Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

04 September 2008

Brutal Massacre, dir. Stevan Mena (2007)

NIKKI says:
Almost.

It tried very hard, but it didn't quite pull off the Spinal Tap-style mocking of the horror film director giving his career one final push. The movie is a mockumentary about Harry Penderecki, who has made a string of shoddy horror films, one of which was a huge success. He hasn't had a success for a while and is back to the drawing board making Brutal Massacre, in the hopes he will be re-crowned a horror king.

But, as we all know, low-budget filmmaking comes with a range of headaches and issues. And those are made worse when the cast and crew are downright amateurs. Even the director, in this case, doesn't seem to know what he's doing. This is where the film falls down. There are so many cliches and obvious jokes that we've seen before in these sorts of films. And the comedy is far too broad with inane gags that make the characters look stupid and therfore hard to root for or really care about. And when you look at Spinal Tap, which is the touchstone for these sorts of enterprises, you absolutely adore each and every member of the band for their idiosyncracies and stupidities because of an earnestness built around them. They are developed so well, whereas the characters here are really just playing off stereotype -- naive director, dumb blonde cast members, bored casting agents, bossy ADs, bitchy producers, etc.

A few highlights, though, include every single line Brian O'Halloran speaks because I love him. And the only true Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen, as a crazy former property owner saying "motherfucker" a lot. Hilarious.

Otherwise, the film just did not know where its humour was, and became a jumbled mess of potentially interesting ideas.

2/5