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Reviews
Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007)
One of the worst films I've seen.
When "Deranged" was made the film-makers saw fit to turn Ed Gein into Ezra Cobb even though the resultant film was actually quite close to the facts of the notorious case. I presume that enough was fictionalised that they thought they should change names and such.
"Ed Gein - The Butcher Of Plainfield" masquerades as a true story retelling of the Gein case, but actually bears very little resemblance to the history. As a biopic type film it is a travesty. If ever a film needed names changing it is this one, far more so than "Deranged". It is as close to the true crime story as "Dirty Harry" was to the true story of the Zodiac killings.
OK, so, that annoyance aside, how is it as a horror film? Well, as a horror film, well, as a film generally, it is quite appalling. One of the worst films I have sat through in months. Issues run thus: 1) Kane Hodder is quite astonishingly miscast as Ed Gein. Utterly unsuitable in the part, Hodder just lumbers through glowering menacingly. Very bad.
2) Kane Hodder is the best actor in the film! The rest of the cast are rather "amateur dramatics" and utterly unengaging. It is painful to witness some lines being delivered.
3) The occasional efforts of stylish film-making seem to come from "The Big Book Of Moody Cinematography Cliché". You've seen it all before, better executed. Aside from the efforts at style, the rest of the film-making is largely inept: cameras shake, framing is bad, there are overlong pointless shots holding back the pace...which leads me to...
4) It seems to go on forever. It is under 90 minutes in length, but sitting through it is an ordeal. You'd swear it ran two and a half hours.
5) Ed Gein almost seems secondary. Mostly the film is concerned with the family affairs of a newly promoted Deputy Sheriff. Said Deputy is played by an abysmal actor upon whose shoulders no film should rest.
Is anything good about it? Well, the gore FX are very good. Some convincing wounds are in display and the make-up is generally excellent. None of this, however, makes up for the massive failings of the film.
It doesn't even have any kitsch value, it's just bad; not enjoyably bad, not "so bad it's good", just genuinely bad. A film to avoid and despise.
Infested (2002)
A smug attempt that falls flat.
"Infested" tries to do too much, and derails itself in the process. It's main crime is a dependence on easy option, post-modern references to other films to entertain Generation X video renters. This gets tired very quickly and soon takes on the air of "rip-off" rather than "homage". It intends a kitsch "so bad its good" appeal, but ends up just being bad.
There is some good acting to be found however, from actors who clearly got the joke and entered into the spirit of the affair. It's not enough though - shoddy direction, lazy camerawork and an overall atmosphere of "naffness" are too strong to be overcome.
Also, as in "Night of the Lepus", the monster animals just aren't a frightening concept at all. Flies! What a stupid idea! Not even wasps or bees, but flies. I'm sure I'm not alone in having never shivered at the thought of a blue-bottle... It also feels like a lame monster was chosen as some kind of joke, but it's about as funny as it is scary.
I'm afraid, "Infested" fails to become a "beer-and-a-joint-laugh-at-the-lame-film" experience. I think it tries too hard. It suffers from the same problem as Tarantino's "Kill Bill Vol.1" in that you just end up wishing you'd watched one of the films it rips off instead.