100 Bloody Acres (2012)

What is it with Australia and/or New Zealand cranking out horror comedies? I swear that there must be something in the water because between the two they have been making some great movies in what is the hardest genre mashup to do correctly. When I saw this one pop up online, I was immediately interested.

Reg and Lindsay, the Morgan brothers, run a small business. They create fertilizer for local farmers using ground up roadkill as an ingredient. They are coming off of the best batch ever and are being pressed for orders. The secret to their recent ultra-successful formula is people! They have been collecting deceased accident victims and putting them in the fertilizer. Though with a big order to fill and the fact that Reg is enamored with a pretty girl they end up with some live ones tied up in the barn! The rest of the movie is Reg and Lindsay fighting, a guy tripping on acid as horrible things happen to him, some relationship stuff, and lots of gory fun.

This is a very funny movie. Some of the humor is obvious and some of it not so much. There are the slapstick moments of hands getting lopped off, the mentioned drug humor, and all of them slipping around in the buckets of blood being sprayed. Basically, what you would expect in a horror comedy. There are also some funny one-liners, and an ongoing gag about the Morgan brothers radio commercial and how people react to it. And of course, with one of the victims dropping acid before things got crazy so we have some funny bits involving his perception of what is happening. But then there is also a subversive and twisted humor that runs deeper in the plot and characters which I need to talk about next.

This never ends well

The filmmakers took the classic scary hillbillies vs city folk and flipped it all around. People end up tied to chairs and fed to a meat grinder, but really isn’t that just recycling? I also found it weird and twisted that while Lindsay is killing people it doesn’t seem that he is evil or that it is personal. It is just business and he is going to do what he has to do to fill the orders. The movie doubles down with the whole Reg and Sophie (the pretty girl) romance that is odd. I don’t think that I’ve seen a movie like this where one of the hillbilly killers turns out to be a hero and some of the victims actually are the asshats. As you can see there is a lot going on with 100 Bloody Acres.

Time to talk about the gore and special effects work. There aren’t that many kills, five if my count is right. We get a couple of people in a meat grinder, another couple are shot, and there is one surprise death that I won’t ruin here. The kills themselves aren’t graphic and are played for laughs. That said they don’t skimp on the blood as it is sprayed all over the place. There are some severed limbs, including a hand that ends up being part of a gag involving a dog that was one of the highlights for me.

Again, 100 Bloody Acres is very funny and because of that worked for me as a not so serious horror movie. There are kills, blood, and more than enough humor to be had with this one. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that. I recommend checking out the movie. As of the writing of this review it is streaming on Shudder (edit: this is no longer the case). Both the service and this flick are well worth your time.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil (2018)

One of the cohosts of the podcast that I do every week had been talking about this movie, so I added it to my list. Then months went by before I was bored and looking for something different. Then I remembered Kyle’s recommendation and logged into Netflix to check it out. Spoiler alert this movie is awesome.

Errementari plays more like a fairy tale then it does a horror flick. Set in the eighteen thirties in Europe (Spain I’m thinking…) we meet a young girl living in a small town. It seems as if she is the responsibility of the church because her mother committed suicide, which is a mortal sin. This is a very Catholic town, so she is ostracized and gets picked on a lot. This ends up putting her in a situation where she sneaks into the local hermit’s home while looking for a doll. Somethings happen that I won’t spoil but I can share that the remainder of the story is her finding out the Blacksmith made a deal with the devil and it went wrong, as these things normally do. Again, there are many twists and turns to the movie and I’m being overly simplistic to keep from spoiling anything.

This is a great movie. The story is engaging and as I’ve already stated plays out very much like a fairy tale. That of course means that at its core Errementari is a morality tale that involves greed, anger, and potentially redemption. You also get a lot of demons and the gates of hell, so that is fun flick. It is paced briskly and moves you thru the story making sure to not waste a scene or kill the momentum. The cast is excellent and helps the audience to see the story and characters doing so with a passion that you don’t often see. This is important because it is really a simple tale with very familiar character archetypes. You can probably predict what will happen as it is following obvious patterns. But between the cast and story it engages the viewer and it just works.

The creature effects work is top notch.

This one is also visually stunning both with the set designs and the creatures. The sets walk a line between total fantasy and a realism. The buildings look like they could be lived in and functional, but also have a slightly off kilter vibe about them. Not sure how they accomplished that, but it fits nicely with the content of the story given the supernatural elements. Speaking of that we get one demon that has a ton of screen time and it looks great. There is an actor giving a performance under the makeup which is done in a way that allows him to be very physical while still looking alien. We get several more demons that don’t get nearly the screen time, but all have individual designs unique the them. I would have expected some cookie cutter assembly line makeup work, but they don’t do that. Even those that are just background characters clearly had a great deal of thought put into the makeup. That is an attention to detail that I noticed and that made me love this movie even more.

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil is still streaming on Netflix as of the writing of this review. If you like horror or fantasy you must check it out. It is fantastic and should have a much bigger audience than it has found so far.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer