Toxie's Triple Terror DVD Review
In summer 2004, BCI Eclipse announced that they had licensed some titles from Troma for DVD release on their Brentwood Home Video label, famous for releasing multi-packs of horror movies. On July 13th, the first two sets of Toxie's Triple Terror were released. Volume 1 features Curse of the Cannibal Confederates, Demented Death Farm Massacre: The Movie, and Deadly Daphne's Revenge and Volume 2 includes Evil Clutch, Chillers, and Beyond Evil. But Troma fans are left to wonder if the sets are worth picking up, since there's no extras except for a trailer on each and the titles are not the most popular of Troma's catalog. So I contacted BCI about letting me review the first two volumes and they hooked me up with some screener copies to review.
The packaging of the DVDs are three translucent slim Amaray cases, with advertising for the other volume of Toxie's Triple Terror on the inside of each. The three slimcases are packed inside of a glossy full-color cardboard box. All of the films are mastered at a video bitrate of about 5.8mbps and have audio in Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448kbps. However, it does not appear that the audio has been remastered for 5.1, so the presentation seems a little bit pointless, even though it does give the audio a bit more bass. The 5.1 does make the Troma intro music sound ten times better, though. Every disc, with the exception of Beyond Evil, includes the trailer for each film. With that out of the way, we'll take a look at each individual disc.
Curse of the Cannibal Confederates
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Curse of the Cannibal Confederates is
a film that even Lloyd Kaufman claims is terrible. In All I Need To Know
About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger, he claims its one of
the top five worst Troma releases ever. However, the title (which was
originally Curse of the Screaming Dead) always stuck with me and I
always wanted to see the film regardless of its reputation. The film opens up with some footage that will later appear at the end (which Troma added, probably to help out the slow pace of the opening) before we get into the real story. Six friends are taking a hunting trip in their RV. The most notable characters are Mel, who's a kleptomaniac that recently stole a ring (I guess he did this just so we'd be sure to know that he steals things for a later plot point) and Kiyomi, a young blind Japanese girl (who's credited as Blind Kiyomi, probably because she couldn't act blind to save her life). Anyway, the group takes a different path to find a place to camp and discovers a confederate graveyard and a church. Inside of a wooden chest, they discover a confederate flag. Weird things begin to happen, including a gravestone moving on one of them and later, after they set up camp, they're attacked by a group of dead confederate soldiers. As they fight off the rebel soldier zombies, we learn that Mel stole a journal that one of the confederate soldiers wrote. It tells of how they were tortured and a voodoo priest put a curse on them so they could get their revenge. With a plot synopsis like that, you'd think
the film wouldn't be too bad. But it is... trust me. I've seen some much
worse Troma releases (The Dark Side Of Midnight, anyone?), but
Curse of the Cannibal Confederates is pretty pitiful. Everyone in the
film either overacts (ie: Christopher Gummer as Mel) or delivers their lines
worse than the most atrocious b-movie actor you could imagine. At times, the
delivery of lines alone was worth a laugh. My favorite example is when Sarah
asks to have a gun and Mel randomly shouts "NO!" and suddenly it cuts to
something else. One of the worst performances has to come from Rebecca Bach,
whose attempts to play the feminist character Sarah leads to some of the
worst line deliveries in cinema history. But what really doesn't help out the film is the incredibly slow pacing and lack of gore. The film runs at such a slow pace, I was tempted to fast forward a few scenes, but didn't due to my loyalty to reviewing unaltered films. I'm not a gore-hound by any means, but you'd come to expect some blood and guts from a film titled Curse of the Cannibal Confederates and previously titled Curse of the Screaming Dead. Gore eventually does come in an overlong five-minute montage that brings the film to a screeching halt, even though it was already running at a snail's pace. The technical aspects aren't too much better either. The film's shot on grainy 16mm footage that's covered in print damage and suffers from only using availible light. Sometimes the footage is washed out and occassionally, it actually looks pretty decent. The audio is pitiful, with hiss, buzz, and wind noise appearing and disappearing between edits. Though Curse of the Cannibal Confederates is a pretty terrible film, it does hold your interest, surprisingly. It's one of those films you can compare to watching a train wreck, where it's so bad and painful to watch, but you still want to watch it. It's worth checking out as long as you know that you're in for about 88 minutes of terrible filmmaking and you're ready to laugh at that fact. Get together with some friends and the mind-altering substance of your choice and it could be one hell of a party flick! VIDEO: RATINGS: |
Demented Death Farm Massacre
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titled like Demented Death Farm Massacre: The Movie, I was expecting
to have a Tromatic classic on my hands. I was completely mistaken. What I
got instead was a boring and seemingly pointless film that doesn't have any
redeeming qualities. Pretty negative for an opening of one of my reviews,
isn't it? Trust me, Demented Death Farm Massacre: The Movie deserves
it. The film opens with some footage of Harlen, a moonshine dealer, making his rounds with some opening credits that were very poorly added on video. Then we're treated to an opening from David Carradine as "the of Hell." He pops up occasionally throughout the film to give us some random quote that doesn't really have much to do with the film. It looks like the director was inspired by Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Glen Or Glenda, as Bela Lugosi has a similar role in it. Anyway, four diamond thieves happen to run out of gas in Harlen's neck of the woods and begin using he and his wife's home as refuge. One of them rapes Harlen's wife and then comes up with the idea to steal Harlen's moonshine business, when Harlen starts to take his revenge. Trust me, Demented Death Farm Massacre is a dud. The acting ranges from somewhat passable (George Ellis is the only one who shines) to piss-poor. The pace of the film is dreadfully slow and its fairly obvious that they tried to pad out the length of the film by inserting long walking and driving sequences and even slowing down certain scenes. The film was already slow moving enough, though, so that only adds to the mind-numbingly boring effect of the film. According to the IMDb, the film was released as a soft-core vehicle under the name Hillbilly Hooker. That's surprising, as there's only one shot of nudity in the entire film, which is a shame, because the cast contains some very atractive women. To sum this review up: Don't bother... you'll thank me later. VIDEO: The film is fairly well shot, with very rich colors and a good solid black level. Print damage is scarce and grain rears its head occasionally, but that's to be expected with a film that's this low-budget. At the 29 minute mark there's a shot that's extremely out-of-focus, though there's nothing BCI could've done to fix that. Also, it appears that the end credits were shot on some sort of video, as it contains a bit of chroma noise and is very jumpy. Overall, BCI delivers a great looking presentation for such a lackluster film. AUDIO: Just like the other Toxie's Triple Terror titles, this film is oddly presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 (448kbps), but not mixed for surround sound. There's a bit of hiss and the dialogue is extremely scratchy throughout most of the film. I also think I caught an audio glitch at the 1:36 mark, but it may be my player. RATINGS: |
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Deadly Daphne's Revenge
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Deadly Daphne's Revenge is a perfect
example that looks can be decieving. Troma marketed the film as an I Spit
On Your Grave-esque thriller, but what we actually get is a fairly dull
rape film that spends most of its time focusing on the courts. The film opens up with a group of buddies driving their RV out to a resort they own out in the woods (why they felt the need to drive an RV, when they'd be staying in such a nice place, I don't know). The gang's lead by a racist, sexist pig named Charlie. His half brother Steve, the wimpy Bruce (who reminds me of a geeky Joe Estevez or Roger Cline from Unspeakable). On their way, they pick up a young 17 year old hitchhiker named Cindy. When they get to the cabin, Charlie begins to get a bit too frisky after a few beers and Steve takes Cindy upstairs to keep her away from him. Cindy ends up convincing Steve to have sex with her and afterwards, he finds everyone asleep downstairs. Thinking everything will be safe for Cindy, he goes to sleep in another room. Well, Charlie and Bobo end up raping Cindy and she flees the cabin. Cindy then goes to an attorney and the film follows her legal battle against the men. I can sum this film up in one word: boring. It's like the kind of film you'd see on Lifetime Movie Network, instead of a Troma film. If you're wondering where the title came from, it's from a small subplot involving Charlie and a black woman named Daphne. The only time we see her is in the first minute and the last 5 or 10 minutes of the film. If you can find it cheap and there's nothing else to watch, I guess you should check it out. There are definately films that are even worse out there, but Deadly Daphne's Revenge is a dud. VIDEO: Deadly Daphne's Revenge is very well shot and is the best looking presentation on the first volume of Toxie's Triple Terror. The image remains consistantly nice throughout the entire film, with good colors, perfect black level, and very little grain. AUDIO: Another oddly mastered 5.1 track that fares just as well as the picture. However, there's not much spectacular, as the film's pretty much dialogue driven. RATINGS: |
Overall, Toxie's Triple Terror features two very poor films and one film that's worth a look for a "so-bad-it's-good" viewing. Since the list price is around $10 anyway, I'd say it's worth picking up just for Curse of the Cannibal Confederates, which is an unintentionally hilarious little film.
Volume 2 reviewed on the next page
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