Devil's Den - Killing from Dusk till Dawn

As mentioned countless times already, "Devil's Den" really can be considered to be a "From Dusk Till Dawn" knock-off... But that doesn't mean it can't be fun, right? And indeed, I had as much fun with this one as I had with watching "The Hazing" (2004) the week before. Both can be considered good fun horror party flicks. No vampires in this den, actually, but ghouls instead. No big twist halfway through the movie, but ghoul action from the get-go. No elaborate plot whatsoever, but still a few nice character twists. And Ken"Beyond the Dawn of the Texas Sleepstalking Dentist-Reject"Foree is in it. And for the teenage ladies, there's Devon Sawa (but I must say the dude seems to have gained some weight since "Final Destination"). And guys, I don't need to tell you that there's indeed some pleasant femalish eye-candy in this one, right? Yes, this movie will very likely not go very far into horror history, but it's still a certified fun B-movie watch. The same kind of fun I recently had with "Bloodsuckers" (AKA "Vampire Wars"), now that we're talking vampires and ghouls.

(2006) Devil's Den HORROR/ COMEDY

Conventional lower budget version of "From Dusk Til Dawn" clone which the two are almost identical! With Quinn (Devon Sawa), Caitlin (Kelly Hu) and Leonard (Ken Foree) go to strip club called "Devil's Den" down in Mexico, only to confront a bunch of ghouls. The film starts off as a gore fest to a simple minded comedy toward the end, especially the final dual between Hu and the queen of ghouls who for some reason doesn't even call out her ghoul cohorts. Inconsistently convenient and conventional which the director of this film and the producer may have collided!

OK so in actuality, this is a total B movie (by which i mean it pretty much sucks). But you know what totallyi redeems it? It STARS Kelly Hu. I mean, she is not just an bit part. She is the star role. OK, you had me with Kelly Hu (in her prime). It is what it is!

You know what else kinda redeems the movie. Its about GHOULS. Different! not vampires, not demons, not werewolves. Ghouls! Bonus points for that and Hu, brings this movie from a 5 to a 7.

This film essentially begins with two young men by the name of "Quinn" (Devon Sawa) and "Nick" (Steven Schub) driving back to the United States with a cache of Spanish Fly they had recently purchased in Mexico. Naturally, being the losers that they are, they cannot wait to try their merchandise out on the first unsuspecting women they meet, so they stop at a small, seedy nightclub known as the Devil's Den along the way. To that effect, noticing a beautiful dancer by the name of "Jezebel" (Dawn Olivieri) casting looks his way, Quinn invites her to his table and, when she accepts his offer of a drink, manages to slip one of the pills into it without her noticing. Sure enough, the Spanish Fly produces immediate results and within minutes she is leading him to a quite spot to continue their romantic encounter. Meanwhile, an attractive woman by the name of "Caitlin" (Kelly Hu) has noticed the two leaving through the back door and has decided to follow them for reasons that remain unknown at this time. However, when she finally catches up to the two of them, she notices Quinn fighting for his life against a hideous creature that is attempting to devour him-and there are even more creatures of this type that have suddenly appeared as well. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this movie certainly had potential as both the initial plot and the presence of several attractive actresses like Kelly Hu, Dawn Olivieri and Karen Maxwell (as the waitress named "Candy") certainly provoked my interest. Unfortunately, my interest waned to a great degree due to the number of uninspired action scenes repeated over and over again. Likewise, the transformation of the beautiful actresses into hideous ghouls didn't help either. In any case, other than a few moments here and there, I found this movie to be rather dull for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

I had a nice time sitting through this edgy horror comedy, and have no regrets. It was certainly targeting the younger viewer however I found it a decent expenditure of my time due to the better than average talent they acquired.Eventually I sort of fell into the rather macabre storyline. Obviously the budget was low and the sets didn't change much,in fact everything happens at one location,"the strip club from hell" but for my two cents I have to say they pulled of a nice entertaining little package, probably due to a lot of things like good camera work, a descent director and some pretty good young and not too well know actors like Kelly Hu, who happens to be one of our local girls here in Hawaii. Kelly gave a nice performance, although it's probably hard to step down from a role as Cassandra in the scorpion King to something with less of a bang, she and Devon Sawa, Ken Foree and Karen Maxwell gave it a great effort. I think this film will be a bit of a cult classic in the ghoul killing vampire wasting category. If you don't think a ghoul hunt with dry humor would be your cup of tea then perhaps you should pass on this one, but if your not offended by that sort of thing then give it a shot, I think you'll have a few laughs and the time will go right by. I'm sure we will see a lot more of the cast from this film, they seem to be practicing a craft called acting.