Schmollywood Babylon

Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson, 1981)

What would slasher cinema be without disco scenes? The grand guignol och unhappy love, horny glances, cheesy music and a potboiler of melodrama. It doesn't even have to be a proper disco. It's okay with a mediocre party at a camp nearby a lake, where the teens sooner or later sneeks up on the upper floor and fucks their brains out. Everything about slashers is generic and stereotypical, clichés overload. But you know, I don't expect more. Just like with Godzilla movies. I want to see the big G and his pals crush miniature buildings. That's the thing. The deal with it all. 

Happy Birthday to Me must have been a prestige project when it came in 1981. Very competent J. Lee Thompson behind the wheels and obviously a bigger budget than normal. It feels like Brian De Palma sold his soul to make a slasher, but with the traditional craftmanship from an old Hollywood veteran. The more I think about the movie it's getting odder and odder. Why didn't they just make another cheapie, why did they spend all that money on some advanced special effects (most of them trimmed away by the distributor - probably because the hypocrites at the MPAA demanded it), a fine bunch of young actors and scenes that's obviously was shot with a lot of time behind them.

They could have made it so much easier. 

We will probably never get the answer. When I first saw it back in the days I didn't like it. It's not as gory (but still pretty violent) as some of its contemporaries, and it's still a bit overlong. But it have something. It have "it". Seriously. No, it won't win any fancy prices, but the look of it is so good and the story works - even if it's the cheesiest bodycount-storyline line from the eightes - only beaten by Lambert Bava's You'll Die at Midnight some years later. Both have the same Scooby Doo-esque atmosphere, just more violent. 

I can't even write down the story properly. It's a bit too complex for a slasher movie, and at the same time hardly original at all. The most important thing is that you care - or at least believe - in the characters. It doesn't come up in the same quality as My Bloody Valentine - it's just pretty close. The best thing with it is the cynical manipulation the main characters use against each other, which makes most of them assholes. It's like the filmmakers really wanted to show a bunch of kids that lost touch with reality. The jokes some of them do to each other is absurd. Why would anyone like to do that? Why would that guy behave like that? 

We will never get the answer, of course. It's just a stupid slasher movie. It's just very interesting. I mean, why not make them assholes instead of empty shells - like in some other movies. I hate when they're just piles of flesh waiting to get a knife stuck in them. Then I prefer idiots. 

In all honest, it's quite hard writing something smart about Happy Birthday to Me. It's a nasty little film, semi-bloody (but suffers from some brutal cuts) and with a nice cast. It's not the classic some people wants it to be, but I would say it's a fine slasher - and it should be judged within the genre, and there it's one of the better ones. 

What do you think about it? Let me know!

Scalps (Fred Olen Ray, 1983)

I'll be the first to admit I never been a fan of Fred Olen Ray. But I also admit that he did some decent, trashy, exploitation movies in the beginning of his career - and those are - as we say in Sweden: "Inte fy skam". Nowadays he, IMHO, just makes super-mainstream shit with super low budgets. And when there's not edge to the scripts they just becomes mini-Transformers 3 and a big damn yawn. Anyway, enough with the whining. Scalps is one of my favorites from his wast filmography, which doesn't say much. It's one of those movies that belongs in the "mystråkig" genre, they're so boring they become good. 

There's a secret why Scalps is worth watching, but I'll get to that in a moment. This is the tragic story about a bunch of archology students (I think, but they seem pretty bored with what they're doing) going out to dig in the desert - after native American artifacts. This is of course forbidden, but their goofy teacher encourages them to do this. So they take the car and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive a little bit more for like 30-40 minutes, looking at the scenery, smiling, looking at the scenery again and smiles some more. Finally they're out in the desert, starts to dig and suddenly a demon wakes up and possesses one of the students  - who of course starts to kill them all in gory ways! The end!

First the good things: it's a very cozy horror film. Nothing happens, people talk - but there's something magical with movies set in the desert. It's like that scene in Natural Born Killers but for 80 minutes instead of 10. I could watch whole movies like this, seriously. The actors are hardly good - or it might be the lack of directing - but they do what they're supposed to do and happily gets killed during the last half hour. It's quite gory, but most of all very nasty and drawn out. No, it's no Maniac - but the scalpings and kills are well-made and the blood flows steadily.  

What makes Scalps work - I'm sure it would be painfully slow to watch without it - is the music by Drew Neumann and Eric Rasmussen. What we have here is close to ambient electronic music, sometimes with rhythmic acoustic, almost hypnotic beats, and then back to electronic experimental music. It holds pretty high class, except a few tracks here and there where the cheese-factor gets overwhelming. I wish this music was released on some kind of format, but noooo... no such luck. It would have been perfect listening to while out walking.

Scalps is a super-cheap, cheesy and trashy supernatural slasher - but I can't help digging it a bit too much for my own good. Maybe it's because Forrest J. Ackerman (who I once spent a whole day with, we ate mushroom soup together) is in it and makes a terrible performance (we all know he couldn't act, but still charming as hell!) or maybe it's that desert with it's romantic fog of natural drugs and mysticism - or maybe it's just the gore and music. I really don't know why, but it's still Fred Olen Ray's best movie. 

So give it a try.

Halloween 5 (Dominique Othenin-Girard, 1989)

What's more natural to follow Halloween 4 with Halloween 5? In my world it's not. I was actually more thinking about Halloween: Resurrection than this movie while watching it, which is not a good sign. This seemed to have been shot quite close to part 4, but instead of having Dwight H. Little doing the directing duties then instead hired arty farty guy Dominique Othenin-Girard (probably because he directed the semi-good After Darkness in 1985). This is not a good idea. When it comes to Halloween there's not much room to experiment with the visual style, it takes away a lot of the mood John Carpenter cemented in the first movie.

This takes place a short time after the events in part 4. Everyone (except Dr Loomis) believes Michael Myers is dead, but he's not - of course. Instead he's been taken care of by a recluse, yeah, just like in Bride of Frankentein. That doesn't end well and now he's back on track to find Jamie and once and for all silence the rage inside of him. But there's someone watch, a man in black - what the hell do he want? I guess even Michael wonder...

The story is okay, I've seen worse. But it's also all over the place and it have a hard time finding a good spot to just sit down and let the tension work. Dr Loomis is also all over the scenery, screaming, churning out stupid lines and behaving like the madman he is. Could have been good, but even Donald Pleasence seems to realize how stupid his character is written here and kinda gives up. You can see how tired he is in some scenes. But he does the best he can, considering a monkey wrote the dialogue.

Another thing I fucking hate (or dislike, hate is ugly) with Halloween 5 is how the director tries to do something odd with the cinematography. There's weird angles, wide lenses, handheld camera where it just doesn't work. I understand him, it's fun to do something different - but a movie likeH Halloween 5 don't need a new style, it needs a new script. Surprisingly enought - from my side - I like the idea they're introducing with the man in black, and the mythology they started.

Pity it just took them six years to deliver the next part and use this idea even more.

Like all slasher franchises they must jump the shark sooner or later to deliver something new. I guess Halloween 5 is this series shark-jumper, but it's not crazy enough. They should have sent him out in space or something... seriously.

H5 had a hard time convincing me. I glanced at my iPhone more than on then TV and from time to time checked how much it was left of the movie. That's bad. On the other hand, it have a couple of fun and violent kills, Michael Myers is always cool, the actors are okay.

But it's hardly a undiscovered masterpiece.  

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight H. Little, 1988)

After the excellent Halloween 3: Season of the Witch Moustapha Akkad and his team decided to bring back Michael Myers. John Carpenter was involved from the beginning, but when they didn't stick with his idea about a Haddonfield destroyed by fear, examining the psychological aspects of a serial killer's terror, he dropped out. I would have loved to seen his vision, but in all honesty the finished result, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,  is clearly one of the best Halloween sequels so far. There's several reasons for this, but lets take a look at the story first.

It begins with Michael Myers being moved to a new clinic. Of course he overhears that he still have a relative alive, Jamie Lloyd (Halloween-veteran Danielle Harris) - the daughter of Laurie Strode! Or is it? I can't remember, they're relatives in some way. So lets go on, nothing to see here. It's Halloween and the teen daughter of the foster family have promised her to go out trick or treating, but at the same time Michael arrives to town - with dr Loomis not far behind, and the mayhem can begin again!

Now, I'm a big fan of graphic violence. But what makes Halloween 4 so great is that it actually succeeds in being really good without bringing in the blood and gore (except the absurd "thumb-in-forehead"-scene...). It's very old-fashioned in style and it reminds me more about the first one than the second - or the sequels that came after. Director Little manages to gives us a good amount of great scares without just being simple jump scares, which is quite unique in the third (or actually second) sequel to a timeless classic.

Another fine thing is how the guilt of dr Loomis is back in the picture. He's an asshole, as usual, but like in Halloween 2 he ONCE AGAIN indirectly causes the death of an innocent teeen. I makes the wrong assumption, he acts way to fast and he creates not one tragedy, but a half a dozen tragedies - because of those who killed the boy on his indirect order. "You have created a lynch mob", as sheriff Ben Meeker screams at him. A brilliant little twist. 

One of the best scenes in the whole movie is the siege situation. It's something rarely used in a slasher film, but here a house is guarded with cops and inside is Jamie and her babysitter (played by Ellie Cornell) and during a nailbiting sequence Myers is trying to get inside, succeeds (of course!) and causes more trouble. It's classic thriller-filmmaking. 

I've said it before, Halloween 4 is one of the best in the franchise and probably the last really good quality slasher of the 80's. 

Needle (John V. Soto, 2010)

By looking at the cover of Needle it's easy to believe it's a Hellraiser-inspired horror film, but it's very far from the truth. Instead it's an interesting mix of college slasher and occult thriller, without being totally moronic and generic. I didn't know it was a Australian movie from the beginning, so the accents surprised me - and it took a while to actaully understand that this crisp, very American-styled slasher-esque grand guignol was made in the land of Brian Trenchard-Smith. 

But he's not involved in this movie. But still. 

It's a fresh take on the slasher-genre with a few nods towards Italian giallos. It begins with a terribly brutal murder of an art dealer, by using this device - an ancient mechanical occult "transmitter" who works as a voodoo doll-connector. Ten years later and the box is found and given to the son, Ben (Michael Dorman) of the owner (who died somehow, I really missed that detail...). Soon the box is stolen and Ben's friends is getting killed one by one with the power of mechanical voodoo! And it gets bloody!

I love this idea. It's fun. The movie itself looks like a million bucks and the gore is quite plenty and graphic and looks great. If they spent the money on something it's on camera cranes and gory prostethics. Not a bad choice, especially with a script packed with good ideas - but a bit to standard to stand out totally. If I directed and wrote it I would make it more mystical, more European in style. More occult stuff. Now the device is more of a cool McGuffin in a normal murder mystery. The actors are good, but still a bit to handsome and easily to confuse with each other to make it perfect. Instead a reliable character actor like John Jarratt bring some star quality to the show with an underwritten but fun role as the coroner.

If you've seen Wolf Creek you will rememeber him for the rest of your life as the nasty killer in that one. One of the best redneck-psychos I've see. Can't wait to see him back in the sequel!

Anyway, back to Needle. Even if I've sounded quite negative up here I really liked it. It's a damn slick and well-made thriller with ingredienses I like. Instead of a knife-wielding maniac it's a nice solution with the voodoo device. Maybe it's one of those movies for us who prefer murder mysteries. You know, the same stuff like The Eyes of Laura Mars, Blackaria or Four Flies on Grey Velvet, detective stories with a supernatural/pseudoscience touch.

The only thing that really confuses me is the tagline: "Ten Suspects. Six Clues. One Killer...". I get the ten suspects and the one killer, but six clues? I must have missed something there, or maybe you need to be the screenwriter to actually understand what the clues are - because I have no friggin' idea. We're not talking Agatha Christie here, it's a slasher disguised as something fancier! 

Good one. I think you will like it if you're in the mood for somehing mainstream but still a little bit outside the mainstream. 

Rob Zombie's Halloween & Halloween II (2007+2009)

A couple of days ago I watched Rob Zombie's new horrorpiece, Lords of Salem. I was skeptical from the beginning because I just don't like his work... but found myself in love with his new one. That's rare. You can read that review here. But I wanted to go back to two of his most disliked movies - even if I know they have a lot of fans - his Halloween remake and the sequel, this time with Scout Taylor-Compton's doing the Laurie Strode part. I wasn't of them and it became more clear when I didn't remember much of them, so much they almost seemed like new movies. 

Halloween has a couple of really good things going. The first 45 minutes or so is excellent. It's a great backstory with some fine acting and a nice white trash aesthetic. William Forsythe as Michael's stepfather is as disgusting as you can believe with a great actor like Forsythe doing the part. Richard Lynch shows up as the principal and it's always a pleasure watching him work. Oh, and don't forget Sybil Danning in a cameo! It's good old drama. But when the horror comes - cue many years later (with nice supporting parts by Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Dee Wallace etc) - it gets very boring.

Oh, maybe not boring. But there's just a small amount of time you can show Michael Myers stab someone and Zombie just doesn't know how to do it. While the actors is good the action gets repetitive and just Zzzzz.... One of the best things is how they show Dr Loomis, this time played by Malcolm McDowell. Donald Pleasence incarnation of Loomis always had a big ego, on the border to be an asshole - and McDowell take the character even further. He's well aware of the money involved the doctor of Michael Myers, and uses the fame to write a book and do lectures all over the US. A quite realistic way to go I think, in that kind of situation.

That's something that Halloween II goes full out with. Here Dr Loomis is a full-blown asshole, totally unaware of his own stupidity - he's very egocentrical and behaves like he's a little bit more important than everyone else around him. This makes him the bad guy in a way, and the story shifts more towards Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) and his family relations - including Laurie Strode that lives with him and his daughter (once again played by Danielle Harris). When Loomis at the end once again rushes into the grand finale we can sense that it's not just because he feels guilty, it's because he needs to be a hero in front of the cameras. 

The rest of Halloween II is a failure. Much of it at least. It's quite witty to compress the whole story of the orginal Halloween II into the first 25 minutes of this one and there's a great gang of actors (as usual with Zombie's films) stealing the scenes from each other. One character is also dressed like the Vincent Price character Paul Toombes from 1974's Madhouse. I like that a lot. It's also more graphic, more sadistic and Myers tries more ways of killing his victims, but Zombie's directing seems so uninterested of the horror and action.

He just wants to make drama. And I would love to see more drama from him. This reminds me of the Strode parents in the first movie, played by Dee Wallace and Pat Skipper. For ONCE they're played like nice, fun, intelligent parents - and not the usual assholes that's always in this kind of movies. They seem so decent, so nice, that it's extremely painful to see them die. That's the strength of storyteller Rob Zombie.

None of the new Halloween films aren't really bad. They have both bad things and good things, but in the end they're very unremarkable compared to the rest of the franchise. Another thing I liek his how Myers is portrayed like a bearded bum - another realistic approach! Anyway, watch them for the actors and to hear John Carpenter's awesome main theme to shots of Michael Myers. That's the best thing with these flicks. 

The Flesh and Blood Show (Pete Walker, 1972)

After, earlier today, watching Killer's Moon, I had to go even further back into the slashers of the United Kingdom and Pete Walker's first foray into genre cinema, The Flesh and Blood Show. He was mainly a sleaze director (and also with some smaller crime dramas on his resumé), but later found bigger fame with his, often, very nasty and dark horror/thrillers. I mean, this is a guy I adore. I love how how uncompromising his work is - from very cynical, and realistic, characters to plot twists and dramaturgical rollercoasters that actually feels in the stomach - but still delivers good old commercial movies for a wider audience. 

When I first saw this film I didn't like it at all. And it's still far from my favorite Walker-movie, but this time I liked it more. I think I expected a lot more the first time. A more typical slasher, more gore, more blood... you know the deal. Especially after watching heavy stuff like House of Mortal Sin and The Comeback. I'll get back to what I think it's good this time, but first I need to say that horror movies and thrillers that's set in theaters always is worth watching. From the Aussie slasher Nightmares (not that good, but it looks great), Michele Soavi's Stage Fright and of course the criminally underrated Clown at Midnight. Do you know any other bodycount films set in theaters? Theater of Blood is a masterpiece, of course, but it has a lot of scenes outside the stage and the Canadian Matinée is more of a murdery myster set in a cinema, but partly feels like something like what I want. 

While The Flesh and Blood Show almost completely lacks gore, blood or any graphic violence, it's still a well told tale of a pretentious group of young, horny actors, who's gonna create an experimental stage play at an abandoned theater by the sea. So they come there and starts to fuck... I mean, rehearse, and soon something strange starts happening. People disappears and might it be connected to the past tragedy of the building? 

Walker clearly doesn't go full out on the horror here. It's more a mystery-drama (not bad at all) with a healthy dose of female and male nudity. The young actors is great (Robin Askwith, for example, is awesome) and the veterans is damn good to. It feels like a typical British quality production, just with more nudity. But it's a damn pity Walker doesn't go further into horror territory. It would have been such an awesome movie with a higher body count, some gore and some classic chases. Now it's more like watching someone who really want to make a horror movie but never dares to go full out in his wishes. 

But I'm not gonna complain. It's still a good start and it lead to a lot of fine genre movies. The only real mystery with The Flesh and Blood Show is why a copy of Charles Gray's head shows up in the basement? Why? Did he get decapitated in some other movie and this is the prop? Or is it connected to the fake head from Diamonds are Forever? What do you think?

 

Killer's Moon (Alan Birkinshaw, 1978)

You know, I never been a fan of director Alan Birkinshaw. So that's not a good start when buying a movie on blu-ray directed by that director. But I like him as a person. He seems like a bright, honest guy who seem very aware that he's making exploitation. Which also is the fact with a lot of exploitation-directors and producers - from Roger Corman, Erwin C. Dietrich, Harry Alan Towers, Dick Randall, Norman J. Warren etc etc. They're very square. And that's something I respect. I prefer that than discover that they're sleaze monglers with red velvet jackets and gold chains. If you get my point.

What made me extra interested in Killer's Moon is the slasher-esque story. It came out the same year as Halloween, and therefore before the big slasher-craze that hit the world for ten years after. Especially those first years of the eighties, after Friday the 13th came. Someone claimed that after Halloween and Friday it was produced over 1000 slashers the years after, all over the world of course. Could be true. It's simple and easy to make and the genre audience rarely says no to gore and tits. It's not a demanding genre. Killer's Moon is fun because it feels like a stupid slasher from 1987-1988, when the genre was in its lowest form. So in that way it's a many years before its time ;)

This time a bus of schoolgirls breaks down in the middle of nowhere and they seek shelter at a big mansion (and a future hotel) deep in the woods. And because they're innocent schoolgirls it happens so that four mental patients escaped from the asylum nearby and now they want to kill, Kill, KILL!!! And speak with funny British accents and stuff like that. So that's what they do. Plus some rapes of course. 

It's a fun mix of stupidity and very British sleaze. The first half is a lot better than the last, because it gives some time to the characters and quirky humour. The last half feels a bit repetitive with surprising-stalking, rape and then murder. I mean, seen it once and that's it. They could have been more creative regarding the kills and terror scenes. But still... you know, it's charming in the very outdated world, where women are mindless bimbos and the men are either heroic macho-bastards or sadistic rapists, it shows us. It's too late to ask them to change it anyway. Actress  Joanne Good, who seems to be the loveliest woman no earth, brings this up in the interview included on the blu-ray and laughs how dated it is... especially this extremely bisarre line of dialogue: 

Look, you were only raped, as long as you don't tell anyone about it you'll be alright. You pretend it never happened, I pretend I never saw it and if we ever get out of this alive, well, maybe we'll both live to be wives and mothers.

Still a very absurd line!

It also have some graphic violence, but not that much. The nudity is there, but still not that frequent for those who might like it. It's far from a masterpiece, and the clumsy script have a hard time holding up today. But I like the cheese in it. The smelly, juicy cheese. A shameless exploitation film from a time that's very far from what we have today (and thank Satan for that!). I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed it for what it is: exploitation - nothing less, nothing more. 

The Psychopath (Larry G. Brown, 1973)

Just when I thought I've seen it all, The Psychopath stumbles into my life like a slightly retarded child and hugs me. I don't know why, but I had the impression this was a TV-movie first, but it's not. It actually got a theatrical release in 1973 and then escaped into obscurity... and there it still is, far from fancy DVD's or even fancier blu-isher formats. 

It partly feels like a proto-slasher, but still have that slow, cozy boring detective work for the first half hour or so. Always uninteresting the majority of similar movies, but still nice and relaxing. Yeah, that's how I relax anyway. Can't help it. Black Christmas and When a Stranger Calls have similar filler-material with detectives walking around, talking, calling people and sitting in cars doing nothing special. I love it.

The Psychopath, also known as An Eye For An Eye, is a very creepy, fucked-up thriller about Mr Rabbey (Tom Basham), a mentally challenged childrens show host. He's a big child himself and spend all his time with kids, including stalking them in the playground and having some kind of weird platonical relationship with a female producer at the same time. He start to notice how badly some children are treated at home, being hurt (or even killed!) by their parents - and he decides to take revenge, to kill the evil parents! 

I think The Psychopath is excellent. It's creepy, bizarre and the theme of a grown man hanging out with kids all the time makes it even more strange. This could never have been done today, even if one parent actaully - indirectly - accuses him to be a child molester. But he's not. He's just hurts bad parents! It's clear we stand on his side, even when he behaves weird to his female friend, and the parents are truly evil, greedy and disgusting child abusers - so there's no question who's the hero. The cops hardly registers on the camera (even if future star John Ashton plays one of them and is good as usual) and feels like something added to make the movie longer.

Tom Basham is perfect in the part and makes a truly disturbing character of Mr Rabbey. He's the good guy, but he's obviously sick - very sick - and it feels strange to root for someone who's so twisted, and not in a fun, goofy way. Mr Rabbey is just sick.

Over-the-top, colorful and dark, The Psychopath is an original early slasher-esque thriller that's worth watching. It's cheap and far from perfect, but it has "it", if you know what I mean? The people making in probably knew what they was doing and the result is quite unique. It's hard to get (or is there an official DVD?) and the easiest way to see it is on bootlegs or download. But I hope one day someone (Vinegar Syndrome?) will release it. 

That's it.

Savage Water (Paul Kener, 1979) / Death by Invitation (Ken Friedman, 1971)

Vinegar Syndrome is a distribution company I learned about this year, a lot later than everyone else. They've released interesting stuff in the past (including "The Lost Films of Hershell Gordon Lewis", which I need to buy). They're a little bit more into sleaze or genre stuff that not even Code Red wants to touch, so of course I had to make an order.

I was one of the "lucky" who got their double feature of Savage Water/Death by Invitation, a DVD pulled even before it was officlally released - I think because of some rigths issues with Savage Water, but I'm still happy. Because it's a slasher and it's probably the worst slasher I've ever seen.

Savage Water tells the story of a bunch of idiots out rafting. Most of them looks like hippies, or is wearing far too tight jeans shorts, big beards (but nada hair on the chests!) and completely lack the talent of acting. Included in this is a very annoying kid, an odd Indian character named Mamoud and a girl who at one point takes out her guitar, starts to sing and then we're treated to a romantic montage (with full orchestra) for 3-4 minutes. 

It takes more than half the movie until something actually happens. Before that we're learning how to use a life jacket, listning to dialogue that goes nowhere and a couple of nice shots of the nature. The director, Paul Kener, often just puts every actor in the shot, almost in a  line, and then let them say their lines. No bothering with storytelling here. Just up in front of the firing squad, say your damn lines and we can go home.

The kills is hardly nothing to talk about so I won't even bother. The weird thing is that I watched the whole movie without interruption. It had some kind of cozy, talentless feeling that worked as a hypnotic device. And then it's over. The worst slasher ever made. 

I was so emotionally drained after Savage Water that I was extra happy that Death by Invitation was on the same disc and I didn't have to get up from the sofa. This is a totally different form of movie. I might be a lie to say it's great but it's... good. Yeah, it's good.

Shelby Leverington is excellent (even if she look a bit stoned most of the time) as the young woman who understands (how? I don't know, probably through visions...) that her ancestor was killed as a witch by a family hundreds of years ago and now she's plotting to kill them all. It's starts of by showing the witch execution, which both looks like a cheap community theatre reenactment, but with great editing and very good, dark, eerie music putting it together to a great opening. 

After that it's quite a long stretch with family melodrama, which by itself isn't bad. The actors are above average and seems to actually try to do something good with the script. It still have the cheap look of a 70's blue movie most of the time (with the famous "one spotlight aimed directly at the actors" style of lighting) but tells the story good, very far from what I've just seen in Savage Water.

It's also bloodier and more graphic than the first movie, but don't expect a bloodbath. It's an ambitious production made with very little money. Not much happens, but it still works as a horror-drama. A fine example of ultra low budget regional filmmaking.