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[Review] ‘Legend Of The Hillbilly Butcher’ Looks Great, Carves Slow
Before the found footage craze hit horror, we had endless “me-too” films being done in the Grindhouse style. And like most fads (like found footage), it was done to death by indie filmmakers. Don’t get me wrong, it was a cool concept and harkened back to the days of old, but hinging your film on a particular style can only take you so far. Enter director Joaquin Montalvan’s Legend Of The Hillbilly Butcher, which takes on the Grindhouse style while also paying homage to Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Sounds like a natural fit, but is it style over substance?
Carl Henry Jessup (Paul E. Respass) is a backwoods hunter whose local delicacy amongst his neighbors is serving up tresspassers (aka people). In fact, his late daddy left Carl the same butcher knife he used in his own cannibalistic activities. The only people whom Carl calls family are his half sister Rae Lynn (Theresa Holly), and best friend Billy Wayne (Chris Shumway). Carl misses his parents after their tragic murder-suicide. He tries to summon them to live again with the help a demon named Sam Bakoo. Unfortunately, Carl’s soul isn’t worth the price, and in turn sets off more trouble for the cannibal.
Might as well start off with the film’s Grindhouse claim, which honestly is pretty damn impressive. The film really does look like it’s been through the ringer, sporting a faded, scratched up and otherwise ugly-looking picture. Unlike some indie productions which basically take the quick and easy guide in Adobe After Effects, Montalvan put forth a real effort in making the image look bad in a good way, while not phoning it in and doing it with the standard default settings. It really does give the film character. The same goes for the gore effects. Granted, they’re done on the cheap, but the post effects on the image help to mask this and look better than they normally would.
On the acting front, Paul E. Respass does an adequate job as Carl Jessup. Respass was able to take an obviously flat character script-wise and give it some depth, particularly with the demon subplot. Speaking of which, casting the scrawny-looking Allen East as Sam Bakoo gave the role a bit more weight (I see the irony in that) than if it were played by a more ordinary person. Theresa Holly is a treat as Carl’s half sister Rae Lynn. She’s very charming in the role, and does give the character much-needed sympathy in a film where the majority of it’s characters don’t exactly lend themselves to it.
Remember that “style over substance” quip? Yeah, unfortunately that’s the case for Hillbilly Butcher. Beneath the cool look of the film lies a script that has a serious pacing problem. Long dialogue sequences punctuated by long pauses, long stalking sequences and a just plain long runtime make this more of a chore to sit through than anything. When things do happen, the low budget origins sneak up and disappoint us with a real lack of gore. And that’s another problem with this film, as it doesn’t go all-out with it’s concept of a cannibalistic hillbilly. If the concept was explored and developed further, rather than going the artsy route with the dream sequences involving Bakoo, it probably would’ve been more exciting.
As it stands, Legend Of The Hillbilly Butcher is a missed opportunity. True, it does an excellent job of establishing a Grindhouse look and feel that many low budget films fail to grasp, but it suffers with not fully embracing it’s concept, including it’s painfully slow pace. It’s a shame, since Montalvan, his cast and his crew really seemed to be fully invested in creating a great film that attempts to pay homage to Tobe Hooper’s classic. Hopefully Montalvan will be able to put more into his next film than post-production work.
Video/Audio:
The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer for the majority of the film purposely attempts to replicate the grungy look of an old Grindhouse film as much as possible. The shots that aren’t purposely fiddled with in post sport strong colour saturation and fairly good detail. As for the rest of the film, it really does look like an old VHS tape of a film that wasn’t in the best of condition in the first place. As such, colours are faded, dirt and scratches cover the image, as well as out of focus shots and in some instances the image has a slight shake to it. Very impressive post-production job!
Unfortunately, the Dolby Digital 2.0 track is a sore spot. The overall loudness of the film is very unbalanced. Normal conversations are sometimes hard to hear, but when characters shout or scream, the levels are blown out and it’s distorted. Ambient effects also suffer, as they’re either too quiet or too loud, making their additions in post pretty obvious. What makes things worse is that the disc doesn’t come with any subtitles. It’s tolerable, but just keep your remote handy for quick volume adjustments.
Extras:
First up is Gutting Da Hillbilly Butcher, an hour-long making-of doc. Consisting of talking head interviews with cast and crew, with director Joaquin Montalvan doing much of the talking. Topics include everything from the origins of the film, how the look of the film came about, casting choices, how the cast went about preparing for certain scenes, sound design, effects shots, how to morgue breathe (?!) and more. It’s pretty in-depth for a low budget film of this nature, though the continued use of the filters used in the film on the raw footage is kind of annoying.
Following that is a six minute short film Straight Razor, which was Montalvan had filmed prior to starting on Hillbilly Butcher. Shot in a similar Grindhouse-style to Hillbilly Butcher, the film is pretty surreal and has some weird imagery.
Horror Happens Interview is an 29 minute candid interview from the Home Grown Radio NJ show, Horror Happens. The host of the show, Jay K aka Jason Kolucki, interviews Montalvan with actors Paul E. Respass and Theresa Holly. The group cover different topics from the making-of doc, including Montalvan’s love of horror, differences in the script from the actual film, inspirations for the characters and more.
Rounding out the extras are three trailers for the film.
I’d have to say that I’m impressed with the effort put into the extras for this film, even if the film itself isn’t the greatest.
Home Video
‘Herencia Diabólica’ – 1993’s “Mexican Child’s Play” Finally Has a Blu-ray Release [Review]
Did you know that there is a Child’s Play-inspired film from Mexico? If you didn’t, you can thank Vinegar Syndrome’s new label Degausser Video for making 1993’s Herencia Diabólica available for the masses to watch. Or at least for the VS hardcore fanbase, Chucky completists and anyone else who needs something like this in their lives.
Director Alfredo Salazar, known for his writing connection to the 70s Santo film series, also serves as the writer here to bring us a film seemingly inspired from the Child’s Play franchise. While it has been recently labeled as the “Mexican Child’s Play” (there’s a special feature on the disc with that very title), the killer doll concept is where the comparison should start and end. Despite having some seeds planted by that franchise, Salazar delivers a story that blossoms into something unique.
Tony (Roberto Guinar) receives a letter informing him that his aunt has died, and he has inherited her estate in Mexico. He quits his job and uproots his life in New York with his wife Annie (Holda Ramírez) to relocate south of the border and move into his new crib. Now I know what you’re thinking, what person just quits their job and drags their wife to another country without having reliable monetary income? Tony does, everyone, Tony does.
And what’s the first thing they do once they arrive in Mexico and check out the estate? They hit the bedroom, naturally. We are treated to a sex scene with an erotica song that feels like a knockoff of “Sadness” by Enigma (remember them?). Sounds fun and all, but the scene takes place completely in the dark and we see absolutely nothing. Maybe that’s why the sexy-time tune was pumping, so we could know what was exactly going down.
While Tony goes on a job interview, Annie explores the estate’s grounds in a tedious chore to experience, going room by room, plodding along. But it does lead us to her discovery of our antagonist—the evil clown doll, Payasito! Of all the things in the house, she decides to bring this monstrosity down to show Tony when he gets home. What an exciting way to celebrate (sic)! Then out of nowhere, she spouts off some exposition about rumors that Tony’s aunt dabbled in the dark arts and now we know where our title Diabolical Inheritance (the English translation for Herencia Diabólica) originates. For those of you who keep score for things like that.
Before proceeding with this review, you really need to visualize what Payasito looks like to truly embrace the rest of the film’s shenanigans. While Chucky resembles a cute ginger child, Payasito resembles a small clown that is much larger in stature than Chucky. That’s because Payasito is performed by an actor (Margarito Esparaza) in clown cosplay whenever he’s on the move (like Mannequin 2), and makes some really horrible facial expressions. Chucky dresses in “Good Guys” overalls and a striped shirt, but Payasito wears a new wave Santa hat while sporting a Sgt. Pepper jacket and Peter Pan tights. As you can now tell, he is quite beautiful.
Back to our story, Payasito begins to spook Annie cerebrally until she becomes unnerved to the point of having a complete mental break down, making her easy prey to eliminate. She dies but the unborn child survives, with Tony believing that her death was caused by her mental instability. Fast forward some years later and the couple’s surviving spawn has grown into child Roy (Alan Fernando), who at this point has already bonded with Payasito to help him over the loss of his mother. Dun-dun-duuunnn!
Meanwhile wealthy Tony remains single, still grieving his late wife, until his blonde assistant Doris encourages him to move on with his life and start seeing other people. And by other people, she naturally means herself. As the old Kanye West song lyric goes, “I ain’t saying she’s a gold digger…”, and it seems that she might be until we learn more about her character. Doris is played by the stunning Lorena Hererra who has an extremely extensive resume in Mexico, and she carries most of the film quite well during the feature’s second half. The singer and former Playboy centerfold for their Mexico edition is by far the most recognizable face in the cast.
Doris and Tony do indeed hookup and she moves into La casa de Herencia, where she does her best to impress Roy and lessen his obsession with the doll. There is a scene where they go to a nearby park without Payasito that is filled with famous fairytale figures, such as Pinocchio, Cinderella and King Kong! What, you didn’t know King Kong is a fairytale? Me neither. But Roy continues to be obsessed with Payasito after their trip, much to Doris’ chagrin.
Her actions to separate him from Roy gets Payasito angry, setting up the film’s most memorable scene. We already know that Payasito is a devil doll like Chucky, but now we learn he also has the power to invade people’s dreams like Freddy Krueger! Does Payasito enter the dream world and concoct a creative way to kill Doris in her sleep? No, he harnesses his power to sexually assault her instead. Yes that actually happens. After she awakens, Doris grabs the doll and tosses him into a lake, only to find him waiting for her by the time she gets back to the house. So now we know he also maintains the ability to “transport” like Jason Voorhees too. This doll is the total package!
More insanity happens before we close out the film with the longest victim chase sequence ever. It makes the previously mentioned painful house search scene seem like an eyeblink. It feels like it’s the film’s entire third act, filled with so much padding that you could soundproof an entire three-story house.
So how’s the transfer? Considering it was created using a mix of VHS and film source elements from 1993, they did one heck of a job! The work they put into it is especially noticeable in the dream invasion sequence, with the pulsing multi-colored psychedelic visuals. Super trippy stuff. Even the film’s score provides a pretty chill vibe, during the times when Payasito isn’t on the prowl.
If anything you read has piqued your interest in the very least, you should give it a shot. But if not, it is best to leave this doll on the shelf.
Herencia Diabólica is now available to purchase at VinegarSyndrome.com.
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