Changing Life - Der Fluch Der Zombies (2001)

Changing Life - Der Fluch Der Zombies (2001) - Germany
Directed by: Ted Kaufmann, Jan Deichen, Dominic Schulschenk

ABOUT THE FILM:

Changing Life starts with a drug deal in the forest between two young men. After negotiating prices, the dealer leaves to take a piss and accidentally leaves a bag of weed in the chair, which his buyer steals. The dealer comes back to discover his weed is missing, and chases the buyer down to savagely beat and kill him with a stick, leaving his corpse in the open.

As the dealer meets up with some more of his buddies to continue doing business, they are interrupted by someone sneaking in their hideout who issues them a warning. Many years prior, a teacher and his students had supposedly gone missing within the woods, and it's alleged that the teacher killed all the students and himself, thus putting a curse on the forest. The dealers aren't quite buying it, cap the guy and flee. As they make their escape through the forest, the dead suddenly begin to rise and pursue them. The dealers get very lucky as they stumble across a car with an axe and a chainsaw inside. Will they survive?

REVIEW:

Sure, it's a story that's been done before with the old wive's tale about people disappearing into the forest, but the movie takes this cliche concept and manages to twist it into something fun and entertaining with a group of druggies with guns.

At only 45 minutes in length, the movie never wears out its welcome and displays some decent splatter scenes. Body parts are sawn and hacked off, zombies are shot several times until they're dead, the undead feast on the living and many organs and gallons of blood are spilled...

Despite being an amateur production, Changing Life is pretty well-made given the circumstances. The handheld camera work, while shaky in some spots, is decent enough and easy to watch. The movie is well-edited with good cuts, transitions and fitting music. The special effects, while cheap yet again, are just a lot of fun! Ridiculous amounts of blood spray and spurt out of every wound and cut, painting the dealers red practically. Some of the highlights include an axe to the arm and a zombie with a big afro.

The only thing the film could've done differently is maybe change up the ending a bit, as the ending is a little underwhelming. But I digress because I had a lot of fun watching this. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the filmmakers went on to do anything else. That sucks, because Changing Life certainly shows their potential!

RELEASES:

-Changing Life was first released on VHS by Sen Productions on October 19, 2001.

-The film was later re-released by Sen Productions, this time on Super Video-CD on September 24, 2003. The disc comes with animated menus and a handful of trailers.

-And finally, on October 31, 2004, Changing Life was released on a limited edition DVD with a slew of extras including an audio commentary, interviews, trailers, a photo gallery and English and German subtitles.

Check out their website to watch or order the movie:

http://www.changinglife-themovie.com/

Aberración (2000)

Aberración (2000) - Chile
Directed by: Patricio Valladares

ABOUT THE FILM:

Aberración is a 22 minute Chilean film that was made in 2000, in the infancy of filmmaker Patricio Valladares's career. This is one of the earliest gore films, if not the earliest, to ever come out of the country, and was shot in 2000 with a budget of 15,000 Chilean pesos (roughly $18 in USD).

We follow a man living in a dorm with his roommates, who pours a bag of chopped mushrooms (?) into some water, and for some reason, his skin rapidly decays to a nauseating green and he attacks one of his dorm mates, who also transforms and begins to attack others.. Will anyone survive?

REVIEW:

The story is extremely straightforward and easy to follow, despite the lack of any English subtitles. However most people who watch this probably aren't in it for the story. If anything, they're in it for the gore. Aberración may be a very rough and cheap piece of amateur gory filth, but simply put, this little film does not fuck around. Within only a few minutes, our lead has already transformed into his demonic form and begins to feast on his misfortunate victims. He tears at his dorm mate's jugular with his razor sharp teeth, bites open his victim's stomach and disembowels them, all the while smearing the organs on their face. Eyeballs are also plucked out and eaten, and there are many stabbings and eviscerations.

Sounds pretty brutal, right? Well, the idea definitely is. But it would be better if it wasn't so badly executed.

The acting is mediocre at best; at some points, you can tell the actors are trying to keep in their laughter. Despite the occasionally interesting visual effects and edits, the camera work is quite shaky and very muddy looking (presumably shot with a cheap digital video camera). As I stated before, the story doesn't really matter that much. So let's touch on the gore, shall we? ..The unconvincing, butcher-shop gore effects look pretty silly, with very thick and bright red fake blood. The make-up in general seems very caked-on, with everything just laid on top of the actor, or with the guts just hiding underneath a shirt. Definitely not the best special effects, but they're far from being the worst. Also I gotta give credit to the actors; I don't know if I'd be able to stand having smelly animal guts and offal rubbed all over my face.

With everything I mentioned set in stone, just mix some metal music into the edit and you have Aberración, a rather bare-bones but amusing amateur splatter movie. Worth checking out at least once, if you've got 22 minutes to kill or if you just wanna watch some crappy Chilean shot-on-video demon madness!

RELEASES:

-Aberración was released on an extremely rare DVD sometime in the early 2000's, by Vallastudio. The exact date of its release is unknown, but the back of the cover has a blurb followed by "España, 2003"

-The short is officially available to watch on YouTube, courtesy of the director. You can watch it here.

Keepsake (2019)

Keepsake (2019) - United States
Directed by: Nathan Hine

ABOUT THE FILM:
Keepsake is the latest endeavor from Pennsylvania-based film-crew Hardgore Core Productions. I had previously covered their short film The Last Days of Livermore, a short film that was surprisingly well-made and executed with heart and care.
Keepsake fares no differently, as we are presented with another eerie tale, this time about a man who meets up with a cutie at a restaurant. They make their way out to a ramshackle house that had been within the young lass' family for years. The man is skeptical, but is further enticed by a drug he is fed by the yonug beauty. Before entering the house, he sees some rather morbid premonitions of the neighbors waving severed hands at him, but he writes it off as a side-effect of the drug.
And then the two made their way upstairs..

REVIEW:
Similar to Last Days, there are still a few minor sound issues, such as dialogue that is difficult or even impossible to decipher at times. But beyond that minor error, this is another really solid effort from the Hardgore Core team!
Once more, the short is well-shot with plenty of smooth camera-work, and the location is perfect for the given scenario. The two main stars, Bob Vresilovic and Tiffany Laskey are perfect for their roles. Tiffany does a great job at balancing enticing and sexy with creepy and foreboding, and she pulls off her character very well.
The film takes its time to build up to its climax, and does a great job at building up tension by showing increasingly more creepy aspects of the house and of the neighborhood it lies within. And then we reach our climax, and are treated with one of the most uncomfortably long and drawn out murder sequences I've ever seen in a film. The camera does not shy away from the gore at all, as we are treated with extreme close-ups of the man's jugular as it is slit wide open. Many a gallon of arterial spray floods the bed and its surroundings; tissue and viscera is torn in excruciating detail, and the sound effects are nothing short of cringeworthy. The man is now a keepsake for her collection...
Crafted by the Hardgore Core crew, with additional props by James Bell, the gore effects and makeup are insanely well done and will easily satiate the gorehound's appetite.
And for the cherry on top of this crimson sundae, we are treated with a haunting and beautiful score by the talented Will England, which compliments the film well, in contrast to the usual use of extreme metal or noise in other gore films.
Overall this is a very solid short film from a group of talented and passionate filmmakers, and I can highly recommend it!

RELEASES:
-Keepsake was originally created for and is apart of the gore anthology film Followers of the Dead Light, orchestrated by our favorite Canadian sicko Yan Kaos!

-Keepsake was released on a limited edition DVD by Dead Vision Productions in 2020, but the DVD is out of print.

Hitler is Back from the Grave / Schrottmagnet

Hitler is Back from the Grave / Schrottmagnet (2016/2018) - Switzerland

Directed by: NoodelBrain Film-Crew

ABOUT THE MOVIES:

Special thanks to the filmmakers for providing me with a screener of Schrottmagnet!

To kick off the year 2020, I will be taking a look at a pair of short films from

Swiss splatter-team NoodelBrain Film-Crew.

Hitler is Back from the Grave is a 4-minute short following Hitler, as he and a few allies are resurrected and begin partying. However, what starts off as a humorous onslaught of sleaze and sexual depravity very quickly devolves into an unrestrained orgy of ultra gore!

On the other hand, the 13-minute short Schrottmagnet takes a much more serious direction, as we follow a man who wakes up only to endure another day of suffering and misery. He's fired from his job as he had missed three days of work, he finds himself annoyed by every little thing around him, and has to fight the urge to leave his overweight wife, who he can't bare to look at, even though she loves him unconditionally.

REVIEW:

Across the span of about 20 minutes, NoodelBrain Film-Crew has managed to make me laugh one minute and find myself feeling for an individual the next. Hitler is Back may not have much of a plot present, but at only 4-minutes it is a blast and a half, as we get some well-executed and insanely bloody death scenes! We get decapitations, axeings, disembowelments, impalements and so many more gory goodies, and the special effects are quite impressive for such a low-budget outing.

Whereas Hitler is Back delivers gore in spades and then some, Schrottmagnet is much more serious in its approach and its execution, with no laughs to be found. We are quickly introduced to our main character as he dumps exposition about why his life is so miserable, and we can find ourselves instantly drawn to his struggle to give up, with the smallest sliver of hope that we will see a bright ending. 

Both films have decent enough acting, and are also well-shot and lit. Each short has a blurred border and flickers, almost as if being projected. As a result, Hitler is Back feels like a lost Grindhouse classic that had just been rediscovered, and Schrottmagnet feels so much more gritty and dark, perfectly matching its already grim subject matter.

Overall, these two outings prove that NoodelBrain are a talented group of filmmakers, who are not only proficient in making awesome splatter effects, but are also capable of balancing comedy and horror very well, a technique which is often difficult to pull off or is overlooked altogether. I am looking forward to see not only what NoodelBrain will bring us in the future, but I'm psyched to see what the rest of 2020 has in store!

RELEASES:

-Hitler is Back from the Grave was released on DVD by NoodelBrain Film-Crew in 2016. The short is available to watch online officially and can be viewed here.

-Hitler is Back from the Grave was released as part of the 1st P.S.Y.C.H.O. Productions Film Festival Blu-Ray in 2018.

-Schrottmagnet was released as part of the 2nd P.S.Y.C.H.O. Productions Film

Festival Blu-Ray in 2019.

-Both short films were released as a double-feature DVD in Canada by D.I.Y. Productions in 2019.

Catcall 2 (2019)

Catcall 2 (2019) - Canada

Directed by: Patrick Fortin

ABOUT THE FILM:

(Special thanks to Patrick Fortin for providing me with a screener for review!)

Catcall 2 is the latest film from Quebec-based filmmaker Patrick Fortin, wherein a pair of women continue an onslaught of hyper-violence against the pigs daring enough to taunt, harass and follow them, topped with a noisy soundtrack by Smegma Pile and Kids Kill Kids.

REVIEW:

Similar to the first Catcall, this sequel dishes out over-the-top gore and guts without skipping a beat. Heads are smashed and bashed into smithereens, men are shot until they are nothing but unrecognizable matter, and greasy, bloody stains coat the walls and the streets.

Sounds like a great time, right? It definitely is, but there are a few small complaints I have. For such a short film, there is very little story to take in and some of the scene transitions feel confusing, such as a dance/party sequence following a hyper-gory killing spree near the end. One other issue is the inconsistency in the special effects. The special effects were executed courtesy of Camille Monette and Gore Gore Dave, with additional props provided by filmmaker/effects artist James Bell. The props vary in quality, with some looking great and some looking noticeably fake and cheesy, such as a prop head that has its eyes gouged near the start of the film. There are also several shots where blood tubes are visible without having to look for them, which can be distracting.

With those gripes aside, this is still a really fun short that I can recommend.

RELEASES:

Catcall 2 was released on DVD by Goriest Production et Macabre Édition on a 

limited run of only 30 copies, along with a few bonus short films:

Fucker Apocalypse (great title!)

Young Blood

Fisheye

Sequelle