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Merry Evil Xmas! Caesar & Otto’s Deadly Xmas review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Just in time for the 2013 holiday season comes Caesar & Otto’s Deadly Xmas the sophomore sequel the original film humbly titled Caesar & Otto. Caesar and his half brother Otto embark on a religious cause to become a traveling Santa Claus and his buddy elf. Another Santa has other plans as the bodies of Caesar & Otto’s friends begin to pile up from his deranged thirst for blood. As the blood flows, Caesar & Otto’s oblivious nature doesn’t leave them one clue to the chaos that has been ensuing.
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The indie horror comedy is a large homage to the genre that references mainly back to Silent Night, Deadly Night and just like Silent Night, Deadly Night, Caesar & Otto’s Deadly Xmas comes off just as cheesy as Cheez Whiz to where most scenes are not very funny and where very few scenes give a good chuckle. The main characters are whimsical, but immature to the point where the comedy makes my take teeth grit together painstakingly.

Dave Campbell directs, pens, and stars as Caesar and his love for horror shines through into his work, but Campbell also has his hand in editing and the his editing work leaves the film feeling too fast pace that if you look down for a second or blink your eyes, you’ll end up missing an entire sequence or a key part of the film. Also, I’ve never seen the previous two films, Caesar & Otto nor Caesar & Otto’s Summer Camp Massacre, and there feels to be that some portions of the movie carried over into Deadly Xmas. I was waiting for a flashback sequence or something else that would reference what had happened previously, but nothing came about leaving more confusion.
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Like a good homage, Deadly Xmas involves a lot of great horror icons that also made an appearance in Summer Camp Massacre as well. Slumber Party Massacre’s Brinke Steven’s, Return of the Living Dead’s Linnea Quigley, Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose, Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman, and Soultaker’s Joe Estevez make a b-list guest cameo appearance. Kaufman’s scene was particularly the funniest of them all, but I don’t want to discredit the others as they have bring something special to the Campbell’s film even with Joe Estevez making light and spoofing Doctor Phil with Doctor Pheel!
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Wild Eye releasing and MVDVisual bring Caesar & Otto’s Deadly Xmas to life with some really good appeasing art work that will sure attract attention to the Christmas horror genre. Check out the bonus features that include alternate scenes, behind the scene featurette, a short film entitled Piggyzilla, another short film entitled Otto’s First Job, trailers, and a bonus short film starring Maniac Cop’s Robert Z’dar entitled The Perfect Candidate.

Strippers aren’t evil! Stripperland review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

In all my days I would never consider the exotic profession of a stripper to be a bad thing.  These (sometimes) youthful ladies contribute to society just like the rest of us and perform a gentleman’s entertainment that will forever be the loner’s safe-haven and open ear to deaf, faux sympathizers.  Director Sean Skelding sees the pole dancing society to be the evilest place on the face of the earth as his film, Stripperland, has strippers from all shapes and sizes, dolled up in cheesy outfits, run an undead amok eating the guts of the living and mindlessly dancing to hip-hop music.

Idaho is an annoying college kid who lives by a set of exotic dancer rules that help him survive a world of undead, flesh eating strippers.  He meets Frisco, a man on a mission to destroy every stripper that steps in his path and to fulfill an obsession for home made baked goods, and they embark on a journey to Oregon, but before they arrive, West and Virginia, two uninfected females, trek with them in search for their Grambo.

Sean Skelding has a vision and that vision is to recreate that vision in a parody.  Stripperland parodies Ruben Fleischers’s 2009 Zombieland and, in all honestly, doesn’t do it very well.  Having strippers only come back to life to eat the living doesn’t make much sense to me; to have them dance to hip-hop music and crave one dollar bills as a distraction ploy has the same effect.  I get it, Skelding, Strippers are the epitome of mindless drones who seek nothing but sparkly objects, a fistful of George Washingtons and just want to dance all night long.  This concept could have been done with another storyline; why use Zombieland’s premise?  Stripperland isn’t a soul sucker of only Fleischer’s zomedy as it mocks a bit of Zombie Strippers (for obvious reasons) and Romero’s Day of the Dead (with Thom Bray as Dr. Logan).

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