Another easy going yet gory little title on the Sub Rosa 'Extreme' label, immediately opens with gut wrenching imagery of innards being pulled from some poor victims stomach all in loving close-up, leaving you with no illusion that this is anything other than low budget hack and slashery. The film takes place in Christmas town and focuses on a group of school friends who reunite in order to halt the murderous reign of Oneshoe McGroo, a crazed friend who is out to seek revenge for years of torment he had to endure as a child. Set within the rural location of a forest, each friend is singled out for a little back-woods payback, yeeehhhaaa.
The film has it's back against the wall right from the off with a ridiculously rambled and labored dialogue segment that has Eric Stanze drivel on for about 6 minutes whilst setting up the back story to Oneshe McGroo's character. Now this isn't a complicated matter as you might imagine and should have simply been worked in around a more visually stimulating opening to the film. The one redeeming factor to this unforgivably clumsy commencement is that Eric's character gets his nuts ripped off straight after his little speech so I guess what goes around comes around.
You could be forgiven for thinking that you are having a bit of an acid trip during the latter stages of the film with one outstanding example of why I enjoy watching this type of movie so much. Take one girl and one guy all alone doing what low budget horror films have them do best, having sex. But this isn't any ordinary sex, this is melon headed sex! "What the hell did he just say" you have probably just thought to your self, well you did read it right, the guy places a giant melon on his head whilst doing the nasty with his lady friend and manages to create the finest image of the entire production.
Yet more strange and inexplicable things occur including the reaction of the group to being in a hostile environment with a killer on the loose. You would have thought that an air of tension would descend on the paranoid group but instead they all sit down, get drunk and play strip Trivial Pursuit.
The overall pacing of the film is just too slow and even at 70 minutes you just can't help that feeling of pointless padding, even if it is entertaining to a degree. This film does however win an award for the 'best gratuitous breast shot whilst in the shower', not even attempting to cover the pervy shot with a plot element and even go as far as to include a radio voice over that refers to baking a cake but just happens to coincide 'kneading the dough' with 'feeling my boobs', you get the picture.
The film does have some good qualities including the makeup effects which, although being a little sparse, are fairly graphic and which include a fabulous 'screwdriver in the skull' shot that looks all too real and is given a nice lingering look just to ensure your stomach is nice and empty. This film is good fun even if the plot, characters and general production are poor, just detach your self from the real world and you might just make it through the hour.
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