight over and a dr who’s supposed to be a main character but ends up being talked about more than he’s actually IN the film. I’m going to lean towards them not quite grasping how to direct their cast members. Now that’s not to say it’s all bad, I actually, genuinely think the twins they got for this film do a more than decent job and work a good range, which must have had some director involvement. But outside of them…well…yeah…its another swing and a miss I feel. So overall? Not a good look for the direction honestly…

From a cine perspective. This film could realistically be used as an act of terrorism, literally; it’s so full of unexpected strobe lights, rapid cuts and flashing imagery that, to anyone not expecting it, this could cause some VERY serious harm. Shots have reasonable enough composition, it’s not a pretty film by any stretch, but there’s some depth of field here and there and they do seem to at least understand basic framing rules (for the most part…when it suits them) The biggest issue with the cine really is how its been assembled in the edit. Because what they’ve done to this film can only really be described as “they’ve minced it” they’ve done to it what is done to a steak to make hamburgers.

Almost every single sequence has at least one example of undercutting the scene, cutting the scene too late, putting WAY too many shots into a sequence creating something disorienting, or assembling the scenes in what clearly must be the wrong order in places due to continuity issues. We may never know if a recut version of this healmed by someone who understood basic editing rules would have treated the cine more fairly. As it stands all I can say really is the shots I saw were okay, but the presentation, to me?, was abysmal. Like seeing a battered flower propped up in a spent soda bottle filled with piss.

There are no good performances in this movie barring the twins who do a decent job, I don’t talk about child actors, but with Nukie we’re well into bizarro world so fuck it, they’re the best part of this thing. Everyone else is shite.

And finally! The soundtrack! Its not half bad! It sounds a smidge on the cheap side but it’s better than a lot of scores we’ve covered this season, it’s just such a shame it’s absolutely not designed with a family movie in mind. At times this sounds like an art house piece, at times it sounds like a straight sci-fi horror movie score. Its not bad, but it’s totally not fit for purpose and the editing on it is SUPER weird. With the score just, crashing in and out of the film everytime they remember that having your film play out in silence when their ISNT dramatic tension, is a bad thing. Couple that with the aforementioned poor on set audio recording, with muffled voices, unclear dialogue and on set noise scattered throughout and it really is just a totally poor show…in my opinion I hasten to add.

Nukie was released as a big box ex-rental VHS tape in the UK in 1988 by 20.20 Vision, why they bothered to licence this thing when their books contained hits such as “Bill and Teds Bogus Journey” and “Bram Stokers Dracula” I have NO idea. That being said, they also distributed “Robot in the Family” over here…so…I don’t know who they had working in their Licensing department back in the day, but I want to buy them a good curry and a bad pint. And…other than that and a laserdisc release in 1989, thats it! It never got a retail home video release, and no company has been brave enough to test a DVD or Bluray release of this thing on the open market, and with good reason! I have seen a number of bootleg copies of this film floating around on DVD and their *MAY* possibly be a european DVD release that was official. But theres so many bootlegs of this film for sale, it’s honestly quite hard to say…it’ll happen inevitably at some point…may GOD have mercy on us all…

I waited well over a decade to check out Nukie, after having it labelled as one of the worst movies ever by SO many of my esteemed colleagues, I feel now, having actually seen it somewhat underwhelmed. I wanted to hate this thing, I REALLY wanted to be able to come to this review impassioned! Hell; even if I couldnt be mad at it, it would have at least been nice to be able to come here with a bit of a jaw dropped “What the FUCK!?” style breakdown…but the reality is, this probably isnt even in the top 5 worst movies i’ve reviewed on this channel. Let Alone the worst movie of all time. What this is, is just a fairly repetitious, fairly boring, border irritating watch written by two people who had almost no experience writing. The direction and cine are questionable, but probably could be somewhat fixable had they not hired 7 different editors to try and salvage the thing. Even then though, that still wouldn’t fix the fact there’s only 12 minutes worth of actual plot development here…but it’d almost certainly make it a lot more tolerable.

This isnt a terse warning not to watch Nukie, if your curious, go watch it. This is a tired warning not to watch Nukie. Its a truly hollow experience that I’ll probably end up using more as reference materials from now on than anything else…that and the novelty value of owning a slightly soiled Nukie is inherently amusing to me…Its just a quite boring, heavily padded, badly put together film that doesnt deserve anger…it deserves abandonment.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/nukie/

I dont think I was entirely prepared for what I was getting into when I decided to take a look at 1993’s “Champagne and Bullets”, A.K.A “Road to Revenge”, A.K.A “Get Even” (though…that last ones all as one word so…I guess it should really be “Geteven”. My first exposure to the movie was from an early episode of Red Letter Medias “Best of the Worst” where they covered the…highlights? of this thing? and what I saw was frankly so absurd in terms of presentation that I knew it was a movie that I had to get round to watching at some point. And; with Vinegar Syndrome releasing a rather lovely (and might I add comprehensive) set in 2021, I made sure to nab myself one because…lets be honest; this is my kind of rodeo.

The film was the brainchild of John De Hart. a (now retired) lawyer who decided almost completely on a whim that he wanted to write, direct, score, produce and star in his own gritty action cop drama thriller. And…he did just that. Self funding the production and carrying it to a limited release in 1993 under the title “Champagne and Bullets”…it didnt gather much momentum. So! A short time later he recut the film to remove most of the nudity and sex scenes and also to cut down quite a few of the longer scenes bringing the runtime down from 98(ish) minutes to 75(ish) minutes and retitling the picture “Road to Revenge”. This fared a little bit better and managed to get distribution, but it wasnt until the early 2000’s that Dehart would have one final crack of re-releasing the movie, reinsterting some of the nudity and sex scenes and shooting 4 miniutes of new footage (that was shot on standard video tape and not film like the rest of the movie) this cut clocks in at roughly 89 minutes and was retitled “Get Even” and this version, for a time, was the best known cut of this movie out there.

So this film is a bit like “The Wicker Man” of shite action cop thrillers. But I suppose the next question is. What makes this film so special that it deserves 3 separate cuts and a limited edition Bluray release? Well…the plot is more or less the same across the 3 cuts, but for clarity, i’m going to be *mainly* talking about the “Champagne and Bullets” cut for the purposes of this review.

The plot follows best buddies Rick and Huck. two cops just palling around and trying to get things done by the book. When the film opens they’re partnered up with a tom carvel sounding motherfucker called Normad and the film wastes NO time in making it clear Normad is the villain of the movie. As he leads Rick and Huck to stage a drugs bust, without a warrant. Things dont quite go to plan, and the pair end up in court trying to defend their decision. Normad testifies AGAINST the pair, claiming that Rick and Huck are in fact drug takers AND dealers and that the “Bust” that went down was in fact a drug deal that went bad. The judge sides with Normad and Rick and Huck are kicked out of the force with immediate effect.

Some time passes and Rick and Huck move in together and start doing some freelance security work to help make ends meet. This includes having to deal with obnoxious and pompous frat boys as chaufers for prom night. It’s not pretty. But its good honest work. After getting off a particularly manic shift Huck suggests the pair hit a bar for “Cowboy night” and it’s here that the main thrust of the film really begins.

Because, when Rick and Huck enter the bar they’re greeted by Cindy, Cherry and Cindy’s mum. And this is a blast from the past for Rick because Cindy and him were in a pretty serious relationship when Cindy mysteriously vanished without a trace. The pair reconnect briefly and Cindy rather cryptically explains that she’s been in a bit of a bad place for a time and that shes come back to town to try and get her head back in the game and is currently stopping with Cherry. It’s clear almost immediately that the pair intend to rekindle things, but before it can go any further, Huck breaks the pair up because it’s time for one of the greatest moments in cinematic history.

For a solid. 3-4 minutes. We as the audience are effectively treated to a music video for the song “The Shimmy Slide” and…while im not going to risk angering the copyright claim gods here by playing a clip. I absolutely would not begrudge you if you paused the video here. Searched “The Shimmy Slide” and just…basked in the most awkward and absurd piece of work i’ve seen on film in a LONG time. It’s pretty much THE sequence that anyone who watches this movie remembers. AND WITH GOOD REASON!

Anyway; While Ricks up there giving it his all a rather sinister looking group enter the bar and almost immediately surround Cindy, they recognise her from somewhere. Cindy makes a break for Rick as soon as he gets off stage and at the exact same time 2 things occur. A woman gets up on stage and starts stripping and an outraged “Karen” calls the police to report indecent exposure. And while THATS going on, Rick and Huck team up to protect Cindy and a small bar brawl breaks out…the stripper doesnt stop at any point during the brawl by the way, it’s a bizarre few minutes of bad punch sound effects and the gentlest toss’s and tumbles you’ll ever see. Anyway, the police turn up and Rick manages to avoid arrest, Hucks not so lucky however and ends up behind bars for aggravated assault.

Rick and Cindys mum go to bail Huck out of jail but the cost of bail pretty much bankrupts an already struggling Huck. This is put on the backburner however as we then spend an almost coma inducing amount of time with Rick and Cindy. Watching the pair have a romantic meal and make small talk, before we catch up with them the next day hanging in someones back yard on a swing. It’s here that Cindy opens up a bit more about what happened to cause her to leave town mysteriously.

Cindy says that she basically fell in with a bad crowd, started doing drugs, the drugs got harder, the friends got fewer and eventually she was sucked into the world of satanism and devil worship. All was, actually going pretty alright for Cindy, until she attended a black mass where they announced they were going to sacrifice a live baby. This was apparently the stick that broke the camels back for her and she basically got up and started wailing and screaming during the sacrifice, ultimately ruining the event. The guys from the bar earlier removed her from the mass and bound and gagged her. The next day she got her things together and fled back to her home town to try and get away from it all.

Unfortunately for her; the leader of the cult is non other than Normad as it’s revealed that he’s actually a drug dealing cult leader running operations while being backed by the law. Rick doesnt know that Normad is the cult leader, but comforts Cindy all the same. The pair embrace and by this point they’re pretty much back on as a couple.

Back with Huck though, things arnt going so rosey after being cleared out by the bail money Hucks got nothing left to pay the bills…as illustrated by him standing in the bathroom LITERALLY shooting his bills and flushing them down the toilet. Things go from bad to worse when later that night Hucks Ex-wife turns up demanding an alimony payment as apparently Hucks quite a bit behind on paying. When he tells her he cant pay, she does the perfectly reasonable thing and rips her dress open, calls the police screaming that Hucks trying to kill her, before cursing Huck out and running out of the house.

The police end up taking Huck in for something between aggravated assault and attempted murder and GUESS who the judge is who’ll be hearing Hucks case? Normad. Who’s now been promoted to the role of a judge for some reason (im pretty sure it’s lawyers who become judges…not cops) Anyway; as you can imagine it’s a kangaroo court and Huck gets hurled into jail with no bail. As soon as he gets in he manages to trick a janitor into leaving his post before grabbing a bottle of bleach from his wheely cart and treating it like water in the desert. A short time later and Hucks in the hospital where a chance encounter with a nun sets in motion a new path for Huck and…from here about a third of the film devloves into a weird mixture of padding and literal blink and you’ll miss it plot points. So to save us both a lengthy breakdown, I’ll just hit the key beats.

Rick and Cindy go to see Huck only to almost immediately leave him to go and grab the last of Cindys things from her parents house, they have a montage of lovey dovey romance stuff, theres a BLOODY long sex scene that goes on for about 2.5 million years between Rick and Cindy *Urghhh* Huck becomes a full blown religious wacko, Rick and Cindy get Married, on there honeymoon night Cindy does a ULTRA long striptease to “The Shimmy Slide” that lasts about 2.2 million years, And the bad gang update Normad about Cindy, Rick and everything thats going on and Normad demands Cindy be killed because she knows too much.

Which takes us up to the final act! Where Cindy finds a picture of Normad and immediately recognises him as the cult leader, she tells Rick and the pair head out to inform the police! But the bad guys spot the pair leaving and decide to give chase! In a barnstorming finale that actually IS probably some of the best parts of this movie, will Rick and Cindy bust Normad, Will Huck achieve enlightenment and has Cindys mum REALLY got it going on? All these things and more WILL probably be answered. If you check out “Champagne and Bullets”

And I think the biggest problem this film has is that it’s script is border incoherent. I’d stop short of saying I personally found it to be the inane ramblings of a mad man. But only by a hairs breadth. A good tip for any budding scriptwriter out there is, if you going to write a script…and its a novel idea but hear me out…if your going to write a script. Have a point. It makes it so much more interesting an experience for the viewer. This film could, in my opinion, best be described as “Asleep at the wheel” scenes just; “exist” bereft really of any purpose or requirement. The film maker has NO issue with a 10 minute long dining scene where nothing happens apart from Rick and Cindy sitting at a table while a stream of characters who arnt really involved in the plot come in, talk to them for a couple of minutes and then leave never to be seen or heard from again.

Its not even so much that some of the scenes are absolutely pointless, the thing that annoys me more is that some of the scenes DO have a point that gets lost because the scene was only required to be 5 minutes long, if that. And instead has turned into a 15 minute long, seemingly improvised character piece that again, adds nothing and just goes on and on and on. A good example being when Cindy goes to her parents house to get the last of her things and a SUPER long cyclical conversation happens where Cindys dad accuses Rick of being a drug taking devil worshipper and Rick just repeatedly keeps saying “Im not” in a roundabout way…it’s just ridiculous.

I mean;This is the kind of film that thinks that referencing “Hamlet” constitutes “High art” status. The kind of film that will spend 15 minutes running a sex scene, and 2 minutes explaining whats ACTUALLY going on. And it can at times be BEYOND insufferable.

The pacings pretty damn awful to. The first act is actually not half bad in terms of setting up our hero’s and villains, putting our heroes in a tight spot and then introducing the love interest while keeping things *fairly* light on tone but busy on development. But around the time Rick and Cindy start reconnecting after Cowboy night at the bar. The film pretty much loses its thread and goes completely round the reakin to just put across VERY simple plot mechanics. The films an hour and 38 minutes long and I’d say the first act is about 25 minutes and the final act is about 20. Everything that happens between those two points is utter freewheeling of both the best and worst kind.

I’d hoped, with this film having multiple cuts, that John would have gone back and tried to salvage the film. Rework it to make it leaner, more sensical and focussed on the plot points and not 15 minute montages of Rick and Cindy playing with Ice cubes in front of a fireplace. But here’s the biggest disappointment. NON of the cuts achieve anything close to making this film more coherent. If anything the film makes less sense the more it’s been worked on.

For example; you’d think with my main complaint being that the film is “Too long and incoherent” that the ultra short “Road to Revenge” cut would be my preferred viewing choice. But no! Because in that cut they’ve ALSO cut out some key plot points that help define the characters and make the film make sense! So while it’s shorter and less focussed on showing us that John De harts had sex, it’s also almost TOTALLY incomprehensible. In part because they’ve chopped key points out, but more bafflingly because they’ve left in some of the padding for some unknown reason!

“Okay Dan” I hear you say “Well, if thats the case; the “Geteven” cut must surely be the one for you?” NO! Because in that one they’re STILL missing some key plot points and all they’ve really put back in is some of the super long boring nudity and sex scenes and new footage of Rick working out outside and shots of the L.A Strip. Its not quite as incoherent as “Road to Revenge” but now it’s got WAY more of the boring bits back in it!

There is no “Good” cut of this to me. It’s either too long and rambly or too short and incoherent. Though; I suppose if im looking at positives there are points in this movie that are frankly so absurd, weird or just downright daft that I had to openly laugh at just how unashamed this film is to just be itself.

And on that subject. The dialogue for this film, while equally as incoherent, has some absolutely ASTOUNDING lines in there. Stuff you couldnt make up. I firmly believe John De Hart must talk like this in real life. Lines like “Adyosi Bela Lugosi!” and “Listen here you Polyester Puppet!” I was absolutely delighted! With a personal favourite exchange being when Rick goes to visit Huck in hospital after his suicide attempt and the pair greet each other by saying “I heard you did that bleach thing!” to which Huck responds “Yeh!”…just…I have no words for this thing. In places its drawn out, protracted and aimless. But when it hits that sweet spot of sounding like an alien wrote it. Oh man does it scratch my bad movie itch.

The Script was Written and directed by John De Hart, with additional direction credited to James Paradise. De Hart has one writing and one directing credit. This film. Thats it. This was his only experience of film making and apart from an acting credit in 2006, he’s effectively retired at this point. As for Paradise. This is his only directing credit too, but! He’s more of an actor with 33 acting credits including “Sleepaway Camp”, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Doogy Hauser M.D”

And surprisingly; all things considered, the direction isnt too bad. In fact, for a first attempt at film making i’d say it was pretty damn good! Theres a clear vision here and John’s clearly trying his best to really give the visuals his seal of approval. Admittedly if this had been churned out by a studio i’d have probably not even blinked in saying this film was pretty meh. But for a one man band with no previous experience? Its pretty impressive honestly. Scenes have a clear structuring to them, shots in places seem pretty considered and the final act is actually rather decently handled. The cast direction iiiis a little bit wobbly. In fact in some scenes its pretty much fallen over. But I think here, its a case of taking the rough with the smooth. Again; this was a first time director with no prior experience of working in film. It’s hard to get what you need out of an actor even as a veteran film maker. So while it was probably a bit of a looser production in that regard, it’s not the worst it COULD have been.

What IS fucked in this thing though is the continuity. Which is just AWFUL. Characters will go from not having drinks, to having drinks, to not having drinks again. People will randomly go from standing NEXT to objects to holding them, theres no real concept of time passage. It goes from day to night completely willy nilly and sometimes MONTHS can go by in film without ANY kind of acknowledgement. In some ways I like the inconsistencies because it helps make the weirder moments of this film even more unusual, but at the same time its an editors nightmare because the analytical part of my brain wont shut up in pointing out all these weird inconsistencies.

On the cine front. Its passable. It, for the most part looks like a feature film, scenes have a decent selection of shots that follow a pretty standard formula, there are a couple of bug bares, moments where the camera is clearly being hand held and has to move quickly often result in jerky, VERY unprofessional shots that instantly pull you out of the action and while there is a decent variety of shots, i’d have personally been happier with a bit more variety in terms of pans, tracking shots and other bits. It experiments! Which is good. Though whether those more experimental moments were intentional or just because the film maker didnt know that the shots he was using WERNT considered standard takes for a production is up for debate. But! There was nothing too egregious in here, it’s just a not too awful time.

And as a quick aside I do need to mention the lighting here, which, for the most part is pretty decent. There are a couple of shots here and there that stray into “Floodlit” territory, but for the most part he handles Day for night lighting pretty decently, theres some attempts at Chiascuro dotted throughout and in the last 10 minutes things go positively J.R Bookwalter in terms of shadowy sequences lit by multicolour lighting gels and hyper experimentation on shot composition. It looks great!

On the performance side of things. Its pretty poor. John De Hart appears to come from the Neil Breen school of acting. Giving a performance that quite often feels like he’s reading his lines for the first time on set…AND HE WROTE THE BLOODY THING. He’s dry, overly quiet and has NO physical presence on camera. I’ve seen taxidermy look more animated on screen than this man. Im sure he was trying his best, but his strange acting style and choices while endearing were not suitable for the grizzled action cop the role required.

Wings Hauser appears to be pissed as a fart through about 90% of this movie, his performance is memorable in the sense that he appears to absolutely have given NO craps throughout. I can only assume this was a clean paycheck gig for him because he slurs through his lines from start to finish with all the enthusiasm of an ambien dosed sloth. Pamela Jean Bryant gives a largely unimpressed performance as Cindy…and its hard not to see why. She was a playboy playmate who’d been in shows like “The Incredible Hulk” and films like “Dont Answer the phone” and here she is…having to spend AT LEAST 30 minutes making out with John De Hart. I mean…whatever she was being paid…probably needed a few more zeros on the end is all im saying.

In fact the only actor here who seems to be somewhere in the realms of decent is William Smiths turn as Normad. He’s gravelly, stern and actually plays a half decent baddy for this movie…it’s just a shame he doesnt really get to sink his teeth into the role as the films WAY too busy watching a drunk Wings Hauser piss about in a pool with two models for 10 minutes or following Rick as he tells rubbish jokes to a waiter for an hour and a day. I mean; he’s not astounding. But hes the best of a bad bunch and i’d have really loved to see him be a bit more malicious in this rather than the odd snippets we ended up with.

Finally; the soundtrack. It’s almost all John de hart. He has a guitar and hes threatening to use it and boy, DOES he use it. 70% of the soundtrack is just John and an acoustic singing in what sounds like a monologue its a MORE than bizarre choice with VERY mixed results. Almost all of which are hilarious. Theres a couple of synthy numbers in this, but nothing memorable and when it isnt John or forgettable synth. It’s royalty free recordings of classical music. It’s probably the most mismatched and incoherent score I’ve covered this season. And while I didnt hate it, I have more questions about it than answers.

Champagne and bullets release history is…difficult to track down in all honesty. As far as I can tell the actual original cut “Champagne and Bullets” had a limited screening in 1993 but ultimately never found distribution. When it was recut into “Road to Revenge” it DID manage to make it to VHS, but im reading conflicting reports that it came out in either Late 1993 or 1994. I equally cant find a distributor for this VHS release so In the absence of knowledge im going to fall back on logic and presume that it was self distributed by the films production company “Monarch Productions”. In 2006 the film was released AGAIN on DVD courtesy of Amadeus Pictures with some footage put back in alongside additional scenes shot in 2006 as “GETEVEN”. And finally in 2021, all three cuts were released by Vinegar syndrome in a deluxe bluray package which includes a full length commentary by John De Hart, an interview with the man himself, “Road to Revenge” and “GETEVEN” presented in VHS quality alongside a lovely new HD scan of “Champagne and Bullets” all wrapped up in a wonderful Hardbox numbered set that comes complete with a double sided poster. This is literally the most comprehensive set this film is EVER going to get. Savour it.

Is Champagne and bullets a piece of “Trashterpiece theater”…mmmmaybe. While it absolutely has its moments and is VERY weird in places, with some fabulous dialogue, bizarre performances and a script that has ADHD almost as bad as myself. It really struggles to maintain its momentum and frequently gets sidetracked into frankly PAINFUL sequences that are just…so inane and go on and on and on. It’s absolutely a good/bad movie. With direction and cine thats actually not half bad and a soundtrack thats positively ear splitting.

It has all the elements of a winner really if your into bad movies. But that poor script structuring is a HELL of a ding against this thing. At the time of writing this films out of print. And I bought my copy for £30 which wasnt that far off Vinegar syndromes asking price. Is it worth that? No. absolutely not. I cant fault the work thats gone into this release. Its superb. But the film itself just…isnt entertaining enough (to me at least) to warrant that kind of cash exchanging hands. Im not going to get rid of it because I own it now. But if you were to come to me now and say “Dan! I wanna buy this movie! It’s £30” i’d be telling you to save your money honestly. There are much greater laughs to be had for much less cash. If you do see it in the wild going cheap though; i’d say absolutely snap it up!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/geteven/

2006’s “Halloween Night” While clearly tying itself via marketing to the “Halloween” franchise, is arguably probably the closest we’ve seen in this run to a movie that actually kind of sort of has some reference points to the Halloween franchise. And! Its a mega early release from “The Asylum” AND it’s the first Asylum film we’ve ever covered on the channel!

Honestly; I’ve never been too “into” asylum films…Im a firm believer that “truely” entertainingly awful films have to come from the (somewhat deluded) belief that your film is going to be a masterpiece, even if the filmmaker is totally devoid of talent. Self awareness kills these kinds of films. So a studio thats entire operation is PURPOSELY to shovel out half arsed low budget films where the aim is not to make something good, but rather something that’ll shift copies through sensationalism while strangling TRUELY weird and wonderful experimentation in the crib…yeah. Thats not really my happening. Not to slam anyone who digs those movies, They’re just generally not for me. It would appear that Asylum *gradually* shifted to that sensationalist model though, as a brief look at their early work from 1999 to 2005 shows that to begin with, they were actually pretty grounded.

The plot of “Halloween Night” is *allegedly* based on real life events, in the DVD extras they clarify that the plot for this film was based on an event that happened to one of the crew. Now…unfortunately this film right out of the gate has one massive problem and thats that they bring in approximately 2 million characters in the opening and then don’t introduce them properly, meaning that their names are all scattered across the whole films run time and due to audio issues on my DVD release of this combined with some characters only getting name checked once it’s been difficult to keep track of things. So, rather than have to rewatch the film multiple times and then PAINSTAKINGLY link actors based on headshots alone on IMDB to their character names. Im running with pseudonyms on this one because…why the hell not? If the film didnt care that much about naming the characters up front I don’t think anyone should care if I give them made up names for this.

The only name I DO know is the killer in this movie, Christopher Vale. The movie opens with a flashback to Christopher as a child witnessing his mother getting sexually assaulted and murdered, followed immediatley by his fathers suicide. Chris witnesses the whole thing and then emerges from his hiding place to release some kind of chemical into the air which kills the intruders but horribly burns him in the process. The film then jumps forward ten years and it’s revealed that Christopher’s been in an asylum ever since. While doing their rounds he manages to viciously murder an orderly before escaping the asylum. Its here that we’re introduced to a WAVE of teenagers who’ve rented a house in the woods. Each year a chap I’m choosing to call “King Rollo” puts on a lavish halloween party and this year, they’ve rented a space to do a mediaeval themed gathering. Along for the ride is “King Rollos” missus “Roselina”, “Shaggy”, “Shaggys top babe”, “Lewis from Revenge of the nerds”, and a secret lesbian couple.

They’ve turned up to help set things up, but unbeknownst to them, King Rollo has ulterior motives. He’s invited a character im going to call “Arsehole” to the party without telling anyone else with the plan being to have him break into the party, threaten everyone with a gun before abducting “Shaggy”. With the big gag being that while the party goers “THINK” the halloween theme is “Ren fair” it’s actually “Psychological Horror”. Things start to go wrong quite quickly however, as a police blockade is set up just down the road from the house meaning getting in and out of the party is awkward due to mandatory police searches and helicopters buzzing all over the place. Shaggy and his missus get stopped by the police and they panic because Shaggy is going to the party as an “Executioner” and because he obsessed with getting a VERY accurate costume, he went so far as to illegally import ACTUAL weapons from out of state that are in the back of his car. Luckily the police just want to know if the pair have seen Christopher and after showing them a picture they head on their way, but not before pulling up just after the blockade as a petrol station to fill up.

The pair find the petrol stations abandoned and Shaggy decides to use the opportunity to change into his costume. Unbeknownst to him though, Christopher’s hiding in the petrol station toilets and using some kind of weird ritualistic carving knife he takes shaggy out and steals his costume. Now vaguely disguised, he heads back to the car…fails to drive because…y’know…he’s never done it before, and butchers Shaggys missus. Before barely spluttering off in their car and heading up to the teens party house. After some rather dramatic introductions, the party gets formally opened and drunken revellers pile in. After a while, King Rollo and the arsehole put their plan in motion. The arsehole enters the party, awkwardly mingles with some of the partygoers including a very awkward sequence where he tries to aggressively hit on one half of the lesbian couple, both of whome tell him, quite rightly to fuck off and keep fucking off until his not fucking there anymore.

At which point, Christopher enters the party and King Rollo and Arsehole have a “play fight”, Arsehole pulls out the gun and eventually takes Christopher who he THINKS is Shaggy hostage before fleeing the house just as a fake police officer whos in with King Rollo turns up to try and “assess” the situation. With people in literal tears, King Rollo decides that this “prank” probably wasnt his best move and comes clean with the best line in the entire film “The REAL theme was Psychological horror! NAAAT mediaeval Decadence!”. EVERYONE kicks off at King Rollo and the whole party falls apart, the real police turn up, find out they’ve had their time wasted and threaten to arrest everyone there if they don’t all clear out asap.

While this is going on however, we then cut back to Arsehole, who pulls up and chats with Christopher about how cool the prank went, Christopher kills Arseole AND the fake cop before heading back to the house to start murdering again leading into our 3rd act, an explosive finale where, yes, they do that scene where one of the last survivors wanders around the house and finds all their dead friends one by one to kill time. In a film that just about tries, Will we ever get to the bottom of Christophers past? Will the cops find him in time and will the teens make it through to the end…of “Halloween Night”.

From a script perspective. What we have here…is; well actually not too bad. Don’t get me wrong, this thing isnt defining the slasher genre for the mid 2000’s by any stretch of the imagination. But what we have here at its core is just a quite reasonably executed if not fairly generic slasher flick. it’s professionally paced. Theres a clean 3 act structure here with nice clean transition shifts between the acts to get you from plot point to plot point. the first act is particularly nice and nippy, moving at a more than reasonable pace and keeping things nice and interesting from the opening roll right through to when the party is set to start. It’s not perfect mind, as mentioned earlier, they have a real problem with overstuffing on characters. There’s WAY too many, which makes it hard to really get a read on them, and because they don’t really bother to name the characters consistently and up front (preferring instead to name drop across the first and second acts) it makes it SUPER difficult to really get invested in these people when you don’t really even know who they are for the first 45-65 minutes.

Because theres so many characters, it does mean that some disappear for a decent chunk of the opening act, or are relegated to doing very minor menial tasks in the background because, the film just doesn’t really have a lot for them to do and it’s WAY too preoccupied trying to set up the main thrust of the story to deal with characters who really don’t need to be in the film until the end of the 2nd act. I feel like they were kind of caught between a rock and a hard place honestly; if they’d had less characters, it’d make the script tighter, but the party itself would be SUPER unattended which would have had a knock on effect in the 2nd and 3rd acts making it look sparse and quite cheap due to the lack of extras. It’d also make the final act “Slasher ramp up” a bit of a non event. But including the additional cast has led to a whole lot of not really knowing what to do with them…So, While I’m not entirely happy with the situation, I can at least appreciate that it was something of a lose lose situation.

While the first act is pretty solid and REALLY gets the job done, the 2nd act unfortunately bloats to a BEYOND uncomfortable level as we spend WAY too much time just kind of mooching about at the party, and I know its supposed to be scene and tone setting. But here it gets painful. The key events of the second act realistically could have been handled in 10-15 minutes here. But instead its nearly double that…meaning we have to spend an ungodly amount of time just watching people dance about, weird small talk between the guy playing the stair troll and people wanting to get into the party and shots of Christopher mooching about the party, but not really doing anything. I genuinely started to think that the film was a lost cause at one point BECAUSE it had slowed down so much, I cant exactly say it’s padded because it IS busy trying to tie all it’s elements together, but I just feel like it could have done this much quicker and more concisely.

When the film finally made it to the third act, I had low expectations, but! While it didnt manage to get back to the speedy highs achieved in the opening act, it DID manage to pick up the pace and end things pretty concisely. Again; it wasn’t PERFECT, but given that some of the movies i’ve covered this month barely bothered with act changes and tonal shifts. It’s surprisingly nice to deal with a film thats pretty much just a decent stab at making an okay and somewhat solid slasher film.

What I will say is this film borrows a LOT from other horror movies. For a starters you have elements of the original “Halloween”, “Halloween 2”, “Halloween 4” and “Halloween Resurrection” (no…seriously) alongside nods to “Black Christmas”, “Friday the 13th” and “I know what you did last summer”. In a frankly BIZARRE turn of events, they also appear to have paid a scene forward back into the Halloween franchise, with the scene where Christopher kills Shaggy in the gas station and then suits up eerily mirroring a scene in Halloween (2018) where literally the exact same thing happens. (I appreciate that it could be argued that the gas station scene here is most likely an homage to the gas station scene from Halloween 4…but I think it’s SO much more entertaining to think that the producers of Halloween (2018) just watched a load of Halloween knock offs and cherry picked the best bits into their movie.) While these “Liberations” are expected, they do somewhat lower my opinions on this thing a bit because, it’s not great to just steal random good scenes from other movies and put them in your movie. Even if, quite often, they’re some of the best bits of the film altogether.

Outside of it’s theiving, the film pretty much hits every slasher trope going, you get the “I’ll be right back” the scene where one of the guests mistakes the killer for someone else, the scene where the cops turn up and don’t take the kids seriously, its a free for all honestly. Some horror fans like the tropes, I can take or leave them personally but the fact that this film tries to cram SO MANY of them into the hour and 25 runtime does get a little tiresome by the 3rd act. The dialogues probably the weakest element of the scripting here, they’ve gone for that, slightly snarky Gen X style fast paced chatter type dialogue that was probably best utilised in scream, just long, almost monologuey lines that have to be read really fast and sharp because if they don’t get read that way they make literally no sense and don’t sound anywhere near as charismatic. The dialogue feels like an imitation of an imitation of the scream style of writing. Throw in some VERY dated language (early/mid 2000’s homophobia and mild racism ahoy!) and the result is a movie that swings wildly from being just about tolerable to pretty insufferable and almost inaudible in places.

The script was written by Michael Gingold and David Michael Latt. David has 15 writing credits, his last in 2020 and I’d say this was probably his best known writing credit. But really; he’s more of a producer and in a move that may well make Roger Corman shit his pants, David has nearly 290 production credits at the time of writing. Which is just…wild. I mean to put it into perspective as of 2022 Latt is 56 years old and has 287 production credits. By the time Roger Corman was 56 years old he’d only managed 195. Which is just…wild. And he’s still going! With several projects still in active development and no signs of slowing down, I fully expect him to potentially catch up to, if not blow clean past Cormans production credits fairly soon!

The film was also written by Michael Gingold, he has 5 writing credits and he’s more of a director than a writer, with 30 credits under his belt. This was his last writing credit, and i’d be inclined to say I think this is probably his most recognised work. On directing duties with have Mark Atkins, Mark has 24 directing credits and this was only his 3rd ever directing gig. His works include “Six headed Shark attack” and “Android Cop”. While his last directing credit was in 2019, he’s a keen cinematographer with 56 credits under his belt.

On the direction front, we have a good solid attempt here. Atkins has delivered a film that, while probably not the most original piece visually, does have a level of distinction about it that, for the time would have just about set it above its low budget slasher peers. This is one of those Halloween movies that utilises warm colours throughout to help almost subconsciously remind the audience that this movie IS taking place at halloween, with plenty of oranges and reds on display throughout and a grade that eases slightly towards the warmer end of the spectrum. These choices contrast nicely against the flashback sequences which are instead manipulated to have a cooler look and feel (presumably to emphasise the passage of time) which I thought looked quite nice.

While there are key moments that have strong visual definition in the opening act, around the time we get into that bloated 2nd act, the direction also kind of settles into things a bit, as we end up with more traditional sequences that frequently feel like a “Gun for hire” going through the motions. Which is a shame after so much effort went into the first half an hour. I’d say with Atkins at the helm, this does have some potential, even if it does skirt mediocrity from time to time. Direction of the cast is perfectly serviceable too. No complaints from me. I feel like Mark was able to work with the cast to deliver something reasonable. Though I think he maybe struggled a bit in places to pull the right kind of emotion and feelings from the cast. Their physical presence was good! And it’s clear to see a lot of time went into the choreography of some of the scenes, but while the physicality is nicely handled, emotionally? I’d say it was a swing and a miss.

From a cine perspective, we do alright as well, there’s a not unreasonable amount of experimentation on display, which I always like to see in my Horror movies, But I do rather feel that in places they’ve over egged things a bit. Composition of shots (for the most part) is pretty solid and helps convey the plot of the film in a more than decent manner and, for the most part, sequences are passably constructed. My big isuse with these sequences is that, they’ve tried to cram WAY too much into these sequences shot wise and at times it can be a bit disorienting and distracting rather than the what the actual aim of fast cine should be, which is panic inducing and claustrophobic.

For years now i’ve said that good horror sequences work on a slow boil principle, you start with longer slower cuts in your early sequences establishing the set up to your audience. Then; as things start to get a bit uneasy and spooky, you cut more frequently and begin to ramp up, introducing more experimentation, before finally, when the horror of whatever is the big spooky is on screen, your cuts need to go into overdrive while keeping consistent and purposful. It’s NO good just throwing everything and the kitchen sink at a sequence and hoping the disorientation will carry the horror. The best sequences craft what the audience see and choose their cuts carefully. Halloween night unfortunately goes for the “Everything and the kitchen sink” approach resulting in break neck sequences that really don’t give the audience time to breath or even process what they’re seeing. It can make some scenes confusing and I actually kind of began to dislike just how scattershot it was. Even in the bloated sections the cine is just, all over the place and it really pulls you out of the story. Given that the editing of this was also done by David Michael Latt, I think either editing isnt his strongest suit, or he just didnt care and wanted it out the door. From the looks of things.

Performance wise…we have our weakest overall element, the cast arnt *objectively* bad. There physical performances are great in places here! But theres just something going on with their actual line delivery thats just awkward and weird. Most of the cast mumble their way through their lines, some to the point of incoherence, and they all really just feel like they wernt confident in their delivery. for low budget horror this is positively passable in context. But I didnt get on with it personally; I just found it way too stilted and, in a move that actually surprised me, The film does dally a little bit into comedy horror. there was more than decent scope for them to lean into that with the performances to deliver something maybe a little next level. But they totally miss the ball and just blast through those scenes completely flat. Which, to my broken brain, almost makes it funnier. But to a broader audience would most likely come across as a cast just not giving a crap about the gig they’ve signed up to.

While a lot of these performances do feel a bit like they’re only their for the paycheck. I will give a notable mention to Scott Nery as the killer Christopher Vale. while he gives an almost entirely mute performance, his physical acting in this is above and beyond the rest of the cast. Giving a genuinely animated performance that works a more than decent range, he gives the character an intimidating edge, but is aware enough in his performance to give the character a decent emotional undercurrent and even the odd bit of physical comedy. I think he does a really solid job and I have to commend him for bringing the character (no matter how generic) to life quite effectively.

And finally; the soundtrack. Its not too bad! Again we’re not talking award winning, it borders on the stock side of things in places. But they use effective sound cues throughout the film to really emphasise the horror elements while also giving life to the party scenes and the more thriller driven moments. It’s a decent enough score that takes a step above the standard cheap midi fodder that a lot of these movies seemed to pool from. What I will flag up is the on set audio, which was far from ideal. The cast are already giving mumbly performances and there were at least half a dozen scenes I saw where they either didnt quite get the mic placement right, or had to do some off site ADR work, but when the audio is bad, it’s almost inaudible. Which was quite the disappointment.

Halloween Night was released on DVD in 2006 by Lighthouse DVD Distribution, which surprised me as, given this is an ‘Asylum’ film, I had figured they’d maybe handle their own distribution on this one as they’ve done in the states. Rather oxymoronically; the version released in the UK is touted as the “Unrated Directors cut” while also having a great big ‘18’ certificate in multiple places across the box. Good lot of extras on this release too! Not only do you get an audio commentary and a handful of trailers for other movies Lighthouse distribute, but you also get deleted scenes, bloopers, a brief interview with David Michael Latt AND the option to watch the movie in both a 2.0 and 5.1 surround mix. Which blows most of the movies I’ve covered this month clean out of the water.

Other than that this movie hasnt had a bluray release and is currently out of print, but it’s dirt cheap to pick up online. And; honestly? I think giving this film a bluray release and a proper making of documentary might just give it enough of a facelift to make it actually worth picking up. The DVD version is watchable, but it’s got heavy compression on it that doesnt let you see the detail that the picture really has. If they could present it in widescreen, re-encode it and clean up the extras, even better. So here’s hoping for an upgrade in the near future!

Halloween Night is probably the only example i’ve found during this run of “knock off” movies where the film was created from the ground up to be a cash in BEFORE the release of a movie tied to the franchise, a short time after this film was released the Rob Zombie remake of Halloween would hit the screens, and it cant be ignored that it feels like the Asylum wanted to get in early to try and nab a piece of that pie. While I cant say i’m absolutely in love with this film, I did come away from it feeling better about it than when I went in. With a script that left mixed to positive feelings combined with reasonable enough direction and a passable score I think theres almost certainly something for slasher fans to enjoy with this one. More broad horror fans may be put off by the unfocused cine and editing, the WAY less than stellar performances and the fact this thing is starting to show its age. But i’d say if you want a hit of that sweet sweet low budget mid 2000’s horror and you’ve seen the main hitters, Give this a shot, it’s not perfect…but then, thats the asylum all over…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween-night/