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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Zombie > South Africa > Crime > Thriller > Torture Porn > Comedy > Exploitation > Italy > Mystery > P > The Dead (2010/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/Dead Hooker In A Trunk (2009/IFC Midnight/MPI DVD)/Fred 2: Night Of The Living Fred (2011/Lionsgate DVD)/Night Train Murders (1975/Blue Underground)/Spiderhole (2010

The Dead (2010/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/Dead Hooker In A Trunk (2009/IFC Midnight/MPI DVD)/Fred 2: Night Of The Living Fred (2011/Lionsgate DVD)/Night Train Murders (1975/Blue Underground)/Spiderhole (2010/IFC/MPI DVD)/Texas Killing Fields (2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/2012: Zombie Apocalypse (2011/Asylum Blu-ray)/Undocumented (2011/IFC/MPI DVD)

 

Picture: B-/C+/C/B/C/B-/C+/C     Sound: B/C/C+/B-/C+/B/C+/C+     Extras: C-/D/D/C+/D/C/D/D     Main Programs: C-/D/D/C+/D/C/D/D

 

 

There was a time in the Horror genre where if the films were not original, they could at least be interesting, but most look like bad film student disasters trying to imitate only a few of the great films in the genre and the results are usually awful.  That pretty much includes most of this batch of releases, save a few with some ambition.

 

 

The Ford Brothers give us The Dead (2010) with a cover that looks far too much like that of Dawn Of The Dead, but takes place in South Africa and most of the zombies here are Black Africans.  However, that is far from enough to set this apart from the thousands of generic Romero wannabes of late, yet this did offer a few things to make it more interesting.  If only Howard J. & Jon Ford could have made this work.

 

What I liked were the locations, a lack of pretension and the lack of talking which reminded me of how most zombie projects of the last 10 years have had some of the worst writing ever.  Unfortunately, there is no suspense, there are too many clichés and the duo does not know what it wants to say as it misses endless opportunities to do so.  The actors are good and all are working against a tired subgenre, but fans are more likely to enjoy this over most such releases of late.  Extras include Deleted Scenes of interest, a behind-the-scenes featurette and feature length audio commentary by The Fords.

 

 

Less successful is Jen & Sylvia Soska directing and co-starring in Dead Hooker In A Trunk (2009) which wants to be yet another Tarantino rip-off with torture porn moments, but is handled so sloppily and idiotically that it is always like watching a version that is not a final cut in the worst way.  Three gals (a nerd, a Goth chick, a glamed-up smarty) find the title content in a classic Pontiac sports car (the auto is the most interesting thing here) and this leads to fights, blood, gunshots, drugs, beatings, but no story or script of merit.  Boring from beginning to end, I was only expecting it to get better in one early scene, but when it failed there, I knew they were doomed.  You will be too if you waste 89 minutes of your time watching in what is Weekend At Bernie’s for idiots and that says something.

 

Extras include Deleted & Alternate Scenes of no consequence, a behind-the-scenes featurette, trailer and on-camera interview.  Watch Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry instead.

 

 

John Fortenberry’s Fred 2: Night Of The Living Fred (2011) is the hideous sequel to the hideous Fred – The Movie with Lucas Cruikshank back in the title role as the endlessly obnoxious, highly stereotypical idiot (I swear that voice is being sped-up and added later!) as WWE star John Cena (whose made his share of bad films) plays his father (!?!) and Fred must find out why his music teacher (who he is very attached to) has disappeared.  Turns out his neighbor is a vampire and Fred must stop him, including enlisting some friends.  Wow, is this awful, like the Fright Night remake script that was rejected.  Nothing here is funny (down to the lenticular paperboard sleeve where you can make Fred turn into a vampire) and this is a total mess.  Extras include Fred Videos and three making-of featurettes.  Good luck with this one!

 

 

An Italian attempt to capitalize on the original Last House On The Left, Aldo Lado’s Night Train Murders (1975) has two young ladies going home from Germany on a train, only to encounter two male hoodlums who join an older woman to trap, torture, rape and torment them all the way home if they can survive that long.  Some of this is effective, but much of it is just badly done or flat out dumb and after a few plot twists, the revenge part kicks in, sometimes literally.  They even try to make some kind of profound statement at the end, but it just never totally adds up.

 

Still, this is the uncut version and Blue Underground has done their best to do justice to a film that I had not seen for decades.  Horror fans should see it out of curiosity, but don’t expect much.  At least it understood what it was ripping off unlike most of the entries on this list.  Extras include Theatrical Trailers, Radio Spots, Poster & Still Gallery and an interview piece with Lado called Riding The Night Train.

 

 

When I saw the title Spiderhole (2010) all I could think of was the infamously bad Spider Baby, but this is simply a British torture porn film with four teens driving off and taking over what they think is an abandoned house, but “SURPRISE!!!” it is not.  Yawn.  Instead we see four good actors wasted in a dumb 82 minutes exercise that is trying to be Saw but we “saw” all of this already.  A trailer, behind-the-scenes featurette and interview segment are the extras.

 

 

Watchable at times, Ami Cannan Mann’s Texas Killing Fields (2011) is a sometimes good thriller with Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (in the best thing either has done in a while) are police partners investigating a series of dead female bodies showing up all over the place in the title locale.  Jessica Chastain is also a detective, but she is splitting with Worthington’s character and still experiences plenty of sexism on the job.  Morgan’s daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) is also being harassed, though the film never effectively paints a sexist Texas out, so these moments seem more like plot devices, but with that it eventually becomes a cheap child-in-jeopardy romp.  It is too bad Writer Donald F. Ferrarone could not make this more intense, original and spared us much of the predictable melodrama and being “inspired by true events” (loosely we gather) is no excuse.  A feature length audio commentary by Cannan and Ferrarone is the only extra.

 

 

Nick Lynn’s silly telefilm 2012: Zombie Apocalypse (2011) was made with the SyFy Channel and it shows, not knowing if it should be serious, gross, violent, a joke or hip, but it will do anything to be part of the genre and get fans to like it.  Too bad the intent to appeal to fanboys (stereotypically so) had this mess all over the place and casting Ving Rhames and Taryn Manning does not save it either.  Wow, what a dud!  Extras include a Gag Reel (at least someone was having fun, because it is not the viewer), Trailer and a Making Of featurette.

 

 

Last and probably least is Chris Peckover’s Undocumented (2011) seems like a torture porn film at first, but there is something else going on here as masked white supremacists/separatists kidnap Mexicans and other non-whites coming over the border and decide to torture, terrorize, mutilate and destroy them slowly and otherwise, including children.  Far from “a new one” that we needed to see, this at first seems like any other such genre work, but then it gets political and gets into trouble.

 

By being so shallow all the way through, it thinks it is being a comedy or satire, but in all actuality, it intentionally or inadvertently becomes a pro-racist work making such activities palatable and with zero ironic distance and zero talent behind the camera or in the script, any comment seeming against such things becomes a celebration of them and as much of a starting gun to do them as Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation (1915) was to relaunching the then-dead Klu Klux Klan.  I only accuse them of blatant stupidity and not irresponsibility, though all involved are responsible for its content.  As for spoofing patriotism in the genre, William Lustig’s Uncle Sam (1997, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) is a much better film.

 

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Dead and Killing are the newest theatrically-intended shoots, but they both are styled down somewhat to their disadvantage, allowing the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Train which comes from the uncut 35mm camera negative and has both the best color range and best Video Black despite some flaws from age.  The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Apocalypse is the softest of all looking like an HD shoot with older HD cameras, including limited color and more noise than expected.

 

All the DVDs are anamorphically enhanced with Hooker & Spiderhole at 2.35 X 1 and Fred & Undocumented at 1.78 X 1.  All but Fred are also styled down, but Hooker is barely better (shockingly) as the rest are much softer than they should be, while all include some motion blur too.

 

Apocalypse claims on the back of its case to have a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix, but when you play it, all you get is inferior, lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and it is not that good and is on par with the same kind of mix on the Fred, Spiderhole and Undocumented DVDs with a lack of overall soundfield.  Hooker has the worst sound with plenty of location audio issues beyond any attempts at realism or style with a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that is stereo at best.  Fred has a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo alternate track that is almost as weak.

 

That leaves lossless mixes on the remaining three Blu-rays.  The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix on Dead and Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mix on Killing are the best here, but on par with each other as Dead makes the most of its soundfield even when it is quiet and Killing is pushing it a bit by trying to expand to 7.1.  Still, they are decently recorded for the most part.  That leaves a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on Train that is in much better shape than expected despite showing some of its age.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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