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
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