This horrendous little movie demonstrated an absolutely sorrowful attempt at moviemaking, which surprised me when you consider some of the genre talent involved in the production.
When a lard ass family and their ‘pale and thin’ daughter suffer a blow out during their summer vacation, the dad who is portrayed as a stereotypical outdoorsman, has to go for help as he is obviously unsure of how to change a tyre despite probably going to desolate places for such activities as fishing, hunting and hill walking on a regular basis.
‘Dad’ soon meets a diner owner, who overacts so badly that there isn’t a shred of creepy intrigue about her person, and you would run screaming for the hills the moment you clamped eyes on her. Dimwitted dad finds her to be very nice so takes his family to her quaint little cottage which I’m pretty sure featured in the movie ‘Wrong Turn’.
The ‘pale and thin’ daughter picks up on this long before her family decides to stay for dinner with a metal looking person with a face stuck to his head, a guy with an enormous head covered by a burlap sack and Warwick Davis boasting awful make-up. Did they just throw talc in his face?
The guests dinner of raw flesh is soon interrupted by ‘The Surgeon General’ who is hyped up to hell on the back cover and rightly so, as he is the only redeeming feature present (well almost).
Like countless other (yet better) redneck films, the sister is spared her life so that she can be with Brain (huge head guy) and become one of the family.
Now the film was atrocious by this point but got a whole lot worse!
The ‘pale and thin’ girl (did she have a name? L….iz perhaps? It was Tina…although I had to check the official site to find that out) manages to claw her way out of a room via an old trap door which leads to some basement type tunnels under the house/diner and get this, proceeds to call out ‘Hello?’ ‘Is anyone there?’ You have got to be kidding me!! Is she the dumbest bitch in horror history or what? You could possibly forgive this in an 80’s backwoods horror if the villain had yet to be seen, and potential victim number one thought her friends were hiding in the trees, but not when you’re in a psycho family’s basement!!
She manages to get out and thinks she has found help in the form of a bunch of O.A.P. bikers, but she only manages to succeed in getting one of them killed, before going for a bike ride with her hubby-to-be who demonstrates that he’s a psycho with a bit of a heart, before we are subjected to a visual daydream which sees him running naked through Times Square.
And so the film continues on its dirge, showing little promise as a gang of beer swilling truckers are set upon and the O.A.P. bikers attempt to avenge the death of their buddy.
The film looks cheap, has absolutely nothing nice to look at and has possibly the worst sound quality ever committed to film.
The majority of the make-up effects are practical, Warwick Davis is the only cast member who really goes for it, and the Surgeon General looks good most of the time. These are the only good points about a very bad film. I’ll admit that there were even moments when I had to hit fast-forward as things were taking far too long to get going.
OVERALL SUMMARY
A very badly conceived and executed film. I have no idea what possessed a talented make-up effects technician to make such an utterly bland film. I would love to know where it all went wrong.
