Another foursome I found on Prime, and it’s a mix of serious horror and horror comedies. Let’s get right into them.
CANNIBALS AND CARPET FITTERS (2017)
I’ve been waiting for this one to hit streaming for a while because it stars some full-figured boys. Wahoo! If you’re a fan of British horror comedies that are as gory as they are funny, Cannibals and Carpet Fitters is a good one to check out.
It’s especially notable because things don’t always turn out as predictably as you might expect for the characters.
Although part of the opening sequence is presented in found footage format, the film doesn’t stay that way. Either way, it proves to be one kick ass kill scene that lets you know exactly the kind of horror party you’re in for.
Next we meet the workers at a carpet installation company. A muscle boy and girl head to an isolated house to do a job, and another trio of guys is on the way to join them.
Wouldn’t you know the house is filled with a family of cannibal goons? Let the cat and mouse games and the slicing and dicing begin!
The first pair plays it straight, and the female totally rox. It’s the next trio of guys that brings on the Three Stooges fun upon arriving.
It’s funny, it’s a thrill ride, and the blood and guts totally rule if you like a good splatterfest.
SADISTIC INTENTIONS (2018)
It’s rare that I don’t get a single moment of satisfaction out of a movie, but Sadistic Intentions is one of those cases. Not even so much as a hot shirtless guy. For me personally, it was 82 minutes that could have been spent on something more my speed.
It doesn’t help that the description for this film makes it sound like it’s going to be a night of “metal mayhem”. For starters, following an intriguing opening, it’s 46 minutes of talk after a metal head dude and a girl show up at a mansion where a mutual friend told them he’d meet them. While they wait for him to arrive, they talk and talk and talk.
Finally he shows, we learn he has some sort of occult sacrificial plans for the girl, and the two guys spend the remainder of the film fighting about it because the guy who got to know her really likes her.
There’s no suspense, the characters aren’t charismatic or likable, it’s no fun watching them hang out and drink beer for 46 minutes, and the occult aspects barely qualify as horror.
The general concept reminded me of We Summon the Darkness, and I barely made it through that one, which now seems like fun compared to this.
ENTERFEAR (2020)
Enterfear seems like one of those films shot in the hometown of the filmmakers with many of the locals in main roles and as extras. While these types of films can suffer from uncountable problems and come across as home video messes, this little indie does a whole lot right and demonstrates the potential of the creators if they had a budget.
The premise is fun—a meteorite lands near a broadcast tower, causing a television station’s programming to cross over into reality.
This being an indie, the most they could do was dip into some public domain titles, so we get some Plan 9 from Outer Space, an episode of The Twilight Zone, and of course, The Night of the Living Dead.
Smartly, the film is only an hour long so as not to wear out the limited material, but it does present a couple of fake movies near the end to add some variety.
Our hero is a cute young hick who must head to the tower to figure out what’s wrong when the TV station broadcast begins to glitch. Before long, he’s being chased by zombies flickering with TV waves and has to team up with a coworker to figure out how to stop them and save the town.
Much of the basic humor lands perfectly due to good comic timing, and the guys have fun with the concept, which moves into Stay Tuned territory.
The zombies are a combination of basic face makeup and some simple CGI for the TV effects, but it works with the low budget vibe. While part of me wonders what they could have done with better financing, I also imagine the tone of the film simply works better with a more homebrewed feel.
BACKWOODS (2020)
This short, seventy-minute movie goes a really roundabout way to deliver a basic but satisfying slasher segment near the end. If only the fun of that short, gory segment had actually been sprinkled throughout, it could have been a really good time.
Instead, rather than tell a linear story, it unnecessarily complicates things by jumping around, leaving us completely confused as to what the hell is going on for a majority of the running time. There are some good attempts to bring something different to the slasher plot, but it’s almost like it’s trying too hard. We are bombarded by a series of situations that don’t quite allow us to latch on to a particular plot line, distinct characters, or final girl.
There’s a high school party where kids talk, puke, fight, and tell tales of an urban legend of The Hangman, who kills boys and abducts girls to be his brides…which means there are rhetorical flashbacks of that killer. There’s a girl escaping a car trunk and then running away from a guy in a mask. And there’s a deformed backwoods creep in a shed.
When the timelines fuse there’s a twist that’s a little silly but at least establishes that the deformed creep isn’t the only threat, and even though the super brief slasher segment is super fun, the deformed killer ends up relying on a gun little too much. Even so, it’s a well-produced teen slasher, so if you need a fix, I’d say give it a go.
