A low budget, badly acted, snoozefest!
I guess the moral of this story is, if you have never heard of a horror movie before, but somehow find it with the accolade that it is a "true horror movie classic"...read some reviews first before diving in. I wish I could get that last 1hr 22mins of my life back. I think I might have lost some brain cells in the process as well. This is bottom of the barrel folks...I honestly have no idea how it's gotten some of the praise it has gotten. But lets continue on with the review.
The movie starts off with a psychiatrist Dr. Cashin showing a psychotic person a movie that he made, in order to make some sort of "breakthrough". His buddy doesn't think it's a great idea, but man the killer is enjoying it so much he just starts taking bite size chunks out of his arm...and of course he is left all alone in the room with no supervision. This is a bang-up jail/insane asylum...I have no idea...there are bars there and apparently some crazy people running around. So, somehow he gets sucked into the film and there is a "bloody massacre" at the institution.
Flash forward 5 years to a B-movie theater that is going to show this very same movie. We are introduced to the theater workers. It doesn't really matter what they do here, they are just theater workers. Bridget, Rachel and Kenny are all working on a very slow night at the movies. We get the standard goofing off teenagers that are just "waiting for body bags" cast here. So Bridget's squeeze Mario shows up and his friend and his girl show up and they all decide to go watch the movie together. Oh, and Bridget has a brother Timmy that doesn't stay at home and just wanders around unsupervised...and there is a little piece of history that suggest they were both abused by their dad after their mom died. I mean that's about it for character development here folks..nothing else to see but the freak show. Oh yeah, we have a redneck biker and his chick show up for this movie as well, so he can posture and threaten people, and of course try to be heroic after wanting to stab one of the innocents to death with his knife...ugh!
So the central element this film is that of life imitating art, as through the magic of movies, this killer can show current stalking/murdering in his film that was made back in the 60's. How this is done, we have no idea, because no effort is made to even clue us in to what he did originally. But he does have that hand drill accessory that might have come with a Fisher Price serial killer playset. Anyway, it's pretty obvious that the black and white film the killer made is a homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The bad thing is that I think some of the actors in the B black and white footage movie are actually better than the main cast at points. And of course the killer is supernatural and can appear and re-appear at will...and do other stuff like make it appear that there is no one in the theater banging at the door to get out, while the cop shines his flashlight in and tells dispatch, "There is no one in there, the place must be closed?" And I just love the fact that after one of the teens gets *spoiler* both toes broken, that she can run like nothing is wrong.
Look, this movie is not scary. It does have it's moments of gore, but that's more towards the end and the bulk of the movie is very tame. This take of the film was supposed to have additional footage and blah blah blah. What, was the original movie rated PG? Oh wait, there is that gratuitous breast shot, but that might have been cut from the original...who cares? The characters are as cliche as they come in this genre. And also the killer's weapon to me was just ridiculous...and handheld drill apparatus that he can gut people with and slash people with and impale people with if he throws it. Oh yeah, but he's supernatural. so I guess that excuses all of that. I really just wanted this to be over. Towards the end, it kind of did something I did not expect, and for that i'm not going to trash it as much as I could have.
3 out of 10...and i'm being generous.
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