I am no stranger to watching amateur/indie horror films.  I’ve seen a shit load of them, I’ll continue to watch them, and I have no plans on not watching them.  So when a film like HACK JOB comes around that’s filled with gratuitous titties, amateurish gore f/x, over the top acting that will have you feeling embarrassed for the actors on screen, and a plot that will make even the most A.D.D-stricken teen seem calm and “leveled,” I really must stop and ask myself one question:  Why was I having so much fucking fun with this one?

I admit that I’m not the most mature 41 year old around.  I admit it and my wife and about 100 other people will confirm that.  But the fact that I was finding HACK JOB so entertaining and funny even has me worried.  But then again, how can you not like a film that opens making fun of pretentious foreign films.  After we get a screening of “The Life and Death of an Avocado,” a snooty cable channel is set to interview “Pretentious Director” (Danny Karron) when suddenly two guys barge into the room, scream and shout about how they hate foreign narrative films, and then cut the Pretentious Director’s face off with a chainsaw.  It’s all done completely tongue-in-cheek and HACK JOB never ever ever takes itself seriously.  Not for a second!!  After the opening credits we then learn that satan creates hell on earth not by causing events like the holocaust or 9/11, but causes suffering by writing shitty horror films and then giving the scripts to moronic, talentless hacks to make.  Enter James Argento (James Balsamo; also the writer-director) and Mike Fulci (Michael Shershenovich); two schmucks who find themselves with such a script, a horror anthology, and decide to make “a ton of money” and make this film.  The film contains three main stories with a wrap around story of Fulci and Argento trying to get their film made.

Not just titties ... Nazi tithes!!

The first story, “Tomb of the S.S,” is what happens when modern-day Nazis awaken some pissed off, cursed mummies.  The mummies look like they’re wrapped in toilet paper, the Nazis look like a couple of Wisconsin cheese-eaters, and the plot is just ridiculous.  But I’ll say it again; it’s a really fun story.  Allen (James Balsamo … again) is an expert in hieroglyphics and is brought out to a dig in Mumbai (which looks suspiciously like the Californian desert).  There he learns that some modern Nazis are attempting to plunder a tomb recently discovered and said to contain riches beyond belief.  The tomb only contains pissed off mummies hell-bent on protecting their booty (why are mummies always so goddamn greedy??).  “Tomb of the S.S” is wicked fast-paced and has a frenetic energy about it that I totally got caught up in.  Technically everything about this and every segment in the anthology is off.  The acting is way over the top, scenes aren’t centered, you can see the boom mike in some scenes, the gore f/x are very amateurish … the list goes on.  But there’s also a pure love of the genre that Balsamo has the ability of putting into every scene.  I also think Balsamo has some talent behind the camera and was intentionally making HACK JOB as over-the-top as he could.

The second story, “Earth is on the Menu,” was just as gonzo and crazy as the first story.  An alien lands and invades a battle of the bands contest.  The entire alien is never shown, but we get a clear view of the front of it.  It’s essentially a sphere-like ball with a huge gaping mouth and lots of tentacles.  And we can clearly see the fishing line being used to move the tentacles!!  It was so obvious, in fact, that it seemed intentional.  Not since THE CREEPING TERROR has there been such a laughable alien on screen (both flicks also have the alien “eating” its victims by the victims climbing into the alien’s mouth).  And who doesn’t love dialogue like this:  The owner of the greasy diner is looking around at the mess in the kitchen and screams out:

“Look at this fucking mess!!  I can’t believe I’m the boss of this shit hole.  There goes three months of college down the fucking drain.”

This had me laughing out loud.  This story even has a character from the original horror-themed death-metal band, GWAR!!

The third story, “The Mark,” is about a guy into meditation who becomes a vessel for something that wants to kill a televangelist.  Seriously.  But what put everything into perspective is when Uncle Lloyd Kaufman makes a cameo as himself in one scene and as a Rabbi in another (the cameo as himself ends with him running off screen with a bad case of explosive diarrhea).  After seeing Kaufman I then realized that Balsamo was making an homage to Troma films.  That much is clear.  And he does a damn nice job of it.  He captures the feel and tone of a Troma film as well as the zaniness and gonzo, guerrilla filmmaking style that put Kaufman and Troma films on the map.

HACK JOB also has a kick ass soundtrack with songs from Calabrese, Bloodsucking Zombies from Outer Space, F.K.U, and Ghoul, to name a few.

HACK JOB isn’t gonna win any awards.  All the negatives I had to say about it are absolutely true.  But it’s also a really fun film that will take you back to the early days of Troma films when THE TOXIC AVENGER, CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH, and SGT. KABUKIMAN N.Y.P.D. roamed wild in the streets.  HACK JOB is an amateurish film full of charm and good old fashioned bad taste humor.  That being said, if you’re not a fan of Troma-like films, then HACK JOB isn’t for you.  But it’s a perfect film for staying in on a Saturday night with some buddies and killing obscene amounts of alcohol.

My Summary:

Director:  James Balsamo (& writer, producer, editor, SFX artist, & actor who plays 6 roles in the film)

Plot:  3 out of 5 stars

Gore:  4 out of 10 skulls (there’s a lot of it, but it’s not very well executed)

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

I love Facebook, I really do, and not for the reasons you think.  Yeah it’s great to reconnect with a bunch of high school and college buddies as well as making it easy for old ex-girlfriends to stalk me as I willingly lay out my entire life for them.  That’s a huge bonus.  But why I really love Facebook is because of the opportunity it’s given me to reach out to the indie horror community.  I have a ton of “friends” from the indie horror scene from writer-directors to actors to special f/x artists, and everything in between.  This is how I got into contact with actor Marv Blauvelt.  After I included Anthony Sumner’s short film, LEWIS, on my Best Horror Shorts of 2011, Blauvelt reached out to me on Facebook to thank me.  After chatting back and forth for a little while, Blauvelt then asked if I was interested in watching and reviewing another short film he made back in 2010 titled, COME.  I’m sure glad he offered because this is a short horror film that I never heard of or came across, but I feel as though I’m a better horror reviewer for watching it!!

In COME, Blauvelt stars as Dr. Conduit, a surgeon who has a taste for the macabre (that’s putting it lightly).  Conduit seems to have a particular fetish where he likes to go out at night, prowl around for women, seduce and drug them, and then surgically remove their vaginas and sew them onto their faces.  Hey; I told you it was a specific fetich!!  As we join up with Conduit he’s visiting an underground fetish store that prides itself on catering to the warped desires of all it’s clients.  It’s obvious the good doctor has been here before because the owner of the shop put aside a little something special for him.  Conduit buys an unmarked brown paper bag, without looking into it, for $75 and is promised that he’s gonna love it.  Inside the package is what appears to be a ‘dead’ creature of some sort that looks like a vagina monster.  At this point the short gets pretty damn bizarre and leaves behind the standard narrative in favor of a trippy, nightmarish style that really adds a lot of atmosphere to the film.

Upon looking at the creature in the jar, Conduit seems to go into some kind of trance or ‘altered state.’  He seems to hallucinate various scenarios about what the creature is or might be.  In one scene he dissects the creature and ends up jerking off in front of it (hey; we’ve all been there, am I right??).  In other “trip” he imagines the creature, which has a very distinctive Lovecraftian influence about it, growing large and looking more vagina-ie.  And let me tell ya folks, considering it only has a 28 minute run time, COME has the highest vagina-per-minute ratio I’ve ever seen.  Even more than most porno’s!!  Usually there’s a lot of come in vagina, but here there’s a whole lotta vagina in COME (sorry; that was too easy to pass up).  Kidding aside, I really loved the trippy, nightmarish atmosphere directors Kirk Chastain and Arthur Cullipher created (Chastain also wrote the short).  There’s even hints of a vagina-monster cult (again, very Lovecraftian) that is using Dr. Conduit in order to bring their god back to life.  This material could have easily gotten away from less experienced or talented directors, but Chastain and Cullipher never get lost in the trippy atmosphere and do a great job keeping the film focused and really fucked up!!

The cast does a really good job here.  Marv Blauvelt is alone on screen for most of the time, and he pulls off the lead role beautifully.  He does a great job with his role that happens to have very little dialogue and a lot of body language that convey’s what Blauvelt is thinking and doing.  I haven’t seen Blauvelt in a bad role yet, but this is the first short where he has a starring role and he proves he can effortlessly carry an entire film as the lead.

I don’t wanna give away too much more of COME’s story, but if you like Cronenberg, Lovecraft, David Lynch’s style of filmmaking, the threat of the Vagina Dentata, and watching a film whereby you feel as though you’re tripping your balls off, then you’re gonna love COME.  This is one of those shorts that leaves you wanting more.  Even though the ending is completely satisfying you’ll want more explanation about the creature and more details on Dr. Conduit himself.  I’d love to see this one turned into a feature.  But for now check out COME … you’ll never look at vagina the same way again!!

My Summary:

Directors:  Kirk Chastain & Arthur Cullipher (Chastain also wrote the story)

Plot:  4 out of 5 stars

Gore:  4 out of 10 skulls

VAGINA Mayhem:  5 out of 5 pubic hairs (seriously; there’s a lot of vagina in this one)

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

I love how everything is so cyclic.  The music, for example, that my dad listened too when I was younger and “hated” is once again popular.  Tube tops and hot pants are also experiencing a small revival.  Even various writers get a resurgence.  Take one of the original minds of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe.  Since I first read him in high school I was drawn to his dark, tortured visions and writings.  I ate up all the various film versions of his various works, and now it seems there’s a huge Poe resurgence happening.  There’s a play about Poe, a movie coming out later this year (starring John Cusack), and a few of his short stories have been re-made by up and coming filmmakers.  “The Tell-Tale Heart” seems to be a popular one.  Bart Mastronardi filmed a version of this story in 2011 that’s gonna be included in the anthology, TALES OF POE (my review here), and now Christopher Di Nunzio throws his hat into the Poe ring with HER HEART STILL BEATS (also based on “The Tell-Tale Heart”).

I was first introduced to Di Nunzio in early 2011 with his full-length film, LIVESTOCK (my review here).  LIVESTOCK had a great story but was slightly hindered by an at-times slow pace and an overly ambitious plot.  But despite it’s few shortcomings, I saw a huge talent behind the camera and was looking forward to eventually seeing Di Nunzio’s next project.  So when my screener for HER HEART STILL BEATS arrived in the mail I was stoked.  The short is only 25 minutes long but Di Nunzio manages to “say” a lot in that little amount of time.  The story pretty much faithfully follows Poe’s short story and Di Nunzio just updates the details to fit into contemporary times.  Ed (Fiore Leo; the star in LIVESTOCK) is a guy who seems to be slowly going off his nut.  Or is he?  One morning his wife Sarah (Leighsa Burgin) wakes up feeling ill and has something in her eye.  This seems to send Ed over the edge and he starts obsessing over her eye.  There’s little hints that Ed is under a lot of stress at work, but is this enough to account for his increasingly crazy behavior?

Anyone familiar with the source material will know that the wife doesn’t make out well in the story (it’s actually an old man in the story).  After the deed is done and he buries her in the woods, two detectives come by the house.  A neighbor called in the night before saying she heard a woman screaming.  The detectives Bobby (John Martellucci) and John (Michael Capozzi) look more like Mafioso than detectives, but they do a quick search of the house, ask Ed where he wife is, and are satisfied with his answers.  But that damn heart keeps beating in his head!!

Di Nunzio does a great job establishing a paranoid atmosphere here.  At first we’re not sure if Ed is indeed going crazy or if his wife is a little evil.  Di Nunzio and cinematographer James Sullivan use different colors and  tones to help establish the atmosphere and to chronicle Ed’s downward mental state.  These two also create some really interesting shots and frame some scenes in a unique manner.  The cast also does a solid job.  Fiore Leo (Ed) does a nice job playing a man who’s essentially losing it.  There’s a time or two when Leo does overact a bit, but nothing that ruins the scene or pulls the viewer out of the film.  The gore is minimum here, but that’s not what Di Nunzio was going for.  This isn’t meant to be a “gore flick” but a character-driven, moody piece, and in this respect it’s hugely successful.

I love it when my instincts are correct.  I knew that even with the few shortcomings of Di Nunzio’s LIVESTOCK that he was a talented filmmaker.  HER HEART STILL BEATS proves it.  HER HEART STILL BEATS is still on the festival circuit, but once it gets picked up for distribution, I’ll let you all know.  Long live Poe and all his interpreters!!

My Summary:

Director:  Christopher Di Nunzio (& writer)

Plot:  4 out of 5 stars

Gore:  1 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

Frequent readers of anythinghorror.com know that I love horror shorts.  Correction … I love well-made horror shorts.  By ‘well-made’ I mean more than just a tight story and good acting.  A well-made horror short has very little time to establish a tone and atmosphere and let’s fact it, all films, whether full length or short, needs to establish the right kind of atmosphere in order to suck in the viewer.  Writer-director Richard Powell did it once before in his 2010 short film, WORM (my review here), but can Powell make lightening strike twice?

In FAMILIAR, which has a run time of 24 minutes, we see the daily routine of John Dodd.  Let me stop right here and point something out.  In Powell’s 2010 short, WORM, the main character was Geoffrey Dodd (both characters played by Robert Nolan).  Coincidence?  To find out I emailed executive producer Zach Green this question and he assured me that these are two separate shorts but that the main characters in both are brothers.  Geoffrey and John seem to suffer from the same malaise:  A negative, violent inner voice that seems to guide their very actions.  Maybe this is a subtle way of Powell examining how mental illness runs in families, but there could be something else more sinister going on here.  Whereas in WORM we follow Geoffrey in his daily routine at work, FAMILIAR follows John in his daily home life.  We see his interactions with his wife Charlotte (Astrida Auza) and teenage daughter Jordan (Cathryn Hostick).  He’s estranged from both and always keeps them at arms length, almost like he doesn’t want them to ‘know’ the real him.

Similar to his brother, Geoffrey, John’s outside appearance is meek and non-confrontational while his ‘inner’ life is ruled by violence, dominance, and an underlying evil that’ll chill you to the core.  At first it seems John’s just going through a really bad mid-life crisis whereby he’s realizing his life hasn’t gone in the direction he wanted.  He’s counting down the months until his daughter goes away to college so he himself can be ‘free’ of his domestic hell.  Just when we get the feeling he’s happy (well as happy as he can be, anyway) about waiting to escape his domestic, suburban hell, his wife tells him she’s pregnant again.  Well this just doesn’t work for him and he blames his wife for trying to further trap him and take away his freedom.  John’s next course of actions is truly monstrous and will have you sitting there with your mouth hanging open.

But then something clicks inside of John.  Is it his conscience?  His morality?  Whatever it is, his actions start to betray his thoughts.  We start to realize that maybe John isn’t the monster we thought.  Maybe there’s something more sinister at work here.  To say anything more would be to ruin it for you.  But even in it’s short 24 minute runtime, FAMILIAR takes a gory twist near the end that you won’t see coming.

The writing here is solid.  There’s no padding, no superfluous dialogue or characters.  The three members of the Dodd family are the only cast members and they all do a tremendous job.  But the success of FAMILIAR rests squarely on the shoulders of actor Robert Nolan.  He puts in another amazing performance.  He has very little verbal lines; most of his talking is done through his inner thoughts (voice over).  But we can see the dichotomy in his mental and physical lives perfectly through his body language and facial expressions.  Nolan is a fantastic actor and I can’t imagine anyone else in this role.  But supporting Nolan is some terrific editing (by Tom Mountain and Navin Ramaswaran) and some very well set-up shots (by Michael Jan Davidson).  And orchestrating it all, of course, is Richard Powell.  Powell has such command over the material that he knows exactly where he wants the story to go and how he’s gonna get there.

Short films, when done right, are such a hugh treat.  When all the elements that go into making a film so successful all come together perfectly you get a short film like FAMILIAR.  No word yet on distribution, but I’ll keep you all updated.  This one is definitely worth your time!!  For now you can follow them on their Facebook page, their website, and their blog.

My Summary:

Director:  Richard Powell (& writer)

Plot:  5 out of 5 stars

Gore:  5 out of 10 skulls (all in the last 5 minutes)

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer

If there’s one thing I am, it’s my honesty with you all.  So I’ll be honest about THE WOMAN IN BLACK; going into this film I was pretty skeptical.  It had three strikes against it right off the bat:  It’s a period piece (I’m not crazy about these and am very selective about which ones I’ll see); its a ghost story (not crazy about them); and it stars Daniel Radcliffe.  Don’t get me wrong; I think he’s fine actor (more on this below).  But let’s face it, it’s gonna take a lot for him to overcome his Harry Potter past.  I look at him and see Harry Potter and I haven’t even seen a HARRY POTTER film.  It’s not just him; I look at Sean Connery and still see James Bond.  Every role Connery’s been in since his last appearance as Bond in NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (1983) have all been variations on his James Bond role!!  But I digress.  Besides expecting to see Radcliffe whip out his wizard’s wand at a moment’s notice (keep it clean, people), THE WOMAN IN BLACK carves out it’s own identity in a saturated sub-genre (ghosts/haunted houses) and Radcliffe does an overall good job.

In THE WOMAN IN BLACK, Radcliffe plays a rather sullen character, Arthur Kipps, who lost his wife during childbirth.  His son is now around six and Radcliffe is still depressed and despondent over losing her.  His job as a lawyer is also suffering, so his boss gives him a very tedious task to prove his loyalty to the law firm.  He must travel out to a remote part of the U.K and settle the Drablow estate which apparently involves going through a lot of paperwork … A LOT.  Kipps befriends a local, Mr. Bentley (Roger Allam) who acts as kind of a narrator to the area’s past and as a chauffeur (he’s the richest man in the area and owns the only car).  The more time Kipps spends at the Drablow estate the more haunting and eerie things become.  Then in a typical plot maneuver, Kipps spends the night in the estate and suddenly the ghost shit hits the fan.

Kipps comes to realize that the little village is hiding a dark past that is affecting their present.  A mysterious ghost, the titular woman in black, haunts the area, and every time she’s seen by anyone, a child dies a horrible death.  Fantastic; Kipps is bringing out his nanny (Jessica Raine) and son (Misha Handley) to the countryside to send the weekend with him.  Good one Kipps!!

This is a PG-13 film, so expect the same level of scares you enjoyed in INSIDIOUS.  Lots of shit jumping out at you, no blood, and some truly creepy and scary moments.  This is, remember, a period piece (late 1800’s; early 1900’s I’m guessing), and as written above, I’m usually not into period pieces, but using this era in THE WOMAN IN BLACK really works.  It’s not a gimmicky thing, but plays a few crucial roles.  For one; It sets a great atmosphere.  No technology, cell phones, or even electricity here!!  The old spooky estate is lit by candles.  This creates a really claustrophobic atmosphere as well because out in the countryside, Kipps is cut off from the rest of the world.  There’s no updating his Facebook status to “Scared Shitless” for Kipps!!

The other role this era plays is kind of giving the project a bit of innocence.  Part of Kipps wants to explore the supernatural and try and reconnect with his dead wife, but the rational side of him resists giving into such “superstitious nonsense” (as another character calls it).  Nowadays if one suspects their house is haunted they can have a “paranormal team” on their doorstep within minutes and end up on some shitty Ghost Hunter-like show.  But by using the late to early 1800-1900’s, Radcliffe’s Kipps has to make this journey by himself.  The night he spends in the Drablow estate is just plain old creepy.  Director James Watkins (who wrote THE DESCENT 2 and wrote-directed the very ‘blah’ EDEN LAKE) gets some truly creepy and scary moments on film.  He pulls no punches.  There’s creepy looking dolls and toys, creepy dead kids, and a female ghost that would even scare the shit out of the ghosts from THE RING and THE GRUDGE.

This brings us to Radcliffe himself.  He has a solid supporting cast that does a tremendous job.  The script tries to help Radcliffe seem more “grown up” by having him sporting a beard and drinking a lot of brandy.  But his main test is that there are long stretches where Radcliffe is alone on screen.  Is he up to this?  The above-mentioned night where he’s alone in the estate is a good 10-15 minute stretch of just Radcliffe alone on screen.  He does a good job but sometimes looks a little stiff and uncomfortable.  It could be the period piece cloths he’s wearing, or it could be the fact that he’s not playing the strong, semi-powerful Harry Potter role he’s been playing for the last 80 or some years.  Kipps is a mentally fragile character who has managed to keep it together for the sake of his son, but the cracks are plainly visible.  It’s a pretty deep character and unfortunately Radcliffe comes off a little one-dimensional at times.  I’m not saying he does a bad job; only that at times his performance was flat.

At the end of the day, the plot was nothing new.  It’s the standard ghost-who-was-wronged-in-life-back-for-revenge plot.  What makes this one stand out a bit is that the victims are all kids, and they die in some pretty gruesome ways.  Early in the film we get a lot of silly jump scares (loud pipes spouting out sludgy water, loud birds flying through open windows), but by the middle of the story, THE WOMAN IN BLACK finds its own groove and really delivers some solid, creepy scares … albeit PG-13-level scares.  Unfortunately the ending is a little too sugary and candy-ass for my tastes (don’t worry, no spoilers here), but overall I enjoyed THE WOMAN IN BLACK.

Considering this is Radcliffe’s first starring role after the HARRY POTTER films, he does a good job.  He stumbles a few times and comes across a little flat and one-dimensional, but the filmmakers were smart to surround him with an excellent supporting cast.  Great atmosphere, solid scares, and a good story make for a pretty fun time in the theaters.  Best yet; it’s NOT in 3D!!  I can’t tell you the last time I spent under $10 for a ticket.  Check this one out and I think it’s worth the trip to the theater; I think the big screen helps with the scares.

My Summary:

Director:  James Watkins

Plot:  3.5 out of 5 stars

Gore:  0 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem:  0 out of 5 brains

Reviewed by Scott Shoyer