Despite seeing my share, I've never been much of a fan of the backwoods inbred cannibal maniac subgenre. This goes so far that I don't even fully understand the fervor surrounding Craven's original The Hills Have Eyes. Wrong Turn seemed like the unofficial sequel before Aja/Levasseur made the Hills remake their introduction to American theaters. This sounds nuts to admit, but I find the majority just a bit too senselessly brutal and monotonous portraying the deformed as murderous eaters of the innocent amongst an endless sea of trees or sand. It's just hard for them to not all bleed together.
Dead End is pretty much no different, but there's some amusement to be had. After a simple set-up and some boring relationship claptrap from characters that will inevitably end up cleaved; the action picks up as the standard pissed off malformed products of incestuous relations begin stalking their prey with an assortment of primitive weapons. The action sequences are edited in such a way as to frantically convey the shit-yer-pants terror victims of the axe-welding bad teeth contingent experience. The few skits requiring comedic timing also hit the right tone and act to soften the piles of bloody predominantly girl ass stacking up behind the shack.
Henry Rollins plays a super badass retired military man that presumably pisses WD-40 and shits tank grease that must resort to his training to face down the raiders of the cleft palate. One annoying aspect about the musician/writer/orator/everyman's filmography is the dearth of roles that play upon his public persona. So it's exciting to see a meaty role that casts the aging hot animal machine thoroughly in type with tats intact.
So yea, it's enjoyable as a DTV backwoods inbred cannibal maniac flick and worth the cheapo prices it pops up for. One techy thing to note about the DVD's transfer. The anamorphic picture appears to be progressively flagged, but still exhibits subtle combing like the digital encoding got screwy somewhere in the chain. So it might behoove those with Blu-ray capability to check out the BD and skip the standard def disc.
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4 comments:
Enjoyable?!! This is one of my favorite movies! I think it is hilarious and perfectly absurd. I watch it often.
JM
I enjoyed this one immensely as well. There's not much I don't like about it. The gore is nice (and I'm not a super gorehound or anything) but I love the effect of the girl getting chopped in half in the beginning.
And I also made my BFF that hates horror movies watch this one and she didn't sleep for literally three days. The incest stuff really got to her. So that was enjoyable as well.
I absolutely love this movie. I understand your preferences though. Hillbilly horror can be a bit silly, but it usually takes itself pretty seriously and this one doesn't at all. That's the best thing about it. And it was nice to see Henry Rollins in this kind of role, like you said. He was the best part.
I *loved* this movie - way more so than the first, which I didn't like too much at all.
And Jenn - I love the cut-in-half scene too.
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