TYTD Reviews

As a ‘Something Weird Video’ afficianado, one of the standout set of clips from their ‘preview’ showreel that would play at the start of almost all their releases were clips from ‘Teaserama’ and ‘Varietease’ Burlesque being essentially ‘naughty’ Vaudville I figured it might be something up my ally, So I recently picked up the Kino Lobar set of both movies + ‘Buxom Beautys’ for my troubles and…well, I cant exactly say its false advertising…But I just kind of wish there’d been more to it.

This film is presented in two different cuts on the Kino release, a 4k restoration running to 58 minutes, and a ‘SWV New Edition’ that runs to an hour and 6 minutes, and is basically the 58 minute cut with some low resolution inserts of ‘missing footage’ that was previously included in some circulations of the film.

Going into this, I expected essentially a film adaptation of a burlesque show. Beautiful girls, exotic dancing, titilation, comedians and maybe even a musical number or two to ‘complete the look’ I dived into the 58 minute cut of this first, and was kind of dissapointed.

The main reason being that, this isnt *really* a burlesque show…I dont entirely know exactly WHAT this is honestly. Dont get me wrong it absolutely has Burlesque elements. But non of the girls featured in this film were noted as burlesque dancers, most of them were models, pin up girls or strippers. Add to this that rigerous censorship laws in 1955 meant that there could be no nudity or overt sexual content, meant that this was essentially just girls who wernt really dancers, dancing in heavy coverage lengerie. With the more ‘near the knuckle’ moments involving skin tone bras…

Add to this that the 58 minute cut has only one sequence involving comedians in it…and thats your lot, and you end up with a film thats a little repetative and trading mainly on names above anything else.

However; there is one thing that saves this film, which is the total and utter campness of the production, ALL the girls here are gurning, overexaggerating both physically and in facial movements, the dance moves border on comedic at times. its a flounce, and the best kind of flounce. and while I personally felt the 58 minute cut failed to really capture the zeal and fun of a burlesque show. I have to admit that on campy-ness alone, it still managed to really win me over. It’s fun! the girls look like they’re having a fun time, Its a total vibe! and one that I really quite enjoyed.

The direction and cine is a bit flat, its a series of locked off shots on backdrop set…but the eastman colour really makes these visuals sing. and the score is SO music hall. I love it.

The ‘SWV New Version’ (the 66 minute cut) for my money is MUCH better, as it reinserts another 2-4 comedian ‘bits’ (they’re…VERY much of their time…be warned. I didnt find them particularly funny, but in a way, I kind of like that they capture that period of VERY rough comedy and it really helps break up the dancing) and I believe theres one additional dance that isnt in the 58 minute cut, thats really more of a showcase of talent than anything else, and it works really quite well I thought.

Of the two, I think i’d only ever watch the 66 minute cut again, as I found the colours warmer, and the variety much more easy to digest. But I’d say as a piece of erotic history, its definitely worth catching at least once, if only to see Betty Page CLEARLY having the time of her life!

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

Watched on Tuesday May 6, 2025.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/withnail-i/1/

I was holding off on watching ‘Feeders’ after I caught the trailer for it about 15-20 years ago, thought it looked absolutely nuts, but then almost immediately realised that the only version readily available at the time looked like absolute arse, because this was the early days of the internet and the best quality version available on line appeared to be 80p resolution and compressed in a hydraulic press. I was, in particular, looking out for one of the boutique labels to maybe try and clean it up, and present it in a crisp 720p or even 1080p if the surviving master materials would allow it…But alas, its been all this time and they havent come up with the goods…With ‘Wildeye Releasing’ seemingly holding the rights currently and no immediate plans to put it out physically.

SO! When I was asked to chat about the film on an upcoming podcast, I finally took the plunge and threw myself into ‘Feeders’ because if not now…then when!? I was not (totally) dissapointed.

The plot follows two cool customers called Bennet and Derek, who are on a cross country roadtrip RIGHT as a series of UFO’s decide to fly around rural Pensylvania and cause all kinds of trouble. Beaming down two tiny and VERY hungry aliens, the ‘Feeders’ are here for one thing, invasion, and consumption. But Bennet and Derek are TOO COOL to be eaten. So after wandering around the backwoods for an age, and accidentally hitting a fisherman with their car. they eventually stumble on an abandoned farm house, where the true nature of the aliens will be revealed to them.

I would suggest this is a film thats ‘Low on theory, heavy on heart’ and these are the kinds of movies I have a lot of time for, the Polonia brothers were described by ‘Bleeding Skull’ as ‘Urgent filmakers’ in the sense that their works feel very much like two young men DESPERATELY trying to realise their ideas on WHATEVER format they could get their hands on quickest, using tools and props made from ANYTHING they could grab in a moments notice. And ‘Feeders’ is very much that.

Its a blender of a movie that feels like ‘Things’, ‘The Deadly Spawn’, ‘The Evil Dead’ and just a dash of ‘Return of the Living dead’ all got remixed into a low budget SOV film. and thats kind of the most endearing thing about it, the palpable fact that you can *FEEL* the influences on this film breaking through the script and subtext. it feels like these guys REALLY want you feel their film, their world and their art. Which I have a lot of time for.

The script itself is a little wirey, We have a strong opening act that sets pretty much everything up in a neat and concise way, a second act thats bloated and had me RIGHT on the cusp of fully losing interest, concluding with a short but sweet third act which ties everything up half decently, is totally insane and dumps the viewer off having VERY little idea what transpired, but wanting more.

I think the one thing that saves this film more than anything else across its full runtime, is its dialogue. both in terms of how its written (its very stilted, clearly exposition-centric style writing that reminded me a bit of ‘Things’) married up to the extreme ends of the performing spectrum. Everyones either hamming it up ROYALLY, or giving nothing. which is WILD and again, really put me in the mindset of ‘Things’.

the pacing is a bit all over the place, and as mentioned in the 2nd act, it starts to drag, but it never full goes TOO far into the red for me. Speaking with the host of the podcast I watched this with, he concluded that he felt if the film lost 10-15 minutes around the middle, it would be significantly better. I’d be inclined to agree.

The tone is clearly tongue in cheek sci-fi horror with a smidge of comedy. and Its committed to that thouroughly. which was something I really appreciated, as too often film makers will just get out there and run and gun a movie out the door that has ABSOLUTELY no narrative tonal direction and just goes wherever it wants to. This at least *tries* to have some cohesion.

The characters are wafer thin, one trope per actor and thats about it. no complexity, barely any backstory. they’re perfect for this kind of loose and free film making. and barring a couple of moments of mild homophobia in the middle that seemed unecessary. I enjoyed what was on offer here.

The direction is ROUGH, I dont think the Polonias had regular access to a tripod at this point, so everything is hand held, with maybe a little forethought into what the camera positions should be before they hit ‘record’, but thats about it. It garners a mixed result, with a significant chunk of the film being shaky running footage or footage of the actors faces pressed as close to the lens as possible. The intentions of the direction arnt entirely clear and are, if anything, made worse by the total lack of a HD capture of this footage. Even the DVD release of this is sourced from a VERY heavily compressed low res 3rd or 4th generation VHS copy from the looks of it. Which makes reading the creators intentions a bit hard. However, whether serendipity or momentary genius, there are moments here that I was impressed with and that definitely DID leave an impression on me.

Cine is much the same, badly framed, washed out, pixellated sequences are the flavour of the day, While I will say there are some really nice moments of creative lighting in this piece, thats probably about as good looking as this film gets. There are some (for the time) quite impressive CGI effects, which given the low/no budget nature of the film HAS to be acknowledged as being actually pretty impressive. but lacklustre footage edited together VERY poorly, does not a good movie make.

As for the performances. Legendary, nothing less. Jon Mcbride and John Polonia as Derek and Bennet are SO spaced for most of the movie, its incredible. they deliver their lines in a way that feels almost as alien as the ‘feeders’ themselves. and that combined with some VERY over the top ‘thrown about’ physical acting?… its wonderful. Truely a delight. easily being some of the saving grace this film really needed

As is the score, which I thought was very well put together ‘sound alike’ pieces that *just* manage to skirt any kind of lawsuit. its solid synthy music that suits the film fine enough. Not incredible really, but definitely ‘fitting’ of a film like this.

Did ‘Feeders’ change my life? unfortunatley, I dont think it quite got there in the end. But what I will say for this film is, as soon as I finished it, I had to boot up the trailer for ‘Feeders 2’, and THAT film REALLY doesnt look like its gonna dissapoint honestly. And if this film compelled me SO heavily to go and check out the sequel as soon as possible. Well…it must have been doing something right.

Are there better SOV films out there? Absolutely. But I feel ‘Feeders’ would be a great B-picture to another SOV or ‘shot on 8mm’ movie. Something like ‘Boarding house’ or ‘Things’ would absolutely be a must. Id say this is worth checking out almost certainly…but with ‘urgency’? Probably not THAT much…

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

Another one from the ‘To Watch’ pile, I had about an hour free, so ‘From Hell it came’ it is! And dissapointing doesn’t cover half of it!

The plot? A group of the WHITEST Americans (and one VERY stereotypical British lady) are called to an exotic island where rumours of a murderous tree are running rife. The locals believe that a former Prince who was framed and killed by the islands witch doctor and the Prince’s wife, has cursed the island and has been ressurected as a killer tree to seek vengeance.

The Americans by contrast believe it may have something to do with a nuclear test blast that went off course and has irradiated the island. Honestly? Who knows.

The majority of the film is the Americans being distrusted by the islanders, as the Witch doctor has told them it was American Medicene that killed the prince’s father, the king of the island. But the reality is, it was the Witch doctor and the prince’s wife who did it as a power grab! But, is the tree monster real?! Well…yeh…yeh it is. The end.

Honestly? This is a very dull movie, only really helped by some of THE worst deliveries I’ve seen in a movie in a good while, and the tree Monster itself, which really doesn’t get nearly enough on screen time as I feel it should have.

75% of this film is just folks talking in a lab set, or on a backlot. The vast majority of the script is leading with an ‘American might and genius is great and amazing, and we’ll save these savages with our incredible technology and dashing good looks’ vibe. It’s…a very dated picture.

But yeh, the plots a washout. Ultra slow, low on action, pacings glacial. If it wasn’t for the handful of action scenes and the bad dialogue, it’d have been a total bust.

Direction and cine are about as good as it can get for low/no budget. Unremarkable is what I’d say. Definitely could be better, but isn’t the worst.

The performances are abysmal. Like, genuinely bad on a physical and line delivery front. And the tree monster is almost entirely moulded fiberglass. It’s hilarious.

I was hoping for more from ‘From Hell it came’ even if the tree monster was more prevalent, or if they gave the characters more to do, it would have vastly improved things…as it stands this felt really more like a backpatting commercial for how great Americans are. With some casual racism and stereotyping thrown in for good measure.

Not one I’d recommend, and probably one I won’t be in a rush to revisit any time soon. Simultaneously yawn worthy and groan worthy.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/from-hell-it-came/

‘Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit’ is a bit of an oddity for me, as the original Sister Act was simultaniously a film that I figured ‘Oh! it’d be EASY to do a sequel to this!’ while also thinking ‘Man; I dont really think they should do a sequel to this…’

Well, right or wrong, they did. and its Kinda sorta not as good as the original. but still does kinda sorta have enough going for it to keep me on board.

The plot picks up…well, thats actually kind of the first problem with this one honestly; I have NO idea how long its been since the original ‘Sister Act’, but it seems like…despite the ‘Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey’ style ending where Deloris was shown on the cover of ‘Rolling Stone’, ‘Time’ and many MANY different newspapers…Everyones forgotten that she single handedly saved a church from bankruptcy, took down one of Renos most deadliest gangsters AND transformed a failing church choir into one SO good, they gained an audience (and photoshoot) with the Pope…This is one of those films where you do just kind of have to go with the vibe and not ask too many questions, or your head’ll hurt.

Anyway; after the last film, Deloris has moved to Vegas for a residency in one of the smaller Casinos, and at one of her shows three of the Sister Mary’s turn up on an urgent mission. They inform Deloris that the Mother Superior has sent them to bring her to a Catholic school in San Francisco urgently. As it turns out that after the end of ‘Sister act’ both the Mother Superior and the three Marys transferred from the church to become teachers.

Deloris agrees to go, and on arriving it all becomes clear, the Mother Superior is at her wits end, informing Deloris that they came to the school specifically because they wanted to try and lead by the example Deloris set, and try to tackle an inner city school with a VERY disruptive student population, but they’ve found themselves trapped in a failing school, unable to connect with the students. So. Deloris once again goes undercover as Sister Mary, and joins the schools teaching staff as their new Music Teacher.

She discovers a deeply disconnected Student body, all dealing with their own problems and issues. But through the power of god and accapella music. Their worlds are about to be rock’d and/or Roll’d. That is until the school is told its going to be closing at the end of the semester due to budget cuts on behalf of the church. Leading Deloris to one final roll of the dice, a choir contest with a cash prize, to save the school, and bring meaning to the students lives.

To save some time, my main issues here are with the script itself. The direction, cine, performances and music are all pretty much to studio standard, maybe *slightly* less effective or memorable than the first Sister act…But then its uncommon for sequels to surpass their originals creatively.

No, my issues with ‘Sister Act 2’ are almost entirely script oriented. For a starters, I personally dont think the way they open this film would have been the route Deloris as a character would have gone through. She’s just established herself on a world stage as being a critically important choral arranger, and a key figure in revitalizing Catholocism in her locale. As a character, she almost certainly would have seized the opportunity to get into coaching, or production work, or even travelling around to different churchs helping fix their choirs…or hell, i’d have even believed it if they’d taken the Nuns on tour.

The idea that Deloris went through everything she went through in the first film, BEARING IN MIND, that the first film opened with her basically saying she was ‘done’ with lounge performing…only for this film to basically pick up with her binning off ALL the goodwill she’d built up, and an easy paycheque for life from the church…to do a mid-rent vegas residency…is frankly bizzare to me.

This is then immediately followed with THE most cringy ‘after school special’ establishing of a 90s class environment i’ve seen in a good while. Its awkward, feels forced, as if the writers had never actually SEEN school kids, letalone set foot in a school… and that didnt really endear me to any of the characters. It takes a lot of time for this film to really find its thread and what it wants to be doing, and dont get me wrong, when the choir competition plotline DOES finally appear, the film DOES find its footing and delivers a third act that, I’d argue IS probably better than the finale of the first film. But we have to get through a cringy and plothole riddled first act, and a kind of idling second act to get to that point.

The tones a bit more blunt here as well, they’re aiming more for comedy and the emphasis is off anything too bleak or unusual, which again I personally dont think works in this films favour. The school closing is a sort of high stakes thing within this worlds universe, but given the last film used a similar plotline with the church, and that was just running in the background, and barely mentioned, makes it hard to feel like the stakes are really THAT high…I mean, the worst case scenario is a group of kids, who hang out with each other after school, would have a slightly longer commute to another school. Rather than going to the one they either have no strong opinion on, or worse, actively dislike…and I know that the ‘music ass’ ends up becoming a student favourite. But we see clearly that all the other classes are horrendous.

The finale itself doesnt really feel satisfying either, its all a bit of a foregone conclusion. and the way the kids ‘save the school’ really reeks of someone who’s never been to a PTA budget meeting. (Mild spoilers) but the idea that a school board would choose to keep operating a school at a HUGE loss, purely because the music department won a state wide choir contest…is laughable at best.

The original Sister Act had problems defining their cast beyond the main three players, and here, if anything, its worse. Deloris is now being played as some kind of ‘all knowing’ wise person, who’s patient and forgiving…rather than a smart, but not someone who would suffer fools gladly, hustler, who can spy a good opportunity from a mile away, that she was in the first film.

Bringing the three Marys back was pretty pointless, as they’re basically only here in this film to stand in the background silently, and to VERY rarely throw a quip out…But thats about it. they’re seemingly here on ‘familiar face’ terratory only. The Mother Superior seems to get the best of the script, and she’s really only here to try and establish to the teaching staff that Deloris is a rogue operative, but to just let her cook. Which feels like a downgrade in my opinion.

The kids themselves, are 90s stereotypes come to life, every one of them is defined by ONE basic character trope, whether its being blunt to the point of being rude, being a rapper, being someone invested in cultural history, or makeup. they get the one personality trait and they run it into the ground in the most painfully early 90s way imaginable. It was So cringey to me in places I recoiled.

Mercifully however; the humour is still largely all here, they have raised the ‘stupid humour’ bar a bit, with less ‘lowest common denominator’ jokes and the quality of the gags is improved across the board.

I didnt ‘Hate’ ‘Sister Act 2’ but I did wonder why they made it the way they did. there was a LOT of other, more coherent angles they could have explored with this one. Hell; they could have explored THIS plot in a way that at least TRIED to tie it more to the original…But as it stands it borders on feeling like a pseudo sequel. A film that shares characters from the original, but not the universe. its…weird.

Im not saying I wouldnt watch it again, but I do think i’d need to be in a specific mindset to put it on.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sister-act-2-back-in-the-habit/

Its a Bank Holiday weekend, which means a lazy one, doing a few light chores, eating junk food and working through the ‘To Watch’ pile, and a series my Partners been dying to get me to watch now for months, if not Years, the ‘Sister Act’ films. She grew up with them and has a very strong affinity towards them, I’d never seen them, was vaguely aware of the premise, but was promised a riproaring time. So we went for it today.

The plot follows Deloris (Goldberg), a lounge singer in a two-bit club on the Reno strip, who’s in the midst of an affair with mob boss Vince LaRocca but is planning on cutting all ties due to Vince’s lack of commitment and fleeing Reno to start a new life in New York or California.

However; on going to break the news of her departure, she accidentally catches Vince and his gang in the middle of a cold blooded murder, fleeing from the scene while being trailed by Vinces goons, she winds up at the local police department, who offer to put her in witness protection as long as she’ll give testimony to Vince’s crimes. She’s incredibly reluctant…And about to get even MORE dismissive of the idea, when she finds out her ‘Witness Protection’ location for the next month or two is to be a Convent in Chicago, where she’s told she has to pretend to be a Nun for the duration of her stay in order to not blow her cover.

Deloris REALLY struggles to fit in with the convent lifestyle and butts heads with the ‘stuck in her ways’ mother superior (Played by Maggie Smith) things get close to the whole thing being called off, until the Mother Superior decides to take Deloris off of all duties apart from Choir practice. At which point her fortunes turn around, when Deloris begins to realise the Nuns are capable of great vocal feats. But need shaping and moulding to fit the more motown and soul sound of the 50s and 60s. Butting heads with the Mother Superior all the way over trying to drag the church into the 1960s. rather than leaving it languishing in the 1860s. All the while, Vince and his gangs have a nation wide manhunt on for Deloris, leading to a deadly finale!

And, I thought this was a fun little movie, Its not exactly the most challenging watch to sit through, but its bright, quite high energy and had enough fun moments to keep me engaged more or less throughout.

The scripts pretty decently paced, has a rock solid opening act that really helps bed in the scenario and concept, the humours a tad ‘lowest common denominator’ stupid at times, but there is some genuinely well written funny character pieces here, the tone plays for bright and vibrant for the most part, but uses the mob subplot to help add a bit of dark contrast to the humour.

I suppose the two biggest issues I have with the script are pretty simple ones. The first being that I think the second act gets a bit lost in trying to build up Deloris’s journey to the final act. they dont really utilise the cops/mob/deloris lying low element of the script all that much, and it feels a bit like in the middle of the film it flaps about a bit trying to find its thread to help guide it into the third act. I feel like either it should have been 10 minutes shorter with emphasis on trimming down the 2nd act, or they should have involved the mob and the manhunt elements more into the 2nd act to help add to the variety.

And the other issue? is that I dont really feel like the characters beyond Deloris, Mary Patrick and Mary Robert are all that well developed. we dont get a whole lot of backstory for these characters beyond the core three and maybe the mother superior, we dont get a lot of character development beyond the core three either. This is also one of those kinds of films that abruptly stops at the end, and (mild spoilers) the mob plot doesnt really get fully resolved, which I was a bit dissapointed in, as i’d have liked to have seen, even a brief scene of Vince and co getting the book thrown at them. It feels very much like a film flying by the seat of its pants for the most part. And, while thats all well and good if your caught up in the moment and just going with the vibes. The second you start questioning the small details, it all quickly starts making almost no sense. Which did lose me a bit.

Mercifully though, from that point onwards, we’re clover. Direction is solid, creative and technically well handled (its a studio pic, I didnt really have any doubts it wasnt going to be a polished end product)

The cine too is well shot, decently composed, colour usage is subdued, with a nice contrast of sharper colours to show the difference between the royal reds and creams of the church, and the neon soaked sin pit of Reno. the sets are fabulous, the location work is fabulous and the edit is nice and tight.

Theres not a bad performance in the bunch here, Whoopie Goldberg is wonderful as Deloris, and while its maybe not my favourite film she’s starred in (Ghost, if you must know) she still absolutely aces the assignment and is frankly delightful. As are the core players of Keitel, Najimy, Smith and Makkena. they’re pretty much perfect castings. they bring a solid energy and confident, natural performance to this that I really quite loved.

But easily, the best thing about this film is its scoring, which is part jukebox film, part choral delight. No notes, the moments the Nuns are singing are expertly handled and look and sound great. its a solid score with some real soul hits on there that I loved.

All in all, ‘Sister Act’ is a pretty good time. while I had some issues with it here and there, its definitely one I could recommend for a family film night, and I was pleasently surprised it was as enjoyable as it was. Its imperfect, but it does what it does very well!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sister-act/

I have once again kept my appointment with the Wicker Man. – Theatrical cut (VHS)

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-wicker-man/5/

Free Palestine.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/louis-theroux-the-settlers/

Watched on Friday May 2, 2025.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/wallace-gromit-vengeance-most-fowl/1/

I had a gap in my diary this evening which meant a quick dealve into the weird and wonderful section of my ‘to watch’ list on ‘Tubi’. And as soon as I saw the poster and title for this film in the suggested listings. I kind of just HAD to check it out to see whether it was ‘bad…’ or ‘BAD.’ Turns out…its actually not THAT bad…but its still kind of funky in places.

I’ll cut to the chase; ‘President Evil’ is essentially a low budget Comedy Horror movie thats basically just a beat for beat parody of John Carpenters ‘Halloween’ but with a guy in a Trump mask stalking Mexicans, Latinas, Black people and Trans people. With only some mild changes to the plot of ‘Halloween’ to help differentiate it a bit.

Instead of the film taking place on ‘Halloween’ night. it opens on the results night of Reagans second term and features a young kid called David donning a Reagan mask and killing is pornstar mother ‘Scorchy Daniels’. We fast forward, and its now the 2018 midterms and David escapes, picking up a Donald Trump mask now and tracking down a Latina family who are in the process of selling his family home.

Along the way there are references to SO many other horror films, from ‘Poltergeist’ to ‘Suspiria’ and ‘Young Frankenstein’ and I kind of struggled with this one a bit as to whether I found it weirdly watchable, or just painfully derivative.

My thoughts on the script go down one of two pathways. On the one hand, literally just cribbing the plot of ‘Halloween’ and replacing the all white cast with minorities and Michael with Donald Trump, alongside cameos such as one of the doctors at the hospital ‘David’ is being held in being called ‘Doctor Hilary’, the sheriff of the town this takes place in being called ‘Sheriff Schumer’ and Dr. Loomis being replaced with a ‘Putin’ lookalike. IS about as cheap, low and basic a script writing job you can actually do. Genuinely, this is the kind of movie where ‘It writes itself’ applies SO hard, because, once you’ve downloaded the original script for ‘Halloween’, changed the names, added a couple of comedy sequences in and a couple of scenes explaining how Trumps persecuting minorities…what ACTUALLY is original here? The answer is…not that much.

On the other hand, the comedy itself is INCREDIBLY diverse, primarily, its aiming for lowest common denominator, cheap pop culture gags and physical comedy. But then, and this is the weird part, in places the film gets weirdly lucid, bordering on a 4th wall break, where it feels like the script writers basically channelling their rage and fury about the situation directly to the audience using the character as a mouthpiece. and these moments are some of the most genuinely sincere, and at times bleakly hilarious moments of the film. self deprocating, scathing, black comedy about how the (then and now) president is harming communities by tearing US citizens from their families for LITERALLY no reason other than racist appeasement is VERY much present here, and it feels almost like the script writer is trying to stealth in Anti-trump rhetoric in between scenes of ‘David’ the Trump killer playing with a Putin lookalike in the woods, or deep cut ex-nazi gags.

Its so weird, because it feels almost like this was co-written between two VERY different people. One guy who just wanted to get a script in the can and hit Taco Bell before 6pm. and another guy who saw this as his one and only opportunity to put his opinions about the horrendous things going on in front of an audience, and decided that being sneaky about it was probably the better pathway. Its a bit jarring to tell you the truth because, when this thing is actually trying some of the more intellectually motivated bits, I found it actually kind of engaging and funny. But when its not doing that, its the worst excesses of American obnoxious style comedy and was border unwatchable. Not helped either by the fact they, at least a couple of times, go for low hanging fruit and do stereotyping, which I think here was intended to be taken as a ‘Im a lefty who KNOWS this is racist, and is essentially parodying the kind of guy who WOULD be racist’ but they dont really commit to the bit enough, which just makes it feel like they’re being weirdly out of tone and racist/transphobic/homophobic as a result.

That being said, regardless of the above, this is still fundamentally just a re-framing of a classic. and while its ABSOLUTELY nowhere near as good as the original ‘Halloween’ with its DNA being so close, its still kind of hard not to enjoy it to a point.

Other than that, this is pretty much your bog standard low budget horror film for the most part, the directions a bit shakey and not exactly ‘revolutionary’ but Richard Lowry is a pretty well established director for this kind of level of film making, and he commands his crew about as well as i’d expect for a production of this scope and budget. Not brilliant, by NO means the worst i’ve seen.

Cine? is actually kind of surprising. while the framing is great with a few instances of wobbly cameras, bad white balancing and ropey effects. I actually thought the lighting was handled very well for a production of this scope, the colour use was half decent and theres actually some pretty impressive sequence arrangements here. I wont say its brilliant at all, but it feels sturdy for the most part, the kind of film that isnt taking too many risks, but hey, you want a ‘Trump slasher flick’ this does exactly what it sets out to do.

The edit is a little all over the place, with a few wobbly cuts here and there and, as mentioned some of the effects work isnt great, though the big finale does handle itself quite well! Sequences are a little loose, but i’ve seen worse. its passable, but largely kind of unremarkable.

Performance wise? Sitara Attaie is actually VERY surprisingly decent as this films ‘Laurie Strode’ (here called ‘Lana’) she gets some of the best dialogue in the entire film and she absolutely embraces the tone and goofiness this films going for. I think she really nailed the brief, shes a great physical performer, emotes brilliantly and delivered her lines with conviction even in some of the sillier parts of the movie. She gave me Leslie Nielson vibes, which again. For a film like this?! surprised me.

That being said, Ryan Quinn Adams as ‘David’ the killer ‘Trump’ was equally fantastic, emoting with rubber in ways that I didnt know rubber could emote, He has some great comic timing on his physical performance that really engaged me. Could things have been pushed further? absolutely. But hey, this is low budget cinema. I’ll take a win where I can get it.

The soundtrack is essentially a ‘horrors greatest hits’ with soundalike tracks from classic horror movies from the 70s through the 2010’s. they usually use the music for comic effect, playing it in key moments where its ‘fitting’ for the scene. I wasnt too offended, it worked about as well as it could have honestly.

All in all? its a mess, its awkward, and the humours a minefield of gut laughs to just plain unfunny and offensive. But despite its flaws, there was something about this movie that just kind of…Charmed me, for lack of a better word. I think it may be the fact that there IS clearly SOME brains working on this thing behind the scenes, and that it plays itself as exactly what it is, without trying to be something its not. it comes in, does what it needs to do, and gets out. And I appreciate it when films dont try to ‘guild the lilly’ too much in that sense.

Would I recommend it?…possibly?! I think this one would have a very specific audience, but I think it could maybe pair up with something like ‘Wacko!’ or something similar. definitely one where your milage may vary. but there was enough to like here that I could see myself catching this one again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/president-evil/