ZOMBIE KILLERS: ELEPHANT’S GRAVEYARD (2014)

ZOMBIE KILLERS: ELEPHANT’S GRAVEYARD (2014)

Label: Anchor Bay Entertainment 

Release Date: February 3, 2015
Duration: 104 minutes
Rating: Not Rated
Video:: Widescreen (2.40:1) 1080p
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 with Optional English SDH, Spanish Subtitles
Director: B. Harrison Smith

Cats: Billy Zane, Dee Wallace, Mischa Barton, Felissa Rose, Brian Anthony Wilson

We have the small rural community of Elwood, a walled-in community serving as a haven for uninfected humans at a time when most of the world is overrun by hordes of black-goo spewing infected zombies. The community are lead by a retired Army surgeon named Doc (Brian Anthony Wilson) and a man named Seiler (Zane), who leads a group of young men and women known as "the zombie killers" who provide security for the community and patrol the surrounding areas for food and supplies.

The community is also home to a religious zealot named Lia (Felissa Rose) who as with most of her ilk love to point out the moral shortcomings of others, it just wouldn't be the apocalypse without one. Rose does a damn decent job portraying the amped-up bible thumper who loves to rile up the good people of Elwood. 

The film offers up an unusual amount of character based interactions for a zombie film, but there's some good zombie make-up effects throughout, the practical stuff looks mighty good, but the digital effects are Syfy worthy, meaning not so grand. Hordes of zombies off in the distance are one thing, but a stampede of infected deer and leaping killer fish are quite another. Smith's script is more ambitious than his modest budget will effectively allow, and sometimes you just have to cut back when a few decent ideas stretch your budget and abilities to the point of laughability, which is what happened. 

Not enough to completely ruin the movie but enough to make me start picking apart other smaller things that maybe I wouldn't have if the poor effects didn't draw so much attention to themselves. One of those things being how much paintball is front and center in this film right from the beginning till the very end. It begins with some truly awful voice over narration from Doc at the top of the film with an overly long montage of paintballers right through to the very end. Not sure is the San Diego Dynasty  were financing the film or not but it would not surprise me in the least, I get it, you love paintball, you want to show off your awesome paintball arena and cool gear, but don't shove it down my throat for the entire film, this is paintball propaganda with a smattering of zombies and a lot of melodrama. . 

Many will recognize Felissa Rose from the slasher classic SLEEPAWAY CAMP as the religious nut of the bunch and she does a decent job, I have a lot of love to Mrs. Rose but she's not fantastic but I love her just the same. Then we have Billy Zane who or a brief moment had an a-list career for all of five minutes before settling into a career in d-grade movies that are forgettable. He's got a bit of a Western tinge to his performance that I liked, but there no heart in his autopilot performance. Horror veteran Dee Wallace appears for about a minute in a role that adds some heart to the film, but it's very brief appearance and in just one of several facets of the film that should have been excised from the movie, including a strange fracking-origin of the plague that was unnecessarily convoluted and not fully realized, they're going for an environmental message but it's muddied and unnecessary. . 

There's a more than average character moment quotient throughout the film, a bit too much for my simple tastes honestly.  With all the melodrama and character building I was seriously starting to yearn for some damn zombie carnage, which we do get in very small doses but never to the point where I was satisfied. . 

I give the filmmakers a lot of credit for their technical ability, you can see there's some skill behind the camera with numerous panoramic shots highlighting the scenic beauty of the surrounding area and creative use of what I assume are drones for aerial cinematography that mimic more expensive crane shots they are getting the most bang for their buck here, it never fails to amaze me what can be done with high-end consumer grade digital cameras these days. 

Not an awful film, I enjoyed the character-based storytelling to a degree but I was hoping for a more satisfying finale given that the carnage was few and far between, that combined with the poor digital effects did dampen my overall enjoyment of the film. This might be a passable weeknight rental but otherwise this has zero rewatch factor. A competent zombie film, just not my cup of tea.  

THE PERFECT HOUSE (2012)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (2012) 

Label: Wild Eye Rel;easing 

Duration: 84 Minutes
Rating: Unrated 

Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo
Video: Widescreen
Director: Kris Hulbert, Randy Kent
Cast: Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, John Philbin, Monique Parent, Dustin Stevens, Andrea Vahl

Having just poured through the special features on the new  SLEEPAWAY CAMP Blu-ray I was drawn to this indie horror anthology by the inclusion of Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten who both starred in that camp horror classic and feature prominently in the interviews on the disc. 

What we have here are three short anthology stories with a wrap-around, a very traditional set-up for the format. The wrap-around segment REAL ESTATE features a young couple looking for a new home - they arrive at what appears to be the titular Perfect House and are greeted by a sultry real estate agent (adult film star Monique Parent) in a short skirt who shamelessly flirts with the husband making suggestive comments while laying on a bed - it's very strange. I kept thinking what would I do if I were n that situation - it would be so uncomfortable. The couple love the home but the real estate agent says that the basement is usually a deal breaker and leads the couple to the basement where she points out a few of the houses more peculiar features which leads us on a journey into the stories past and three tales of terror unfold. 

First up is THE STORM - a twisted tale of a family taking shelter in the basement during a powerful storm. The power is out and the basement is lit my a candle where a mother, father, brother and sister sit around a candle waiting out the storm which is howling away in the background. We start to see that this is not a happy group of kin and there are dark family secrets tearing this family apart - additionally there's something in the basement hacking them up one by one. This is a good start to the film that sets a tone in a settings that is effective with some brutal violence, it's nicely done but felt a bit too short - even for an anthology entry. 

Onto CHIC-KEN we have Jonathan Tiersten as John Doesy who abducts, tortures and kills young men and woman from his quiet neighborhood. Knocking them unconscious he keeps them in cages in his basement workshop where he dispatches them like clockwork except for one young woman (Holly Greene) whom has been kept captive for five years to bare witness to his depraved deeds and for the occasional rape release. Tiersten is tolerable as the sadist but the delivery of his monologues are so monotonous - what saved this for me was Greene as the captive who both antagonizes her captor and pleads for the release of death. Some decent low-rent gore including an eyelid peeling with this one but at the end of the day this women-in-cages slice of exploitation is pretty mediocre. 

The meat of the production is DINNER GUEST starring Felissa Rose (SLEEPAWAY CAMP) and Jonathan Philbin (THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD). A family of five are summoned to a neighbors house for a dinner when things turn ugly as the discussion turns to the return of his prized weed whacker which he loaned the father some time ago. Dinner quickly turns into each of the family members tied down and tortured by the man who bares a passing resemblance to Gunnar Hansen at times. Pretty much just a series of torture set pieces as he puts each f the family members through a series of life and death games. Felissa Rose shows some decent acting chops as the screaming/grieving mothers who must watch as her family is decimated before her eyes but can do little to stop the madness unfolding. A lot of violence and screaming but very little tension - with so little build-up or character development I find it hard to care about these characters. 

At the end the wrap-around concludes and there's a brief prologue that would indicate a dark force inhabiting the home that attracts a certain type of murderess home buyer which does little to sweeten by opinion of the film. 

There are a lot of dark subject matter explored but directors Kris Hulbert and Randy Kent don't handle it a bit too bluntly.  It just feels ham-fisted and thrown on screen without a lot of thought going into it and if the execution were just a bit more considered and measured each of these segments would have a deeper impact on me, but it doesn't and at the end of the day I was not impressed. 

It would be hard to properly judge the video quality as the screener sent for review as it was a non-anamorphic DVD-R with choppy video - my viewing felt like I watching a streaming video with a poor internet connection, it was a chore to sit through. No extras on the screeners but retail versions have a commentaries, interview, behind-the-scenes stuff and more.  

As a low budget production this is not awful but the material needed to be fleshed out more - the script needed another pass to maybe get a bit more meat out of it. If I were to evaluate the film based purely on the onscreen violence this would get decent marks but it only scratched the surface of what this could have been with a more thoughtful approach.