Day 5 of 31
Director/Writer/Producer: James Bickert
Starring: Jett Bryant, Madeline Brumby, Paul McComiskey. USA. 1h 21m.
I wasn’t prepared for this film.. so let me prepare you for this film. I chanced upon it in HMV in the horror section and looking like a cross between Baytown Outlaws, Pig Hunt and Devils Rejects.. but while it’s brilliant in it’s own rights it’s just not like any of these films.. it’s not like any other film… thankfully..
The Impalers are an outlaw motorcycle gang who are constantly on a full on GTA style rampage with a rival club Satan’s Own. And after riding through some nuns and fighting this gang the surviving members seek refuge in a secluded cabin deep in the mountains. The family who were having a small celebration in their cabin are soon preyed upon by the rebel biker gang but a mysterious girl who is locked in the basement holds secrets to a flesh eating monster lurking in the woods and a nazi mastermind behind all sorts of wrongness.
There is no safe haven, every level of wrongness is explored in a similar vein as to other modern comedy exploitation movies such as Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) similarly both films pay little attention to making the film look retro with a few grain lines that are soon disregarded, but unlike the original exploitation films this just rips everything apart in a parody so bad it’s good.
When the blood begins to flow…. who will be left to scream.
Violence and depravity are the flavour of every scene, as the movie roles through every cliche from the exploitation genre including nuns, guns, sex and buckets of blood and then it goes into the extreme strangeness including crazy nazi doctors werewolves and several what the fuck moments. (if you wanna see some awesome cliche action then check out this amazing video from Georg Rockall-Schmidt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0wpaaHGKUo&list=PLSdZUSAfdmGYOa0L53Y3Q6b8WNOTeCfID ).
Despite generally getting slated here and there the film has gathered a cult following which has spurred James Pickett to create a similar film due out this year, called Frankenstein Created Bikers (2016). And while it’s pasted together in a patchwork fashion, the terrible acting and editing is part of it’s charm. Although it’s easy to class this as exploitation or bundle it into the grindhouse genre, it transcends the retro hardbore approach, at least original explotation films tried to take things serious and grindhouse is just unusually ballsy, but at times they just ended up ridiculous but through no fault in trying, but this was never the aim. So in this post exploitation era, things are a little different, more comedic but the addition of a few grainy lines just isn’t enough to help to see past the crumbling plot. But once you accept these flaws and just go with the flow it’s pretty easy to chill to with this film.
Rating 6/10
R – Hobo with a shotgun (2011), Machete (2010),
L – Modern Exploitation films, A-Z of exploitation films, Biker Flicks,
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