BACKWOODS BLOODBATH

(A.k.a. BACKWOODS BLOODBATH: CURSE OF THE BLACK HODAG)

A short prologue introduces us to hillbilly Dave and his sexy brunette girlfriend (Julie Roy). She organises a "birthday treat" for him in his barn one night, stripping down to her black underwear and proceeding to pounce on him.

But their lovemaking is curtailed by something inhuman prowling above them. As you'd imagine, it all ends rather bloodily.

Then we're into the present tense as we meet a group of six city kids travelling to the Wisconsin countryside for a weekend of drinking and generally acting like dorks. Naturally, they listen to bad metal. Don't they always?

When they arrive at the log cabin where they intend to get drunk, shoot animals in the woods and goof around, they meet proprietor Brick (Scott Ash) - a sinister redneck who is quick to warn them of the grisly demise that met the cabin's last occupant.

Undeterred, our hapless wallies proceed to booze it up, get topless in one girl's case, and be generally idiotic. Oh, while listening to bad rock music. Just to tick another low budget horror cliché off, they even stop by a nearby bar where they manage to offend the local hillbillies with their patronising humour.

But before long something sinister, looking not unlike a poor FX man's interpretation of PREDATOR, comes a-hunting human flesh in the woods. And our dim-witted fuck-heads are ripe for the slaughtering ...

Low on originality, basic in look and cheap in execution: BACKWOODS BLOODBATH doesn't immediately strike you as a film with much going for it.

In a way, it hasn't. The cast are largely amateurish, and the script is by-the-numbers despite offering the odd wry one-liner here and there. The pace never gets going properly and the tension is largely absent. Oh, and the monster - a legendary creature known as the Hodag - is about as scary as Kerry Katona (well, maybe not THAT scary).

But the film does have its merits. First off, the gore scenes are satisfyingly splashy. Dominic Ceci and Joseph Mistretta are the young men behind the FX, which are mostly of the primitive low budget variety; think along the lines of the bloody aftermath of Belial's attacks in the original BASKET CASE, and you won't be far off.

Still, there is blood - and plenty of it. And boobies. A couple of the female cast members are very fetching indeed, and their figures are obviously appreciated just as much by first-time director Donn Kennedy.

Elsewhere attempts at humour are wisely subtle. Although they don't always hit their target, they do at least break the potential monotony of this being just another "city folk fall foul of country folk" paranoid horror thriller. There's even room for one character to halt proceedings and sing a little ditty mid-film on his acoustic guitar.

All in all, BACKWOODS BLOODBATH offers nothing new but is hard to disagree with, thanks to a novice but keen cast and some juicy gore scenes. It's cheap and it's undeniably at least 10 minutes too long, but it remains entertaining for the most part.

The film looks fairly soft in a 1.33:1 full-frame aspect ratio which appears to respect the original framing of the film. Colours are deep and the picture's relatively bright considering that much of the film seems to rely on natural lighting.

English 2.0 audio is a mixed bag too. By and large it's okay, with minimal noise or hiss. But occasionally dialogue can be hard to pick up. This is perhaps a flaw in the lo-fi recording of the actual film on DV.

The disc kicks straight in with a simple static main menu page. From there, we're directed to a similarly static scene-selection menu which gives access to BLOODBATH via 6 chapters.

The only film-related bonus feature is an 80-second trailer that plays high on the gore, and the accolades the film has picked up from several websites (as well the numerous times it's made the "official selection" for recent horror festivals).

The only other extras on the disc are trailers for other horror titles also available from MVM Entertainment: ZOMBEAK!, DR CHOPPER, RAZOR'S RING, MR HALLOWEEN and THE HAUNTING OF MARSTEN MANOR. Truly horrific, one and all ...

BACKWOODS BLOODBATH actually isn't that bad. It's dumb and often wilfully so, but shows promise from Kennedy and the young cast. It's also a lot better than any of those other films mentioned in the above trailers.

Review by Stuart Willis