This movie has the worst cover art I have seen in a long time. A long-haired old guy holding a knife does not inspire or frighten me. All it does is tell me that I get to look forward to another weak horror-icon wannabe spouting crazy talk and trying his best to be wacky and unsettling. After my initial disdain for the box art, I flipped the cover over to discover the true horror of this experience which came in the form of the excessively long running time that I knew I was going to be subjected to. I have seen enough low budget horror movies to know that I was in for a long night of bad acting and a picture that is way too convoluted for its own good. At least I can say I was right on the money in this assumption.

The movie is centered around a building in the middle of the woods that resembles a church and is inhabited by the crazy preacher from the front cover (George Russell) and his gang of thugs who have a penchant for overalls and ski masks. These guys like to kidnap women and frat boys so that they can strip them down and torture them Saw-style. The nutty preacher then chows down on their flesh and the leftovers are sent to an old guy in a suit who also has a taste for the cannibal cuisine. It is the cult's good fortune when a group of young adults decide to have a party in the woods, act irresponsibly, and generally behave like idiots. All of these characters seem extremely flawed and there is nobody to cheer for. Even the girl in the sexy schoolgirl outfit is bitchy enough to become unlikable. This may have been fine had the running time been 90 minutes like a normal slasher movie but it was getting pretty old by the two-hour mark.

Even though the movie was overlong, I was able to get through it in one sitting. I think this is mainly because I didn't want to have to spend another night trying to slog my way through the second half. There is not much of a plot as most of the film is spent introducing the numerous characters and their various subplots which are mostly unresolved by the end of the film. This attempt to mimic Robert Altman directing Hostel does not work because the characters are not written or acted well enough for me to care. Aside from a drunk chick named Collette and the main girl with the hot legs, it is difficult telling characters apart. Things pick up considerably when a few of the characters decide to rescue their friends from the preacher's lair but by this time, I began to daydream about one day riding camels in Egypt and visiting penguins in Antarctica. My biggest complaint with this flick is that the lighting and sound is technically poor throughout which makes it difficult and annoying to watch. This becomes more of a frustration when unnecessary footage of meat being chopped up is intercut with the torture scenes. This type of editing brings to mind Ulli Lommel which is never a good thing.

The strangest thing about this movie is what happens after the end credits. I noticed a few thank-yous to some churches as the credits were rolling which intrigued me. Following the credits, there is a short featurette about a woman named Marjorie Russell to whom the film is dedicated. She was the preacher George Russell's mom in real-life and she fought hard to protect the environment from development by power companies. In the process, she founded a Church and established it in the woods of Texas (it is the building featured throughout the film). She passed away and it appears as though George made the movie in memory of his mother with plans to use the profits to continue the fight against the power company. This bizarre story of how a Church made an exploitative "torture-porn" knock-off with various scenes of nudity and general unpleasantness as a way to finance a struggle against corruption makes for a much more compelling tale than the fiction they created. I wonder if anyone documented that journey and what became of it. Now that George Russell has now passed away as well, we may never know. (Josh Pasnak, 2/24/09)

Directed By: Carlo Rodriguez.
Written By: Carlo Rodriguez.

Starring: Michelle Vanegas, Greg Clark, Brooke Riley, George H. Russell.

Picture Ratio: Full Frame (though it looks more like a rectangle).

Picture Quality: The movie is quite dark but this is likely due to poor lighting as opposed to a bad transfer.

Extras: Bare bones.