Extreme Flick Week: August Underground’s Mordum - 2003

August Underground’s Mordum

Director(s):              

Jerami Cruise, Killjoy,

Michael Todd Schneider,

Fred Vogel, Cristie Whiles

2003

Extreme

As with the first part in this trilogy the plot is very shallow and concerns a couple of individuals’ killing- and rape spree. They stop at nothing to for fill their sexual desires including masturbating with a chopped off penis and raping a dead child! One would think that these things would be shocking beyond belief but that’s not entirely the case. Of course it’s disturbing but the whole movie is so hard to watch due to shaky handheld cameras anyway so when we come to the most disturbing part we’re already so tired of watching that we don’t have the energy to get revolted anyway.

Frankly, I had a difficult time staying awake and all the other times I’ve tried to watch it I had the same problem! It’s not disturbing in the right manner that’s for sure! If it were to shock me and make me feel sick (as I think the intention are) I wouldn’t have any problems keeping myself awake but this is just SO boring!

Comparing it to the first movie I would say that this is more extreme. But what’s the use if it doesn’t shock you? It’s hard seeing what’s happening and I doubt that a blu-ray edition would make anything any clearer. The whole point is to create an illusion of a crappy hand held camera and that illusion works great! That makes the picture quality one of the main problems and part of the reason why it’s so boring to watch.

From what I can work out the make-up effects are excellent though! That’s one of the better aspects of the movie. They were great in the first one and they are equally realistic here! So are the acting as well! The feeling of realism is the one true asset of the film and it’s nice to see such a low budget movie without crappy camera angels and lousy acting non realistic acting. How many times haven’t you seen great plots getting ruined by actors that couldn’t deliver a line if their life depended on it?

The bottom line is not very positive though. There are far more negative things to say than positive and the fact that I can’t stay awake for the 77 minutes speaks for itself. I don’t like this at all but I hope that the final part of the trilogy can make up for this!

2/10

Review: The Ghouls - 2003

The Ghouls

Director: Chad Ferrin

2003

Horror

Eric Hayes makes his living with his film camera. He sells the revolting footage that he captures to the highest bidder but doesn’t make a fortune out of it. In fact he’s always looking for the one great story that will make him rich. He follows the police around hoping to get some sellable footage and more or less live of other people’s misery. One day he does discover something different though! He tries to film it but when he’s about to sell it there’s no film in the camera. He doesn’t give up and soon he finds what he’s looking for again, some footage that are so gruesome that it’ll be worth a fortune on the open market. It’ll be something to die for! He has discovered the cannibalistic ghouls…

Something that’s great about Cine Du Mondes releases is the short introduction sequence they sometimes have where the director gets a chance to tell us about his movie. This is the first ever edition with extras of this film in the UK. That’s what Chad Ferrin tells, I don’t really know and I don’t really care as I’m not a big fan of extras. As far as collecting is concerned this should be a great release though! Cine Du Monde has released two other titles by Chad in the past (Unspeakable and Easter Bunny Kill! Kill!) and I see no reason not to get this in your collection as well.

It is, of course, a low budget film! It doesn’t show too much though. It’s pretty nicely acted and the story is well thought through. There might be better gore effects out there but I think these are quite adequate. For me it isn’t the gore anyway, there is a deeper sense to the movie which I’ll try to analyse here. Bear with me…

The movie is about the discovery of cannibals. They look like ghouls but that isn’t the point. Who are the real cannibals on the world really? I say it’s the ones who cannibalize other people’s misery by making a living out of capturing the violence on film. There, that didn’t take too much linguistic skills did it? In other words I think the title may very well be referring to the profession that actually discovers the ghouls. Does Eric Hayes find himself eventually? Does he feel regret? Remorse? Does he realize that he’s just a pawn in the big boys market? This is what I think about when I see it. I have a tendency to analyse too much but you can’t say that I couldn’t be right, could you?

In this sense it’s a great film. I like being made to think a bit and I think this movie does that to you even if it might not be deliberate. And there’s the other side to it as well. If you don’t allow your thoughts to float away you can still have an enjoyable time. The story, even without any of the layers I just described, is entertaining anyway. You can watch it as a straight forward horror flick or as a clever existential film, the choice is yours!

6/10

Images: © 2003 Crappy World Films © 2011 Cine du Monde (UK Licence)