STREAM QUEEN: boys behaving badly, but who did it best?

This triple feature I checked out on Amazon Prime isn’t your usual scarefest. These are indie flix about young men who lose their shit for various reasons, leading to violence and bloodshed. So which one kept me most entertained?

BLOOD WAS EVERYWHERE (2011)

I’ll answer the most obvious question first. Was there blood everywhere? No. No, there wasn’t. There really wasn’t. But there was a lot of white. A whole lot of white. White trash. White trash everywhere.

Following an opening scene of a guy getting clocked while changing a tire on the side of the road, Blood Was Everywhere gives us 25 minutes of a few white trash guys bickering back and forth about buying and selling drugs.

We watch some girls ride bikes around the small town in which the movie takes place. We spend a load of time watching personal drama unfold at a local bar. I’ve never watched Duck Dynasty or Honey Boo Boo, but I imagine they’re not much different than watching most of this film.

Just before the final 20 minutes, a woman sitting on a toilet bowl gets her throat slashed, as does the drug seller (who looks like a younger Iggy Pop, so he’s probably around 90).

The killer then barges into the home of the two girls who were riding their bicycles for the whole movie, kills a handful of people there, then heads over to another house and beats an older couple to death with a bat before the credits role.

While we never see the killer’s face, it’s just a dude in a T-shirt and jeans—hence the horror is that anyone could be a killer for no apparent reason, and could get away with it.

The kills are very simplistic, with little in the way of gore effects. Really, there’s just nothing to nourish the horror soul here.

AS NIGHT COMES (2014)

This is the most “polished” production of the bunch, and yet the script goes nowhere. We are pretty much thrust into the middle of it. An outsider has already moved into town and is already in with the wrong crowd. Myko Olivier (Fun Size Horror: Volume One, a Warbler on Glee) is the new kid (with absurdly sleazy slick hair), and Luke Baines (The Possession of Michael King) is the absurdly queer leader of the gang for someone who is supposedly straight. The underlying homoerotic relationship between these two is about as interesting as it got for me (the deep throating image on Myko’s Iggy Pop shirt in the pic below says it all).

The gang causes trouble, the leader gets pissy whenever the new guy talks to the girl that he likes, and they have conflicts with the high school jocks. And throughout the entire movie, the new guy just stands on the sidelines and watches with shock and dismay whenever the leader does bad stuff. It’s absolutely impossible to care about this loser for not walking away from this gang, especially when he has a sweet girl urging him to.

Eventually, finally, on the night before Halloween, they take mischief night to a more disturbing level that’s still pretty damn lame in the new millennium—as is the lack of Halloween spirit in the film. They put on skull makeup and beat up one jock with bats…in broad daylight…on his front lawn…on a suburban block. NO ONE comes out. NO ONE calls the cops. It’s a small town, so I have to add that NO redneck comes out a shootin’.

They go to another jock’s house and pull a Carrie while the jock is in the pool with his girlfriend then beat him up.

Things escalate from there a bit and the new kid and the leader and up in a lovers’ quarrel…I mean…turning against each other. But really, everyone in this film is so pathetic I was left feeling nothing for anyone and was hoping both boys were put out of their misery (they aren’t, sadly).

VICTIMIZED (2014)

Victimized, written and directed by Michael Kenneth Fahr, who also stars in the film, is essentially a gay revenge slasher. However, the structure is slightly different than your standard slasher after the usual “killer is cruelly treated by peers” intro flashback scene.

A good portion of the first half of the film focuses heavily on how deeply the main character’s abuse at the hands of his parents, his brother, and his peers has led to him completely snapping. The heavy-handed subject matter (much of it handled through flashbacks) might strike a nerve in some gay viewers, while others will be itching to get to the revenge.

Horror hottie Cuyle Carvin (Mind Morgue, Fog Warning, Assault of the Sasquatch) plays the extremely hateful anti-gay brother, who plans to spend some time at the lake house with his girlfriend, played by Sarah Nicklin (Abandoned Dead, Flesh for the Inferno, Fun Size Horror: Volume One, The Haunting of Alice D, The Disco Exorcist).

Little do they know the gay brother is skulking in the shadows, plotting payback for the years of suffering he was put through.

What may come as a surprise is that once the facts are presented, the revenge segment of the film is fairly tame and the body count relatively low.

A couple of friends do stop by—literally a couple—and Fahr’s character keeps Sarah Nicklin tied up, which makes for some good escape and chase scenes.

His disposal of the other characters ranges from semi-brutal to quick and virtually painless. But despite his level of insanity and the seriousness of the torment he went through, the film has fun with his murderous revenge. It shifts into darkly comic territory.

Notable campy highlights include the standoff between Fahr and Nicklin, as well as the arrival of a drunk, horny neighbor. She rules, and she ups her comic game when a handsome cop comes on the scene.

Personally, I’m more about the campy killer flick Victimized becomes in its second half than the “portrait of a serial killer” feel of the first half. I would have welcomed more victims and kills at the hands of a psycho homo, because I prefer Fahr’s vengeance over his victimization. However, the film is called Victimized, so I’ll just have to deal with it. And regardless, this one is definitely my favorite of this trio of films I streamed on Amazon Prime.