My latest streaming triple feature was a buffet of subgenres, which is always a refreshing way to keep things interesting, especially when I didn’t actually hate any of them (the gore factor helped). But I definitely had a favorite.
BLOOD VALLEY: SEED’S REVENGE (2014)
A while back, I blogged about Seed (here), a pretty basic slasher about an executed serial killer coming back from the grave to go on killing. I had no idea that seven years later, a sequel was made, but there it was on Netflix.
“Seed” has become a nomad, living out in the middle of the desert when—lucky him—babes in an RV drive through his neck of nowhere. However, the film’s events are non-sequential, jumping back and forth between when the girls are in the heat of the horror to the events leading up to it. This adds nothing beyond allowing the movie to open with the most perverse kill it has to offer: Seed fucks one of the girls with a gun while getting off, which brings a whole new meaning to the term “shooting your load.” In fact, the filmmakers thought this opening scene was SO awesome that they show it in its entirety again later on in the film.
As we continuously time shift, the girls pick up a creepy hitchhiker, one girl gets crucified to the ground by Seed, the girls are roughed up by a female cop, the main girl struggles with memories of her childhood, the girls bicker, the main girl prays, etc., etc. Eventually, we get the big twist, which we totally saw coming.
Blood Valley: Seed’s Revenge is a mess, but it will do in a pinch if you’ve run out of low budget, gory The Hills Have Eyes rip-offs to watch. Added points for having some familiar horror faces, including scream kings Jeff Dylan Graham (Bloody Bloody Bible Camp, 100 Tears) and Nick Principe (Laid to Rest, The Summer of Massacre), long time scream queen Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, Stepfather II, Leprechaun III), and modern horror babes Christa Campbell (2001 Maniacs, Revamped) and Natalie Scheetz (Madison County).
100 BLOODY ACRES (2012)
I really thought I was going to be a fan of this backwoods horror comedy, but even though it has its moment, it didn’t totally grab me. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t scream “instant classic”—or even make me feel the need to recommend it to any of my friends.
Two brothers running an organic fertilizer business have a special secret ingredient—road kill. And not the animal kind. They grind car accident victims into the mix. But they’re kind of running dry on supply.
When the passive brother comes upon two guys and a girl broken down on the side of the road, he offers them a ride. And you know what that means. He brings them home, and his psycho brother (Angus Sampson of the Insidious movies) decides it’s time to start using live victims in their fertilizer. But the passive brother has started to fall for the girl, who attempts to chip away at his armor to get him to let them go.
100 Bloody Acres isn’t a scares or suspense film, but the gore is splatter flick fun, there’s a cameo by Wolf Creek baddie John Jarratt (who gets to play the good guy this time), and some of the funny moments are quite good. I particularly adored cutie Olive Ackland (Tristan de Martel on The Originals), who gets to show off his comic talents here.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find the movie overall to deliver enough humor—it focused on the relationship between the passive brother and the girl he may grind into meat, making it more of a dark romance! It only runs an hour and a half, but it really started to drag for me.
MEXICO BARBARO (2014)
You could say this is a collection of short horror “stories,” but it’s more like a Spanish take on The ABCs of Death. These 8 shorts have very little in the way of plot—they just take characters and throw them into sick, perverse scenarios. Now this is ending on a high horror note for me. Here’s the breakdown.
1 – I didn’t realize this one was actually one of the segments. It pretty much feels like it’s going to be a wraparound, with a news reporter meeting a man with information about drug cartels practicing magic rituals. But there are some hot man bods.
2 – After a gunfight, a man hides out in an abandoned building, where he is seduced by a supernatural spirit. Great atmosphere in this one plus a creepy twist at the end, but overall, it’s underwhelming.
3 – This is where shit starts to get fucked up and perfectly WTF? A young woman is visited by some horrific witch thing that tells her to do something gross involving her sister’s vagina or else it will do something seriously WTF to her. Even more WTF is what happens next, and the final image in this short is nightmarish.
4 – Another WTF short. A young couple goes to stay in a cabin, some horny troll creature breaks in, and then things get disgusting. I’ll just say there’s puke and troll penis involved.
5 – The twisted shit just keeps coming. A young girl is afraid of a homeless dude out in front of her apartment building. We realize she has every reason to be when he gets his hands—and other body parts—on another child.
6 – Where there’s a swamp with doll parts hanging from tree branches, there’s sure to be trouble. But that doesn’t keep the tourists away in this one…
7 – A man performs a ritual on a corpse in the desert to bring another man back to life, and conjures us some fucked up, hellish creatures in the process.
8 – Ending with some splatter flick fun, this one takes place at a stripper club of the dead, where the dancers get revenge on the men who wronged them in life.
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