So what we have here is the answer to a question.
“What do you get when you take a script that leans heavily on plot devices from dozens of other films that came before it, a shooting budget of whatever the cast and crew had in their pockets that day, a borrowed set, and actors who probably should’ve spent more time either in acting classes, or just way, way more rehearsal?”
The answer? You get the latest movie that will make you wish for seventy six minutes of your life back.
The fact that Eric Spudic, the filmmaker behind such direct to video atrocities as “Aquanoids” and “Killers By Nature,” has any kind of involvement in this, even as an actor, alarms me to no end. Spudic is rapidly becoming the Joe Castro of indie film, and that by itself is scary. That “Minds of Terror” would voluntarily take on this film albatross is like a man so painfully deranged that he’s prepared to blow up an orphanage if Paris Hilton doesn’t give him a b*****b.
Even if it works, nothing good can come of it.
But folks, it gets even better than Stupid Spudic Tricks, I guarantee it. Check out the mannequin at the five minute fifty two second mark! Thanks to the wonders of 4x zoom on my really cheap DVD player, I could watch in sheer cinematic glee as the oldest trick in slasher film, The Amazing Vanishing Man, is pulled off in the cheapest manner possible. He’s there, just long enough for one character to notice, and by the time the shock expires, the man is gone.
Even better, dig the Fun With Dubbing effect at ten minutes, four seconds. Watch real carefully as Jeffrey Vandoren’s mouth can’t seem to match just what it is he’s saying. His mouth starts moving BEFORE his dialogue hits. Though on the plus side, I love how confused the other male lead, “Andy”, looks on in confusion afterward, like even HE’S baffled by the whole thing.
Fun With Dubbing will appear in many, many more places throughout the movie.
And why, exactly, does an abandoned mental health facility, abandoned for ten years (seven minutes fifty nine seconds) have a working Pepsi vending machine in it (twelve minutes thirty two seconds). What, did Vandoren put one in because a fridge was just too damn inconvenient? Maybe he wanted to make a few extra bucks on the burgeoning tourist trade. Everyone wants to visit an abandoned looney bin on summer vacation!
You know, if you borrowed the place for a weekend to shoot a movie, you could’ve at least maybe unplugged the Pepsi machine for those shots, or put a tarp over the damn thing, because as it sits, it’s a plot hole big enough to drive a Buick through.
And check out the DUMBEST sex scene ever filmed starting at twenty three minutes. The girl in question, who’s probably already regretting this and figuring out a way to get it off her CV without having it look like Swiss cheese, is disrobed at twenty three minutes six seconds, but is somehow redressed a mere eight seconds later in the exact same thing she had taken off her.
I swear, ever since Spudic took that Fred Olen Ray class, he’s been in on one cheap, shoddy movie after the next.
Yeah…you may not have known that, but on the “Killers By Nature” promotional material, Spudic gets a little introductory blurb in which he leaves his Illinois home to join Fred Olen Ray’s indie film camp.
And ever since, it’s been one long string of crapola.
Speaking of which, a great drinking game would be to count the number of times the male lead says “Don’t call me Bobby.” Even if you’re just using beer, you’ll be smashed within the first twenty minutes. I’m not kidding–he repeats some variation of this line like a dozen times or more.
Either that or you could play with Fun With Dubbing–first one to notice the mistake doesn’t drink.
The ending is, somehow, not badly done. It’s actually a very good ending–executed properly and done without need of special effects.
All in all, if only the first sixty minutes could have been done like the last twelve, we might have had a pretty fair movie on our hands. But sadly, it hasn’t, so we don’t.
