By Geno McGahee
If you grew up in the 1980s when there were horror hosts. You will remember characters like Commander USA and Elvira. They were hokey and silly, but that was the point. Over time, the horror hosts have faded away, but now we have an attempt to bring them back with a trio of redneck misfits in HILLBILLY HORROR SHOW. Written by Blu De Golyer and directed by Sharif Salama, we have a showcase for some short films and it is a mixed bag.
Bo (Bo Keister), Cephus (Scott Geiter) and Lulu (Rachael Faulkner) are hillbillies and horror fans and have invited the viewer to a movie night. Bo is the leader, Cephus is the dummy and Lulu is just hot and scantily clad. It is very corny and the jokes are terrible, but when you watch something called “HILLBILLY HORROR SHOW”, what are you expecting? This is exactly what I expected and although I found it a little unbalanced between tales, it was what it wanted to be.
The tales are where an anthology lives or dies and we have some positive things going on here. We have a tale about infidelity that was pretty decent, where two men capture a young woman from her house and toss her into a ditch. Some secrets come out and we have some betrayal. It was a pretty simple tale, but it was shot well and they did some very neat shots that I liked. It was your typical short horror film…not too complex…just one idea for the audience to feast on.
A tale of a skeleton roaming and meeting another skeleton isn’t that good, but it’s all CGI and you have to admire the work that goes into making something like that. I would really see nowhere for something like this to go. It wasn’t really a story. It was just a visual deal and is very forgettable. This one is hard to rate. For what it is, it’s great. It’s an impressive display of computer animations, but it probably belongs in a after effects class as an example of what you can do.
The next tale is sort of a zombie tale with a cat and mouse sort of storyline and it’s another one that is just OK. A problem that many horror short films have is that they don’t try to break any new ground and they just repeat what they see. If you have seen any other zombie movie, you don’t have to see this one. Once again, it’s shot very well, but when it was over, I really had no feelings one way or another. After this review, I will forget that it exists.
The final tale was definitely a “best for last” approach. We have some killer bees, some very good acting and great atmosphere. A sheriff suspects something’s wrong with a woman and there is. Her and her son are killing people and hiding a big secret that could destroy the world if released. There is a lot of CGI in this, but it’s done remarkably well. I found this story very interesting and this film should be a lesson for the others. This one brought something different and unique. This wasn’t just one idea. This was a story and the execution was very good.
HILLBILLY HORROR SHOW is being billed as “Volume One”. So, we can expect more of these in the future and let’s hope that there are. In the end, the purpose of this is to showcase short indie horror films and that is a great thing. If you like hokey and silly, you will enjoy this. This is a literal throwback to the 1980s where you would find things like this on cable and sometimes, public access. I look forward to seeing the trio of hosts developing and what they have in store next.
I recommend this.
Rating: 6/10