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Posted by
zacharythax December 7, 2007 -
563 views
Since the 80's there's been a huge amount of low-budget horror films made by true fans of the genre that just didn't work. Sure, you can make a movie with tons of gore, nudity, great FX and all that, but there has to be something else there to make it all work--to make the whole thing more than the sum of its parts. Rob Zombie's films, for example seem to be coming from someone who was steeped since birth in hard-core Fangoria culture and had little exposure to anything else. The directors who made the best horror films started as outsiders to the genre.
George Romero made industrial films and commercials. Dario Argento is a true highbrow who thought he was making murder mysteries. Lucio Fulci made psychedelic giallo films before his maggot-encrusted gutfests. Even Herschell Gordon Lewis, who appears as a very nice hardware store owner in this film, started with nudies and was just trying to make money. I heard after he retured from filmmaking he got into the commemerative plate business. I always wanted a set of Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs collector's edition china.
I get into this because I saw an ad for this movie on the back of a very badly written horror movie mag. I wanted to hate this and had incredibly low expectations. Plus it has Gunnar Hansen in it, who always gives very awkward performances (sorry, but I call 'em like I see 'em)
Sally is a hot glasses-wearing librarian who kills people who make too much noise in the library and have overdue books. She lives with her rockabilly drag-queen brother in a house whose interior decor owes a huge debt to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They even re-create the scenes.
There's a lot of use of old scratchy film look effects and black and white for flashbacks. The torture scenes are quite silly, but the interesting locations (Maryland) and sexy and likeable villaness (who ends up on top) actually brought this out of the gutter.
