Tag Archives: shotgun

Left Of The Cutting Room Floor : The Hills Have Eyes

Posted on by
Reply

It’s common knowledge that there is a lot cut out of some movies these days in order to get an R rating. It’s nothing new, even Hellraiser had to cut out hammer blows, and blood sucking in order to just get an R back in it’s day. With the popularity of unrated dvd these days, some time people don’t know the difference between the Unrated and Rated versions, that’s what this article is here to change. I want to show you just what differences the MPAA demands out of some movies just to scrape by with an R.

So let’s start with The Hills Have Eyes (2006)


Before we’re even two minutes into the movie we have our first cut. There is 15 frames missing of Pick Ax violence, and the audience hasn’t even had a chance to open their chips yet.
Thankfully the next cut isn’t for forty minutes , until we get the shotgun suicide. This cut is even shorter, but the aftermath of the blast is one of the most graphic scenes in the movie.

During the attack on the family at night, we lose almost thirty seconds of footage, due to a numerous amount of cuts. The unrated version feels so brutal in comparison to the R rated version, just in the scenes with the baby alone.

 Ten minutes later in the cave scene, we get one of the most useless cuts I’ve seen. We lose seventeen seconds of a man walking in a cave and discovering tombs, in the rated he finds the tombs much faster, and there’s a longer close up of them.

And we’re at the show down.

Here we have  fourteen seconds of cuts, as well as a few scenes the same length but completely different. All the cuts are to take out gore, but I feel they make the gore unrealistic, where in the unrated version the gore seems more real and painful, thus leaving a impact on the audience.

Finally, in the showdown, like I mentioned, there are scenes the same length. They take away the impact of the blood like so..

and instead shows us a close-up like….


In my opinion, this is a film that must be watched Unrated to get the full impact that the film makers were going for. It’s a shame for the MPAA to make cuts that take away from the realism in such a way. When a movies supposed to be brutal and hard to watch, let it.

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011)

Posted on by
Reply


Now, today is the first non-horror movie I have reviewed, but it’s a call back to classic exploitation films, and it’s been on every horror fans list of movies to see, so I don’t feel guilty about this. Before I get into this I want to say, I have not watched any of the special features yet, so I can’t get into the nitty gritty about how they pulled this off.

The story is quite plain, but that’s fine, all we want is to see a hobo get a shotgun. The story that’s there  follows an unnamed hobo played by Rutger Hauer ( how they got him involved is a mystery to me, but I’m damn glad), who hops a train into Hope Town. Misleading name if I ever heard one, Hope Town is run by drugs, and violence, and nothing else. For example, we see many people being beat and murdered, children being abducted, and plenty of prostitutes. Even every cop is dirty. There’s no hope left in the town.

The Hobo wants nothing more then to buy a lawnmower, and make money cutting grass, a simple dream. But when he finally has enough money, he has to make the choice between a shotgun to clean up the town, or a lawnmower to make money. Since this isn’t called Hobo With A Lawnmower, I think we all know the choice that’s made.

The acting is pretty bad, but it’s perfect for the movie, so it’s an odd line it walks. A lot of over-acting takes place, but for the most part, it’s fun, and since the movie’s so over the top, why shouldn’t the acting be? Speaking of over the top, the gore. Jesus, this movie makes Inside look like a walk through the park. It’s got that 70s gore going on, you know, constant squirting, dismemberment, etc. Every bit of violence has over the top gore to go with it, and if your a fan of practical effects, you’ll love it.

While I liked the movie, I had a hard time watching it. It was filmed in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, a city I use to spend quite a lot of my time in, since I just lived across the bridge in Halifax. I felt the  violence really resonated with me, it felt like the way the city has been going lately, just a little more over the top.  That’s the key with this movie, Over The Top, and if you don’t like your films to just go balls to the wall you won’t like this one.

I’m not going to recommend this one to everyone, there is a lot of disturbing scenes involving kids, and the gore is just constant. But if your a fan of dark, over the top, and gritty movies, or just plain our exploitation films, check it out.

Score – 75%
Gore – 10/10

Voodoo (1995)

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s get to my thoughts on the movie before we even talk about what the movie is about. I’m still completely unsure of what I feel about this one. Sure it has Corey Feldman, nudity, and college fraternities, but it feels like it’s missing a special something. I think it might of been missing a machete, or maybe some turtles, because Corey just didn’t have the same impact on me here that he normally does.

Corey Feldman play’s Andy, a college student with the great idea of transferring colleges and continents to be with his girlfriend, before telling her or finding a place to stay. Take a step forward a couple hours, and he’s living at the Pi Nu fraternity, and all he had to do was steal a naked corpse. If only everything in life was that easy.

I’m going to speed this up a little and get to the good stuff.

  • Fraternity is made up of zombies.
  • Zombies are led by Cassian Marsh
  • Marsh is voodoo priest.
  • Marsh only needs one more zombie to live forever
  • Andy will be that zombie
 I know that seems like a very basic way of writing about this movie, but really the movie it’s self is very basic. There’s not much going on in it except for that. Andy can’t tell anyone cause their all in it, and they kidnap his girlfriend, so it’s up to him to save the day. We’ve seen it all before, a thousand times.

I feel I might of liked the movie more if it had come out in the 80s. It has a very 80s feeling to it,  every part of it, from the acting, to the effects, and even the cinematography. I’m a big fan of 80s movies, specially 80s horror movies, but the fact that this was so far behind it’s time really didn’t settle well with me.

And for those reason’s I have to leave this one with :

Score – 50% (just so bland)
Gore – 2/10