★ 4 / 10
Ever go to one of those all-you-can-eat buffets
talisencrw
Ever go to one of those all-you-can-eat buffets that has virtually every kind of food imaginable, and you go in thinking it's going to be an excellent…
Ever go to one of those all-you-can-eat buffets that has virtually every kind of food imaginable, and you go in thinking it's going to be an excellent experience, a few of the foods you sample are fairly good, but you're left afterwards with a huge bellyache and the check? That's the way I felt after watching 'Death Warmed Up', from my now-infamous Mill Creek 50-film 'Nightmare Worlds' pack--it has a few interesting ideas, and some decent, though dated, atmosphere, but director Blyth doesn't know how to put it all together. In the right hands, this could have worked, but it definitely doesn't, and that's a shame, because it had potential...'it coulda been a contender!'
The two young female leads that play Sandy and Jeannie are beautiful, there's good chemistry between them and the two male leads, particularly in the scene where they're on the ferry going to the island. The completely gratuitous nudity and softcore sex was a great bonus. In an interview that was a DVD extra for 'The Fog', Jamie Lee Curtis explained that she enjoyed starting out in horror and that it was a useful genre for an actor in that it gave one a wide range of possible behaviours to both utilize and show, and, by the end, Michael and Sandy proved to me they were good actors. It's just too bad they were in a nondescript, clunky script that had no idea what it was doing or where it was going. 'Death Warmed Up' is one of those films that doesn't have a climactic finale, or end, per se, it just simply stops or dies, as if the filmmakers simply had no ideas left and simply stopped when they ran out of film.
THIS is the type of film that should be remade, not the wildly successful and great film that has no need to have a different interpretation or chance at life, but the misfires or the should-have-beens--to show the world that these ideas had validity and meaning after all.
★ 6 / 10
Australian slasher punk rock mayhem
BandSAboutMovies
New Zealand was ready to represent when it came to the slasher boom, thanks to this bonkers entry into the canon. It's so violent that it was banned in…
New Zealand was ready to represent when it came to the slasher boom, thanks to this bonkers entry into the canon. It's so violent that it was banned in Australia, a country that was originally made up of convicts.
Director David Blyth's film predates Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, seem as perhaps the first homegrown Kiwi horror film. Blyth has been called "New Zealand's master of transgression" by Fangoria and "one of the great mavericks of New Zealand film" by NZ Listener. He also created the movies Angel Mine, Wound, Transfigured Nights and Moonrise, which is also known as Grampire and stars "Grandpa" Al Lewis.
Years ago, Dr. Howell - a mad scientist trying to prolong human life past death - dealt with his harshest critic by mind-controlling that man's son into shotgun blasting his parents.
Now, Michael Tucker (Michael Hurst, Iolaus from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) has emerged from seven years in a mental ward. He somehow has acquired a loving girlfriend named Sandy and has taken her on a holiday along with their friends Jeannie and Lucas. However, that sojourn is really a front to get him to the remote island where Dr. Howell's clinic is located and gain bloody revenge.
What follows is a descent into the caves of the island, where the doctor's horrible creations live. That's when the film turns into a strange mix of The Hills Have Eyes and Mad Max packed with an equal mix of nihilism and gore.
I really have no category that easily fits this film. It's kind of a slasher. It's somewhat a punk rock biker post-apocalyptic film. And it's also science fiction. It's a glorious mess, all over the place and unafraid to have its hero completely fall apart by the end.
17%
AUDIENCE
· 100 ratings
4.6/10
1.6K
