Ever wonder what you’d get if you took “Napoleon Dynamite”, clone Jon Heder, put him in the movie twice, and then have both of them get killed off in a loud, grotesque fashion by a deranged farm boy who gets his jollies in horrible ways? No? Well, I don’t know why not.
At least, I didn’t know why not, until I saw “Splatter Farm”, the
latest steaming cinematic shitheap from Camp Motion Pictures.
Camp Motion Pictures doesn’t have what you’d call a good record in
the feature film department. Now, granted, they came out with a
pretty fair chucklefest with “Woodchipper Massacre”, a surprisingly
funny and surprisingly bloodless treat. But they also came out with
gore-soaked exploitative craptaculars like “Cannibal Campout” and the “Video Violence” series.
And I’m not holding out a whole lot of hope for “Splatter Farm” to be much better, because it breathlessly maintains that it is based on a true incident. Apparently, something vaguely similar to this
happened on a rural Pennsylvania farm in the summer of 1968. Now,
just how “based on” this particular true story this is, I don’t
know–but “Splatter Farm”‘s plot is simple enough–twin brothers Alan and Joseph are visiting their aunt Lacey out on her secluded, rundown farm. Lacey lives with a young farmhand, Jeremy, and together they’ve both been into some really unpleasant stuff. Needless to say, when Alan and Joseph find out about aunt Lacey’s bizarre “proclivities”, they’re in for some serious, blood-soaked, trouble.
It’s bad enough they’re laboring under such a phenomenally cheesy
plotline, but they’re also, as is the norm for Camp Motion Pictures,
laboring under special effects work that leaves much to be desired.
For instance, in the first minute they’re going to try and shatter a
human head with an axe. It thusly doesn’t bode well that they won’t
actually show the axe make contact with the skull, but rather go from axe upraised to axe in the head in the space of one frame. The
phrase “enormous copout” comes readily to mind, along with some more
profanity-laden similar expressions of disgust.
Disgust carries on as the deranged farm boy who did the “shattering”
then proceeds to jerk off with the decapitated arm of his victim.
I really did mean it earlier when I brought in the whole “Napoleon
Dynamite” riff–the Polonias look and act vaguely like a young Jon
Heder. That sure doesn’t help things; when “Splatter Farm” isn’t
actively engaged in being revolting on a shoestring, it’s just
painfully dull, much like “Napoleon Dynamite”.
I spent most of “Splatter Farm” wishing it was over.
The last fifteen minutes of “Splatter Farm” will be revolting for any of several reasons. From the ludicrous fistfights to the deranged farm boy actively fisting one of the brothers, there’s plenty of reason for you to toss your cookies at the end of this. And not in a good way, either.
I don’t know why “Splatter Farm” even exists. This demeans everyone
involved with it, makers and audience alike. This miserable lump of
garbage needs to be composted.
