Hot Rod Horror

Just spent the afternoon viewing a horror double bill before heading out for the night. The Shining was the other movie - understandably, that film has an experienced director, cast, crew and a budget that yielded what it sowed: a horror masterpiece. Hot Rod Horror - the second on the double bill - is the complete opposite. It wasn't the fatigue of the double bill that made me dislike this. We watched Hot Rod Horror first as we had preconceptions of The Shining through its reputation and having read the book. The thing I didn't like about this is its weak structure, terrible direction and bad dialogue. I got the feeling that the cast were amateurs - some were OK, whilst the others seemed not to know what they were doing. There's simply no tension or horror in Hot Rod Horror - the car lot of junk was cool and the film being shot in daylight gave me the presumption that I had a Texas Chainsaw Massacre / The Hills Have Eyes on me hands. Unfortunately, there was nothing here - no thrills, no suspense, no fun - looks reasonably shot for a low budget, but there's nothing here to write home about.

I'm not sure where anyone could find merit enough to give a movie this bad more than 3 stars at the most. It is total camp and filled with horrible acting. The story line itself wasn't that bad but the acting was so bad that at times it seemed like they were reading their lines from Que cards. The person or persons that own the wrecking yard has a gold mine though. The old Harley "Knucklehead" at the beginning of the movie was the only prop that was worth any real money. I have heard of shoestring budgets for making movies, this one is beyond broke. Glad I didn't pay money to see this flick, ugh. It gets a generous 3 out of ten.

HOT ROD HORROR www.myspace.com/hot_rod_horror Combining Murder, Ghosts & Hot Rods with a driving soundtrack ! You know they say that nothing great came out of Fresno; Besides raisins, This was until now with HRH. A nice collection of classic vehicles including Street Rods, Race Cars and a sweet motorcycle are used as props to enhance the authentic flashbacks. Let's talk about "AXEL", The main bad guy…Maybe a ghost or demon and comes with some driving skills. I like the Willy O interpretation, I wanted some scary makeup on character but, Maybe the car he drives like possessed and the ghost-like nuances were enough, He had to act more than Robert Englund with mask. The stunts are pretty safe and then there was one, Done with a tire iron and blow torch, STEALS the whole movie and took a father and son stunt team to cook it ! Okay, Let's sum up to make this a Modern Cult Classic film, Guys get ahold of the Speed Channel on cable TV and sell this puppy to them, Talk with Autozone and get it carried in their stores by the counter and put Willy O and His Rat Rod on tour in car shows with copies of HRH to autograph/sell !

This movie surprised me-not only was there suspense but it also had some comedy-something I wasn't expecting from an action/horror movie. It also has a great 1950's flashback sequence which is my favorite part of the movie aside from the old cars at the junk yard.Some of the cars in the junk yard really gave the movie a creepy feeling.That is one junk yard I wouldn't want to be lost in! This also has a good cast considering some of the actor's were just starting their acting career. The character's Tom and Owen played well off each other and so did the blonde-Amy and her bitchy friend Kristy.Who ever cast the film did a good job.

Somehow this film managed to assure me that enjoyable low budget 'bad' films are still being made today. I thought that things were becoming a bit emotionally detached as people can insert more CGI into their zero budget films (like Battle:Earth) but here we have a genuinely low budget film, without CGI, or Tarantino rip-offs, or over the top camera work. It's just a straight forward horror with really bad acting that looks as if it cost about ten quid to make.

Story wise we've got a bunch of kids heading off to a scrap yard to get...something (not sure) while their girlfriends moan about such an unromantic outing. The sister of one of the guys there goes to get him as the scrappy is haunted. It is pretty much haunted by a guy who looks like a passing labourer who wandered onto the set.

He's got a backstory though, but we'll get to that in a minute. What we have here is a film where people are looking for each for most of the duration of the film (like Legend of the Mummy 2, Museum of the Dead and Psycho Cop), and it's a plot device I hate. However, in this film the actors are so awful at trying to convey emotion that it becomes almost charming (like the emoting in Zombie Nosh, another zero-budget film that's pretty enjoyable).

It's also a very vintage car oriented plot. I don't know if I would have survived the excitement of watching the actual race they carried out in the bad guy's flashback sequence, so I'm glad we just got a brief summary of what happened. If you like American cars, you might like this a bit more. If you like gore or boobs, then you'd better get out of here because you get about two seconds of gore and no boobs.

What you do get is a guy with a mullet, a bald patch and another mullet on the front of his head, and various scenes of a girl trying to find somewhere to have a pee (or a crap I guess, never quite specified the second time round). There's enough cheese, Garth Marenghi level acting, and general badness to enjoy this from start to finish. I was never bored for a second.