The Daily Horror Grindhouse: Savage Weekend (dir by David Paulsen)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Filmed in 1976 but not released until 1979, Savage Weekend is the story of a brave boom mic that takes a trip to upstate New York for the weekend and ends up witnessing a lot of decadent behavior and, eventually, a few gruesome murders. Sadly, the brave little boom mic apparently has no social skills because everyone pretends like they don’t see it, even though it shows up a few dozen times, always floating at the top of the screen.

It’s also the story of Otis (William Sanderson), a local redneck (I’ve never been to upstate New York but I still find it amusing how movies always portray it as being a step away from Deliverance country) who spends his time talking to his father’s gravestone. Apparently, when Otis was younger, he found out his girlfriend was cheating on him so he branded her with an H. Why an H? Because, we’re told, Otis doesn’t know how to spell whore.

Well, okay then…

Actually, if you’ve watched any number of these type of films, you’ll immediately recognize William Sanderson. Sanderson played a countless number of backwoods weirdos and he always did a pretty good job. (He also played the poignantly sympathetic J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner.) Interestingly enough, in real life, Sanderson has a law degree.

Savage Weekend, incidentally, has a brilliant opening. After running through the woods, a woman finds herself cornered by Otis. As Otis approaches her, he gives her a strange little half-smile. It’s super creepy and scary and the rest of the film never lives up to it.

That said, Savage Weekend is an interesting film, even if it’s not a particularly good one. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or if it’s a happy byproduct of the filmmaker’s general incompetence but Savage Weekend has a truly surreal feel to it. It moves at a deliberate, almost dream-like pace. Characters appear and then vanish for lengthy periods of time. Plot points are raised and then abandoned. As a result of an inconsistent script, much is hinted at without ever being truly revealed. It makes for a very odd viewing experience.

Plotwise, it’s your standard slasher film. A group of people find themselves in an isolated location and are picked off, one-by-one, by a masked killer. Whereas most slasher films feature teenage victims, Savage Weekend is distinguished by the fact that all of the victims are adults and they’re all way too old and successful to justify continually making the type of stupid decisions necessary for a slasher movie to work. Two of them, Robert (Jim Doerr) and Jay (Devin Goldenberg), are stockbrokers. Marie (Marilyn Hamlin) is the ex-wife of the Governor of New York’s press secretary. (At one point, someone mentions that the governor was corrupt and apparently committed suicide. It’s one of those plot points that comes out of nowhere.) Meanwhile, Marie’s sister, Shirley (Caitlin O’Heany), is accompanied by her best friend, Nicky (Christopher Allport). Nicky is flamboyantly gay and, shortly after being introduced, he single-handedly beats up three rednecks and then dramatically announced, “I was raised in the Bronx!”

Since the first murder doesn’t take place until an hour into the film, we spend more time than usual getting to know our victims but none of them behave in any sort of consistent manner, which adds to the film’s dreamlike feel. Nicky clutches a barbed wire fence while watching Shirley fool around with Jay. Marie appears to be on the verge of touching herself while listening to the story about Otis branding his girlfriend. Later, a good deal of screen time is devoted to Marie and another redneck milking a cow, with the camera zooming in on the milk shooting out of the udders. While being stalked by the killer, Nicky puts on makeup while a lingerie-clad Shirley dances through the house while tango music plays on the soundtrack.

It all just feels very odd and strangely paced, as if huge chunks of the script were either not filmed or left on the editing room floor. But that oddness (along with the boom mic) is exactly what makes Savage Weekend an interesting movie.

Halloween Havoc!: Lon Chaney Jr in SPIDER BABY (American General 1964)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

SPIDER BABY is probably my favorite horror-comedy ever, and I include ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN in that statement. This gruesome tale almost didn’t see the light of day, as the original producers went bankrupt, but independent auteur David L. Hewitt (THE WIZARD OF MARS, MONSTERS CRASH THE PAJAMA PARTY) picked it up for his American General distribution company in 1968. Hewitt then used it as the second half of double feature bills. Known variously as CANNIBAL ORGY, THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD, and THE LIVER EATERS, SPIDER BABY has become a cult classic.

We learn in the beginning that the descendants of Ebeneezer Merrye are dying out due to the dreaded “Merrye Syndrome”- a rare affliction causing it’s victims to regress to a sub-human, cannibalistic state. The always welcome Mantan Moreland is seen delivering a package to the creepy old Merrye house. Mantan does some of his tried-and-true “scaredy cat” schtick while looking around the deserted joint. He sticks his head in a…

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Horror Film Review: The Curse of the Cat People (dir by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, you can add the 1944 film The Curse of the Cat People to the list of films that made me cry.

And I know that you’re probably going to point out that it’s already a very long list and I know that some people believe that I cry at every movie that I see. (Listen, if I cried every time that I watched a movie, that would mean that not a single hour would pass without me shedding tears and … well, anyway, lets move on…) But seriously, The Curse of the Cat People is a wonderful and heartfelt film.

Technically, it’s a sequel to the original Cat People. Oliver (Kent Smith) and Alice (Jane Randolph) are married now and they have a six year-old daughter named Amy (Ann Carter). Irena (Simone Simon) does return but we’re never quite sure whether she’s a ghost or if she’s meant to be a figment of Amy’s imagination. There is no mention of Irena being cursed, though a hissing cat does make an appearance at the beginning of the film. In the original Cat People, Elizabeth Russell played a mysterious woman who asked if Irena was her sister. In The Curse of the Cat People, Russell appears in a different role but, interestingly enough, she’s still linked to the memory of Irena.

Instead, The Curse of the Cat People is about Amy. Amy is a shy girl who spends most of her time daydreaming and Ann Carter (who was 8 years old at the time) gives a very real and very authentic performance, one that is totally the opposite of the type of performance that we often expect from child actors. I was a shy child myself (I was famous for always hiding behind my mom whenever I saw a stranger approaching) and, from the minute Amy appeared, I knew exactly how she felt and what was going through her mind.

While Alice feels that Amy’s daydreaming is harmless, Oliver worries about her daughter. At one point, he says that he fears that she’ll never leave her fantasy world and that she’ll grow up to be like Irena. (Interestingly enough, this line suggests that Oliver still doesn’t believe that Irena was actually a cat person.) Amy, meanwhile, has a vision of Irena standing in the backyard and soon, the two of them are best friends.

At the same time, Amy has also become friends with Julia Farren (Julia Dean), an elderly woman who lives in the neighborhood. Just like Amy, Julia lives in a fantasy world. She treats Amy like her own daughter. Meanwhile, Julia refuses to acknowledge her true daughter, Barbara (Elizabeth Russell), accusing Barbara of being a spy and saying she is only pretending to be her daughter. Barbara grows more and more resentful of Amy and that resentment leads her to consider doing a truly terrible thing.

I guess it’s debatable whether or not The Curse of the Cat People can truly be called a horror film. While it does have elements of the horror genre, The Curse of the Cat People is ultimately both a coming-of-age story and a plea for adults to allow their children to be children. It’s all so heartfelt and so wonderfully performed by Ann Carter, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Elizabeth Russell, and Simone Simon that I couldn’t help but cry at the end of the film. The Curse of the Cat People is a great film to watch in October or any other month.

Late Night Cable Horror: An Erotic Tale of Ms. Dracula (2014, dir. Jake Kane)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

It’s October so I’m legally obligated to write about some horror movies per my contract with Through the Shattered Lens. It’s in article 976, section EVIL, subsection 666. So that means I have to do it. And since it’s late night cable, so do the actors.

The movie opens up and two girls are going at it under water for a few seconds. Then the credits roll. I normally wouldn’t mention anything about the credits, but you know what? More people need to come up with stage names based off of jokes from episodes of Seinfeld.

Let me be right up front here. First, this is one of those where the girls keep looking into the camera. Personally, I find that very annoying. Second, it’s probably about 10 minutes of spoof and the rest is sex.

After four blondes get in a hot tub together, as blondes are known to do, they go at it for a while. Then we find out that one of them is Ms. Dracula.

Ms. Dracula is played by Alexis Texas. According to IMDb she’s in numerous porno spoofs including one of Cheers. That has me really scared. I don’t want to see Carla have a threesome with Cliff and Norm. She’s also in one of Beverly Hills, 90210.

Anyways, we now meet Renfield and our married vampire hunters.

You see the girl on the left. That’s Anna Morna. I think I have mentioned her before has given one of the worst performances I have ever seen in Lolita From Interstellar Space. As bad as this movie is, I’m glad I saw it because based on this, she can act better.

In Ms. Dracula, Renfield has created a potion that allows Ms. Dracula to exist at daytime. The vampire hunters have been hired by Van Helsing to retrieve a girl named Ashley who is being held at the Dracula estate. The vampire hunters are going to pretend to be masseuses in order to get inside. And by masseuses, I mean they are going in to have a lot of sex.

Within minutes of stepping through the door, boy goes with Ms. Dracula, and girl goes with Renfield. Oh, and then three girls play strip pool. I’m really glad they made sure to put in that scene from Bram Stoker’s book.

Now remember Van Helsing who hired the two vampire hunters. He just shows up on the estate and has sex with the three girls who were playing strip pool. Yeah, makes perfect sense. I have to stop right here and say I was disappointed that they didn’t go with the obvious of having Van Helsing kill Ms. Dracula with his wooden stake.

Now we know that Ashley is tied up in a room. After trying numerous tools, including a spoon, our husband vampire hunter gets into the locked room.

Then we hear Ashley’s really sad story. They told her she was going to be turned into a vampire and die a virgin. After checking her left breast with his hand, as you should always do before having sex with a virgin, he screws said virgin. She’s remarkably knowledgable for a virgin.

Now Van Helsing shows up in Ms. Dracula’s room and they have sex. No reason given. They are apparently friends. I’d care that this doesn’t make sense, but…

I was too distracted by the giant stuffed giraffe in the scene. Funny enough, there was also a fake giant rooster out by the pool earlier.

Now the married vampire hunters and Ashley get together in the lobby. Then the three other girls show up and the four girls go at it. Meanwhile, the guy is tied up in the shower by Ashley. She found out they were just there for the money they were going to get paid for rescuing her. Then we discover the mystery of Ashley’s sexual knowledge because she runs into Renfield and tells him she’s a virgin as well.

But don’t worry cause everything works out and they all sit and talk to each other. Turns out Van Helsing hired the two vampire hunters cause he needed a diversion so he could come and see Ms. Dracula. All of this is very faithful to the original source material I assure you. Including the ending.

This actually isn’t that bad. It’s just one of those that has way too much sex. I know that’s not unusual for these movies, but the Dracula spoof stuff is actually kind of fun. I wish they had done some more of that. The back and forth between the two vampire hunters was entertaining. Oh, well. Maybe Scared Topless will be better.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar-Nominated Horror Film: Jaws (dir by Steven Spielberg)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s little that is more intimidating than trying to write a review of the 1975 best picture nominee, Jaws.

I mean, seriously, what’s left to be said about this film? Jaws is one of those movies that everyone has seen and everyone loves. And, even if someone somehow hasn’t seen the film, chances are that they still know all about it. They know that it’s a movie about a giant shark that attacks Amity Island, just as the summer season is starting. They know that the town’s mayor refuses to close the beaches, because he doesn’t want to lose the tourist dollars. They know that the final half of the film is three men (Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw) floating around in a boat, searching for a shark. And they certainly know that, whenever you hear John Williams’s iconic theme music, it means that someone is about to get attacked.

Jaws is such a part of our culture that probably not a single day goes by without someone saying a variation on “we’re going to need a bigger boat.” Did you know that, on twitter, Ben Gardner’s boat has its own account? And despite getting pretty graphically dismembered about halfway through Jaws, poor little Alex Kintner has an account as well!

What’s amazing about Jaws is that, even though everyone’s seen it and it’s been parodied a few thousand times, Jaws remains incredibly effective. I still find myself cringing whenever the shark catches Alex Kintner and that geyser of blood explodes out of the ocean. I still jump whenever the shark suddenly emerges from the water and scares the Hell out of Roy Scheider. I still laugh at Richard Dreyfuss’s hyperactive performance and I instinctively cover my ears whenever I realize that Robert Shaw is about to drag his nails across that chalk board.

And then there’s that music, of course! Even after being used, misused, and imitated in countless other films, the Jaws theme still fills me with a sort of existential dread. The mechanical shark was notoriously fake-looking and was rarely seen onscreen as a result. The camera and the music stand in for the shark and it works beautifully.

The one unfortunate thing about Jaws is that it’s been so critically acclaimed and so embraced by audiences that I think people tend to forget that it is primarily a horror film. Mainstream critics tend to look down on horror as a genre so, rather than admit the obvious, they claim that Jaws is more of a thriller than a horror film. Or they talk about how it’s actually meant to be a political allegory or an environmental allegory or an examination of male bonding.

So, let’s just make this clear. No matter what the elitist critics or even Steven Spielberg himself may say, Jaws is primarily a horror film, with that relentless killer shark serving as a prototype for such future horror fiends as Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and both of the Ghostface and Jigsaw Killers. (Jaws even opens with a stereotypical slasher movie death, as a nude and stoned swimmer is suddenly attacked by an unseen killer.) If not for Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss floating in the endless ocean, you would never have had films — like the Blair Witch Project — about people being lost and stalked in the wilderness. And when that shark attacks and graphically rips apart its victims, how different is it from something you might find in a George Romero or Lucio Fulci zombie film?

On the basis of Jaws and Duel, I think it can be argued that, if Steven Spielberg hadn’t become America’s favorite director of crowd-pleasing, Oscar-contending blockbusters, he could have been one of our best horror directors. Sadly, Spielberg has pretty much abandoned horror and I doubt that Jaws would be as effective if it were made today. (I suspect that the temptation to resort to a cartoonish CGI shark would be too great.)

But that’s all speculation.

What matters is that Jaws remains one of the greatest films ever made.

And it’s a horror film!

Horror On The Lens: It! (dir by Herbert J. Leder)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s Horror on the Lens, we are happy to present It!, a Hammer-style British horror film from 1966.

In It!, Roddy McDowall plays Arthur Pimm. Arthur works as an assistant at a museum and, needless to say, he’s eager to move up in his profession. There’s nothing unusual about that. And I guess you could argue that, while it’s certainly not ideal, it’s not necessarily unusual that Arthur still lives with his mother. What is unusual is that Arthur’s mother happens to be dead.

That right — Arthur is totally and completely insane.

As you can probably guess, Arthur is probably the last person who should have control of the immortal and indestructible Golem. But that’s exactly what happens! Soon, Arthur is using the Golem to kill his enemies and kidnap the woman that he loves.

Needless to say, things end with a bang.

Along with being a time capsule of 1966, It! is worth watching for Roddy McDowall’s memorably unhinged lead performance.

Halloween Havoc!: THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES (TCA, 1973)

Posted on October 2, 2015 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

TCM is airing THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES late Friday/early Saturday at 1:30 AM. Do yourselves a favor. Go to sleep. Do not set the DVR. This little opus has nothing to offer. When Faith Domergue gives a film’s best performance, you know you’re in trouble.

The movie is much ado about nothing. John Ireland plays a low-budget film director making a horror flick in the spooky old Beal mansion. Faith is his leading lady opposite hammy Charles Macauley (Blacula). John Carradine’s on hand as the house’s caretaker, so you automatically know he’s a red herring. It’s all about the actors reading lines from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which causes strange things to happen. The only strange thing to happen in the first hour or so is Faith’s cat being found cut in half. Other than that, it’s like swimming through molasses. Seriously, nothing happens until the last ten or fifteen minutes, and when you finally get…

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The Daily Horror Grindhouse: The Manipulator (dir by Yabo Yablonsky)

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Mickey Rooney is … THE MANIPULATOR!

Up until recently, I firmly believed that Love and Other Drugs was the most annoying movie ever made. But then, a few nights ago, I cracked open my Mill Creek 50 Drive In Movie Classic box set and I watched a little film from 1971. I was just looking for a horror film to review for October. Little did I know that I would soon be watching the most annoying movie ever made!

The name of that movie?

The Manipulator.

The star of that movie?

Mickey Freaking Rooney.

In The Manipulator, Mickey plays B.J. Lang, a former Hollywood makeup artist who has had a mental breakdown. He now lives in a dusty warehouse, surrounded by old movie props and mannequins. B.J. spends a lot of time talking to himself and trying on makeup. Sometimes, he wears a fake nose and pretends that he’s Cyrano de Bergerac. And then, at other times, he imagines all of his mannequins coming to life and taunting him. (It’s kind of like the final scene of Maniac, except nobody’s head gets ripped off.) Occasionally, he has weird flashbacks, which are all about giving the filmmaker an excuse to utilize the fish-eye lens and psychedelic lighting.

Eventually, we learn that BJ (and, as I watched the film, I kept wondering if his name was supposed to make viewers think about oral sex) is not alone in his warehouse. There’s a woman (Luana Anders) who is being held prisoner. He has her tied up in a chair and, whenever she begs to eat, he feeds her baby food. BJ calls her Carlotta, though that’s apparently not actually her name. The woman yells a lot. Her first five minutes of screen time consist of her repeating, “MR. LAAAAAAAAAANG” over and over again.

BJ spends most of his time delivering monologues about how Hollywood used to be and occasionally, he demands that Carlotta help him put on a play. At one point, BJ appears to have a heart attack and this leads to Carlotta going, “DON’T DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE, MR. LAAAAAAAAANG” over and over again.

And then a homeless bum (Keenan Wynn) shows up and wanders about for five minutes before dying.

The problem with writing about a film like The Manipulator is that, just by describing the plot, you make it sound more interesting than it actually is. You’re probably reading this and thinking, “Wow, this sounds really weird! I need to see it at least once…”

No, you don’t. It may sound weird but ultimately, it’s more emptily pretentious than anything else. This was both director Yabo Yablonsky’s first and final film and there is not a single camera trick that he does not employ. We get the weird angles, the random moments of slow motion, the even more random moments when the film is suddenly sped up, the extreme close-ups, the sudden blackouts, the ragged jump cuts, and, of course, lots of rack focus and zoom lens use. Compared to The Manipulator, the direction of Getting Straight appears to be mild and conventional! The film does feature three talented performers but none of them seem to have the slightest idea what the movie is about or who they are supposed to be playing. In particular, both Rooney and Wynn seem to be making up their dialogue as they go along.

And really, that’s why The Manipulator is so annoying. It should have, at the very least, been an insane misfire. Instead, it’s just boring.

Sorry, Mickey.

Icarus File No. 2: Maximum Overdrive (dir by Steven King)

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There is exactly one effective sequence to be found in Maximum Overdrive, a horror film from 1986 that attempts to show us what would happen if all of Earth’s machines decided to destroy humanity.

It takes place at the end of a little league game. The coach, happy that his team has won, declares soda for everyone! He walks over to the soft drink machine and puts in his coins and…nothing happens. The coach stares at the machine perplexed. His team gathers around him.

Suddenly, a can flies out of the machine and hits the coach in the groin. Coach falls to his knees, just to get another can driven straight into his skull, leaving him with a big bloody hole in his head. As the coach twitches, his teams starts to run away. Suddenly, the machine is shooting cans out at them. Some of the kids escape but quite a few don’t.

Suddenly, as the kids flee, a driverless steamroller crashes through a fence and drives across the field, graphically flattening one of the players…

It’s over-the-top, it’s kind of scary, it’s fun in a naughty sort of way, and it’s exciting to watch. It’s totally absurd and yet it’s effective at the same time. It’s a really brilliant scene, one that hints at what Maximum Overdrive could have been. It hints that Maximum Overdrive‘s first-time director did have some potential and watching it, one is tempted to feel a pang of regret over the fact that he never directed another film after this one.

However, then you watch the rest of Maximum Overdrive and you realize that one effective scene was a total fluke. To your horror, you realize that this film’s director (and screenwriter) has decided to set nearly the entire film in the ugliest and most disgusting truck stop in the world. You realize that the director has no idea how to maintain suspense and that his idea of horror appears to be having a lot of trucks constantly circling the truck stop. And then, worst of all, you realize that the unlikable caricatures inside the truck stop are meant to be our heroes!

And you find yourself wondering if things could possibly get any worse. Well, believe me — they can.

First off, a guy named Camp Loman (Christopher Murney) shows up and reveals himself to be a total lech and then starts trying to sell bibles and really, what do you expect from someone named Camp Loman? And, what’s annoying, is that the film’s director seems to think that he’s blowing our mind by presenting us with an hypocritical bible salesman. I mean, seriously — the amount of time devoted to Camp Loman will make you nostalgic for scenes of a steamroller crushing a child.

And then Emilio Estevez shows up as our hero but he scowls through the entire movie and delivers all of his lines through gritted teeth, as if he’s pissed off about appearing in Maximum Overdrive and really, who can blame him? That said, it doesn’t really make for an enjoyable performance.

But hey — Emilio’s not the only person in the truck stop. There’s also Pat Hingle, playing the owner of the truck stop. He’s overweight, wears a tie, smokes a cigar, and speaks with a vaguely Southern accent. Hmmmmm, do you think he’s going to be a bad guy?

Oh! And let’s not forget the waitress played by Ellen McElduff. “WE MADE YOU!” she shouts at the machines and then she shouts it again and again and again and again and it’s almost as if the film is being directed by a guy so in love with his own dialogue that he doesn’t realize how annoying the same line gets when it’s screeched over and over again.

And I haven’t even gotten to the helium-voiced newlyweds yet…

When I recently watched Maximum Overdrive on Encore, there were a lot of things that annoyed me, such as the bad pacing, the bad acting, the bad dialogue, the bad special effects, the bad cinematography, and the bad everything else. But what really got to me was just how inconsistent this movie was. Some machines turned into killers but oddly, others did not. At one point, a machine gun starts shooting at the people in the truck stop but the weapons that Pat Hingle keeps in the truck stop never turn on their human masters. Seriously, if you’re going to make a terrible movie, at least be consistent.

So, you may be asking, why is this an Icarus File? Well, it was directed by Stephen King, the writer who is routinely called the “master of horror.” King may be a great writer but, judging from this movie, he was a really crappy director. I imagine, when the film was in pre-production, the logic was that if King could write a scary book then he could definitely direct a scary movie.

Nope.

It turns out that, just as Icarus should never have gotten so close to the sun, Stephen King should never have directed a movie.

Previous Icarus Files:

Cloud Atlas

Horror Film Review: The Green Inferno (dir by Eli Roth)

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

AGCK!

Seriously, it’s hard for me to think of any recent film that has made me cringe as much as Eli Roth’s cannibal epic, The Green Inferno. A film about a bunch of Occupy activists who end up getting eaten by a native tribe in the jungles of Peru, The Green Inferno does not shy away from showing us all the icky cannibal action. Eyes are scooped out of heads. Heads are removed from bodies. Flesh is ripped off of a bones. Blood flows everywhere and …. well, let’s just say that I didn’t have much of an appetite after watching The Green Inferno.

And, to be honest, I have no idea whether or not the gore effects were realistic or not. It always amuses me when some of my fellow film bloggers say, “That’s not what the inside of a human body really looks like.” Like we would know! Listen, I have no idea what it’s like to cook a human body and I never will. It may have been realistic or it may not have been. It doesn’t matter. All I know is that, in a very visceral and frightening way, the effects worked. They made me look away from the screen. They inspired me to say, “Agck!” and I imagine that’s the exact response that Roth was going for.

If The Green Inferno was a box office success, I imagine that thousands of people would leave the movie and promptly google, “Can you get cannibals high by stuffing a baggie of marijuana in a dead body?” (The Green Inferno certainly argues that you can but it also suggests that, once a cannibal tribe gets the munchies, bad things will happen as a result.)

However, I doubt that The Green Inferno is going to be a box office success, at least not during its theatrical run. The film was originally made in 2013 and it’s taken two years for it to finally get a theatrical release and it’s pretty much being dumped into theaters with little fanfare. Not surprisingly, it’s currently getting slammed by most mainstream critics and it’s hard to imagine anyone who doesn’t review films online waking up and spontaneously saying, “I want to see that movie about people being eaten alive!” (Myself, I had no great desire to see it but I felt somewhat obligated, considering that I’m a self-described grindhouse fan and horror lover.) Jeff and I saw The Green Inferno on Tuesday, at the Cinemark 14 in Denton, Texas. The theater was nearly deserted.

And, in many ways, it is a difficult film to recommend, though that’s exactly what I’m doing. It’s not an easy film to watch but it does what it does well. Back in the day, many grindhouse films were advertised as being “a film that goes all the way” and, for better or worse, The Green Inferno goes all the way. At a time when so many horror films are either watered down or just the usual found footage rehash, The Green Inferno is a film that actually made me squirm in my seat. It’s a film that delivered exactly what it promised and that does count for something. The Green Inferno is being advertised as being nightmare fuel and that’s exactly what it is.

(SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER IF YOU’RE GOING TO WHINE ABOUT SPOILERS AS A RESULT!)

There’s an interesting and unexpected political subtext to The Green Inferno and, I would argue, that political subtext is exactly why so many online critics are having such a violently negative reaction to the film. The Americans who end up getting eaten by the cannibals are all Occupy-style political activists. The reason that they are in Peru is to protest a company that is chopping down the rain forests. When they do their protest, they all wear masks (which makes the Occupy comparison obvious) and they use social media to make sure that the whole world is watching. It’s only later, once the surviving activists are all locked away in a cage and waiting to be eaten, that they learn that their leader, the arrogant Alejandro, was actually working for a rival logging company. And now, they’re desperately waiting for that rival company to show up, tear down the rain forest, and save their lives.

And, oh my God — some reviewers (mostly the ones that write at sites like the A.V. Club) are so upset about this! But, honestly, those reviewers are missing the point. The Green Inferno is not attacking the politics of the activists. Instead, the film is attacking the shallowness of the activists themselves. Almost all of them are caucasian, all of them come from privileged backgrounds, and all of them are so high on their own self-righteousness that they don’t even realize that they’re being manipulated by the same system they claim to be destroying. And, just like the college students who spent a few months doing the Occupy thing and then went on to get a job on Wall Street, they ultimately expect the system to protect them even as they play revolutionary. At the end of the film, hundreds of new white, privileged protestors are wearing t-shirts decorated (Che-style) with Alejandro’s face. It’s a deeply cynical vision of political activism but, in many ways, it’s far more realistic than a lot of people want to admit and it makes The Green Inferno a bit more interesting than your typical gore film.

(Add to that, there are thousands of movies about heroic political activists so what’s wrong with having one film where they all get eaten in the Amazon rain forest? Seriously, it’s not the end of the world…)

Admittedly, the film does make a huge mistake. It features a mid-credits scene which sets up a sequel. (And a sequel was announced way back in 2013 but has apparently been abandoned.) That mid-credits scene — which feels more appropriate for a Marvel film — is totally unnecessary. There’s no need for a sequel. The Green Inferno accomplishes exactly what it set out to do.