Tag Archives: indie film

Evil Skips Big Foot Once Again. “Black Water Creek” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

vlcsnap-2015-01-10-21h18m33s194

Sasquatch is withheld love. Once again. How can the eluding furry beast of the woods get the run around treatment every time being reduced to a cheap, half-assed horror project for amateur filmmakers? “Black Water Creek” doesn’t stray far from the same old, same old big foot bobbling. An on leave cop is reinstated to a cold case when a string of supposed animal attacks leave many dead and many questions unanswered. When the bodies pile up even more, the “animal attacks” are more than meets the eye.
vlcsnap-2015-01-10-21h16m04s235
A shoddy, barebones costume with rubber fingers and stationary face expressions and lack of consistent video editing throughout “Black Water Creek” turns the film incoherent and nearly unwatchable. To finish you must be a masochist. Many characters come and go without explanation and the background ambiance seems to run long and leap onto other scenes that don’t warrant the ambiance. The storyline jumps without seamless cuts. And the deaths scenes are all implied and goreless even though many of the victims have been eviscerated and facially mauled.
vlcsnap-2015-01-10-21h17m21s237
There might be a good reason for the lack of quality costuming and the unclarity comes from the story that Big Foot might actually be a rouse for a backwoods drug dealing and smuggling operation. Big Foot is a disguise to take out the competition and to take out the also greedy drug connections in order to lessen the pot of splitting a $65 million dollar drug profit. Only the two detectives on the case, Shaw and Lisa, stay consistent with their story, but the character are dull, dense, and dreary. More like rookies than true detectives. Or Sasquatch is actually a serial killer as the end suggests that it may very well be the work on a serial killer hacking off faces.
vlcsnap-2015-01-10-21h18m05s160
As “Black Water Creek” progressed, I really wanted to push that off switch, but I powered on. Sucked up the aggravating editing and the hypnotic special effects. I tolerated the cheesy costumes and the implied deaths. I clenched my teeth at the video and audio imperfections and had high hopes for a knock your socks off ending. In conclusion, “Black Water Creek” holds no water, bares no teeth, and Big Foot has yet to be discovered on the big screen. Reality Entertainment’s “Black Water Creek” should have a warning label describing how much of the plot will be a convoluted mess. There are far better worse Sasquatch films out there than this shell of a movie.

Nudity Report

No nudity 😦

black-water-creek

This Evil Island is More Like a Luxurious Resort: “Zombie Isle” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

zombieisle
When I first read the title “Zombie Isle,” the first thought was the popular survival horror game “Dead Island” where you can take on a horde of bikini clad, thong and thong wearing, tropicana-sippin’ zombies with various melee weapons. Sounds blood thirsty enough to be turned into a movie, right? Well “Zombie Isle” is obviously not the same brainchild from the people behind the “Dead Island” video game. One could only help and what happens to high hopes usually? High hopes are usually squashed and sure enough “Zombie Isle” was a big bust for not only meeting my expectations of being like the “Dead Island,” but for also being one of the many sheep in the undead genre.
output_oHSS4a
A group of university students and their teacher embark on a field trip to an uninhabited island to study the habitat. When they split up into groups of two, all hell on the island is unleashed and the students succumb as meals for the zombies that inhabit the uninhabited island. Not only do the flesh eaters swarm the island, but a mad Nazi doctor looks to replace the brain his deceased love into one of the bodies of the gorgeous girls trespassing on his island.
vlcsnap-2014-10-05-20h43m53s218
“Zombie Isle’s” plot is, first off, way too scattered to fully explained how this island became ground zero for possible Nazi or U.S. Army experimentation – it’s not really explained. The Nazi mad doctor has a syringe he injects into the neck of the dead bodies to awaken them into flesh eaters. Nobody knows how he got to the island and no one really seems to ask. Also, the doctor keeps a giant three headed mutated zombie chained to a tree. Again, this all goes unexplained. Half the characters gets rip to shreds in the first 15 minutes of the film and that makes caring for characters really difficult.
vlcsnap-2014-10-05-20h44m33s111
On the positive spectrum of “Zombie Isle,” the gory schlock really is potent. Zombies scooping out brains with their hands, stomachs being ripped open and disemboweled, and brains being munched on. With the gory and the blood, the parodical nature of the film, especially with the two dimwitted hotties, can kind of keep us awake at times; as for the rest of the duration, watch your eyelids become heavy and heavier. The zombies themselves do a good job. Hell, even the three headed mutant zombie has a certain ghoulish charm to it even though it’s obviously fake and goofy cladded, but with director Robert Elkins’ use of cigarette burns and faux faulty-like film strips the creature is hidden behind the throwback grindhouse cinematic style. The cast consisting of Crystal Howell, Tony Jones, Apryl Crowell, Kyle Billeter, Davids S. Witt, and Jonathan Moody are seemly a tight-knit group of people who’ve worked on films together before. They feel comfortable in what they’re trying to accomplish, but their really is no depth in their personas.
vlcsnap-2014-10-05-20h44m49s10
On a technical note, the dialogue audibility is absolute crap. One minute you can hear the characters fine and then the next you’re turning up the volume. Constantly I was fiddling with the controls to find a ideal setting and just wasted my time and energy. Also, the soundtracks is very repetitive and drowns out most of the dialogue as well. The sure signs of low budget filmmaking and not making use of something better than to just repeat soundtrack audio. The foley sounds of squished heads and knocks to people’s dome pieces might as well come straight out of a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon.
vlcsnap-2014-10-05-20h45m23s96
“Zombie Isle” heart and soul likes with the gore effects not leaving the film to be an empty shell. The characters are the empty shells and the production kind have been better along with fine tuned story in which the parody could have stayed as some of bits were smirk-able. Surprisingly, no nudity for a zombie film with a bunch of university students, but that doesn’t give the film low marks at all. With that being said, “Zombie Isle” releases this Tuesday October 7th, but if you must venture into an overplayed genre, there are better zombie films out there that won’t leave you stranded on an island.

Trailer: The Houses October Built

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Independent horror is a firm fixture and an appreciated business here at Its Bloggin’ Evil and when The Houses October Built came across my lap, I had to post the trailer. Being released just in time for Halloween on October 10th, the film revolves around a group of documentarians looking for the ultimate and most extreme haunted attraction only to end up finding something more sinister – an extreme haunting attraction that found them.

The Houses October Built is based off director Bobby Roe’s documentary of discovering haunted attractions across the nation.

Image Entertainment acquires the Steven Schneider (“Insidious”,”Paranormal Activity”) produced film that also stars Zack Andrews, Mikey Roe, Brandy Schaefer, and Jeff Larson.

How About A Nice Evil Plate of Hillbilly, Long Pig Meat? Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

lothbposter

Taking after his demented butcher of a father, Carl Henry Jessup (Paul E. Respass) is a backwoods living hunter whose local delicacy amongst his surround neighbors is serving up grade-A human meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Carl relives the past with the tragic death of a murder-suicide of his parents and tries to summon them to live again with the help a demon named Sam Bakoo. When the loner cannibal doesn’t get his wish from Sam Bakoo, he curses and rejects the demon starting a whole new set of problems for poor old Carl. All this is told in narrative story of the “Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher” to three young children by an old man who knows Carl and his murderous history.
vlcsnap-2014-09-05-21h15m55s240
Director Jaoquin Montalvan could be considered the underground doppleganger of Rob Zombie in filmmaking especially in “House of a 1000 Corpses” or “The Devil’s Rejects.” In the “Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher”, all the makings of a Rob Zombie like film are accounted for with the exception of hard rockabilly music. White trash and white trash dialogue? Check. Grindhouse style editing and cinematography? Check. Cannibalism and demon summon horror genre? Check. It isn’t like Montalvan exactly mirror’s Zombie’s films from scene to scene. Montalvan makes this film his own in the subtlety of the work; many of the scenes are low key and not over the top with dialogue and heavy moments of stimulating effects. And the indie director does make this into a bit of a horror comedy. In a number of scenes, the characters will sit across from each other, have a meal or a drink of moonshine, and bullshit in a quippy could of way. End scene.
vlcsnap-2014-09-05-21h14m32s180
The cannibalism story tangent takes a bit of a backseat to the demon that plagues Cary Henry. The quick switch in plot direction is a good, positive change for the Hillbilly Butcher as monotony would set in with the cannibalism plot line. Much of the “meat” effects were a bit scarce and cheesy. The dead bodies were not so realistic. But the quick edited dream sequences of Sam Bakoo and Carl Henry’s visions of Sam Bakoo were intense, surreal, and welcomed. What also helped was the performance from amateur actor Allen East as Sam Bakoo – a scrawny, bald man who can conform with the best of them like Doug Jones from “Hellboy.”
vlcsnap-2014-09-05-21h16m15s185
Another good actor (or actress in this case) is Theresa Holly. A blue eyed, black haired beauty with a bust that would break hearts. Her character Rae Lynn, a friend of Carl Henry, is sweet and tender but when push comes to shove, her salvation lies with her fighting for her life. While there were no nude scenes for her character, Theresa Holly does do some bra and panty scenes in a, and again in a Rob Zombie like way, montage scene.
vlcsnap-2014-09-05-21h14m15s9
With any cannibal archetype or cannibalism film, I expect a lot of gore and with a title like the Legend of the “Hillbilly Butcher”, there comes an expectation that meat would be separated from the bone for consumption. Well, prepared to be mostly disappointed with only one real scene of disembowelment. The scene is fairly gory and intestinally jarring, the movie is practically over by the time we get to this scene. The film does speak more to it’s tone toward placement in the world and in the afterlife; how the good become better and those who do wrong get what they deserve in the end.
vlcsnap-2014-09-05-21h16m36s141
MVDVisual is releasing this 2012 festival hit on September 23rd, 2014 and while I won’t expect this to be flying off the shelves, reaching cult status in a matter of weeks, I do expect a pretty good following for poor old Carl Henry.

Dance the Evil Dance! Bloody Homecoming review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

bhomecoming2
The latest trend for independent horror filmmakers is to pay homage to the 80’s slasher. Bloody Homecoming is no different as one other review site said the film is “an unusually effective homage to the golden age of American slasher movies.” Is the Freshman of Brian C. Weed a worthy throwback of the “golden age of American slasher?” The elements are there and I can say that Weed gave it one hell of a try making a masked killer into a relentless murderer of teens that harks back to classic icons like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers.

Football star Billy Corbin dies in a fiery deathtrap during his school’s homecoming. Three years later, the teens who were labeled responsible, but never held accountable, prepare for the school’s first homecoming since the tragic death of Billy Corbin. While in jubilation of their school spirit, a killer dressed in a firman’s gear hunts them down one by one during the homecoming dance; a killer hell fire bent on revenge for Billy.
bhomecoming
And while director Weed makes a heartfelt attempt at a throwback horror movie, the characters are too shallow and need more work to make them more human. Robotic dialogue creates a kind of hatred that only a masked killer could exterminate. Thank goodness for the “fireman” killer. However, a handful of hopeful characters keep the film’s watchability right on the line between entertaining and dull. Bloody Homecoming does bring a unique way, a rare method, when deciding to who gets the axe. Every character is fair game to bite the dust and no one can argue with that as the usual suspects are token black guys, couples who’ve just had sex, and the comic relief – to be fair, all these characters were in this stereotyped high school teen horror film.
bhomecoming1
Other slasher films such as My Bloody Valentine or Scream come to mind when thinking about the “fireman” killer. I’m guessing the writer, Jake Helgren, gave the killer inspiration for using the fireman gear after the burning death of Billy Corbin. The outfit is a bit out of place, but the connection between the catalyst and killer can determined. The killer uses a sharpened spirit stick which doesn’t make a intimidating weapon, but effective none the less. Lets just say the spirit stick takes the spirit right out of the kids. The killer character’s depth could have been more extensive and more meaningful. The paper thin motivation from the killer does little for the character and the killer would just be labeled as another run of the mill killer.

Bloody Homecoming won’t knock your socks off, but the death scenes are graphic, bloody, and well timed in the scene. Brian C. Weed’s first attempt at horror is just the tip of the ice berg and we could see some great things from Weed if another opportunity presents itself. The editing is professional and well done so I see things could only get better from here and Bloody Homecoming’s UK DVD release is slated for March 10 from Image Entertainment.