[Brutal Massacre]
Plot:Involves the director of a bunch of famous 80's horror movies named Harry Penderecki who plans a comeback with his latest picture "Brutal Massacre". Things don't go as smoothly as planned however.

Cast:David Naughton, Brian O'Halloran, Gerry Bednob, Ken Foree, Ellen Sandweiss, Gunnar Hansen.

My Thoughts::"Brutal"....indeed.

Review:Stevan Mena's "Brutal Massacre" is another one of those horror films that surrounds itself with the premise of a film within a film. A director of 80's horror films is planning a comeback with his latest genre project, "Brutal Massacre". Unfortunately, during the production....things don't necessarily go as planned. But then again, when do they ever during the shooting of a film of any kind? Unfortunately, "Brutal Massacre" didn't exactly go as I had planned either. It was a pretty abysmal film for the most part. I really wanted to like this film on some level, but I just couldn't.

It really never gave me anything to like, and films centered around the making of a film rarely work. Why? Because they're usually boring, and if the comedic wit isn't sharp as a razor blade, then it flops fast. Which was the case with this movie. The horror aspect comes in that they're shooting a new slasher movie, but the problem is this film is never fully explored enough, nor is the shooting of the film. We spend more time getting to know and see the people working on the film instead of the film itself.

Which keeps the horror elements subdued most of the time, and in some cases nonexistent altogether. They do try with this movie though, adding in Ken Foree and Ellen Sandweiss...two very familiar genre names. But even that doesn't work, and both acotrs, while their characters are somewhat likeable, don't give the movie the boost I'm sure the producers were hoping for. "Brutal Massacre" is very low on blood and gore, and scares? Forget about it, they don't even exist in this picture.

Sure...it's supposed to be a horror comedy, hence horror elements mixed with comedy elements...but on a scale of 1 through 10, "Scary Movie" was more terrifying than "Brutal Massacre". Atleast that film had a killer in it. There's no killer in 'Brutal Massacre", which really in reality breaks a golden horror film rule when it comes to the movie within a movie subgenre. There always has to be a killer. A tragic hollywood star, a washed up actor, some rejected extra, or hell even the director (ala Scream 3). Every horror movie where the story revolves around a film being filmed has to have some sort of antagonist. This movie had none, and Gunnar Hansen, who cameos in the film as a possible villain, has his character wasted, underused, and altogether deep-sixed.

At that point, I was just really ready to give up. I can't really understand why this movie was even made. It just seemed to serve no purpose. Most horror films try to address some aspect of the genre. Scaring the audience, grossing them out, screwing with their head...or all three, or a combination of the three. But "Brutal Massacre", for all it's attempts at wit, humor, and giving the viewer a slightly overdone look into the production of an indie horror picture...doesn't meet any of those requirements. Thus it's a total waste.

It's one of the few films that I've seen with no redeeming qualities. It's just 90 minutes of boredom and total disappointment. Maybe the budget wasn't large enough to add on any good stuff to the script or the production in general, but then again....plenty of other indie horror films have done alot more on the same dime or even less of a dime. This movie??? Just chalk it up to bad idea, bad script, bad everything.

Positives:When it was over.

Negatives:Boring script, not a very good idea for a horror film to begin with, a serious lack of entertainment value.

Overall:Half a star out of 4.





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