BUTCHERED

The advent of digital video also ushered in with it a whole new era of low-budget genre filmmaking. Hopeful directors and actors now had ready access to equipment that would help them realise their dreams of making a movie. However, this also meant that a lot of really bad material was submitted to the cameras, which has, over time, generated some rather bad press for shot-on-video movies. It's a shame that so many have thrown the baby out with the bath-water, as this culture of low-budget filmmaking has also spawned some pretty good films, along with the bad.

Butchered, as you've probably already gathered, is another shot-on-video entry into this ever-growing world of micro-budget films. Fortunately, Butchered is one of the more enjoyable offerings, being under no illusion as to what it wants to be - a splatter-filled slasher flick.

The premise of the tale is rooted firmly in familiar slice 'n' dice territory, with a pair of teenage girls entering an abandoned building, which is supposedly haunted, to spend the night as part of their initiation into a campus sorority house. Unbeknownst to them, however, the girls of the sorority house, along with their respective boyfriends, follow them into the labyrinth-like building in order to play pranks on them and scare the life out of these initiates. But there is also another person in the house - a vicious serial killer. And so the fun begins…

Measured up against films of the calibre that Hollywood put out it's not what would generally be described as a 'good' film by any means, but it works well enough in its own way. This is a movie aimed squarely at the gore-loving crowd, and doesn't assume otherwise. It's pure entertainment for gorehounds, and on that level it works extremely well. However, the performances are rather poor, the script is howlingly bad and the direction is less than competent at times. Having said all that though, I found it hugely enjoyable and I had a great time in the company of this film. The FX are actually pretty good with plenty of grue and gore on display, as well as some obligatory nudity (what slasher flick would be complete without a shower scene?). If you're in the right frame of mind, this is an exceptionally entertaining little film, but it certainly won't be to everyone's tastes.

Hardgore present the film as a full-frame transfer, presumably how it was shot. The picture quality isn't great, but looks about as good as you'd expect from a film with such a minuscule budget as this. I did notice the image being saturated with strange banding lines at certain points throughout the film, but I was forgiving of this considering the budgetary origins of the production, and in all likelihood this is down to source elements rather than to any fault of Hardgore. The audio as a basic Dolby Digital 2.0 English track, but it gets the job done and sounds reasonable enough. Nothing spectacular, but perfectly adequate.

The disc is pretty much a bare-bones affair with only a trailer for the main feature, as well as a handful of trailers for other Hardgore titles, provided. But overall, they've done a reasonable job of presenting this film on DVD - it's not the best disc you'll ever set eyes upon, but I've seen far worse. Definitely worth a look.

Review by C J Otter