The Attendant

Gives shot on video a bad name, I only bother reviewing it at all because several of the directors other movies are actually quite fun, like Crack in the Floor and the recent Blood Ranch. Those movies for one thing had more money so had a better look but those films had another thing that money doesn't have a lock on and that's odd ball off beat ideas. None of those here.

Blame whoever did the post production work for a really terrible looking movie, washed out camcorder looking--sort of a hallmark perhaps for producer Mark Gordon who around this same time unleashed the soft blurry blown out looking Aquanoids--keep this guy away from your post production work.

--but the bad look here is in a way is the most memorable thing about this sub standard junk. Badly acted thrown together you name it.

Now I'm prepared to offer a low budget film like this a lot of slack, but when the film in question takes that slack, shoves it down it's pants, goes for a half marathon and then proceeds to rub that sweaty, fetid slack all over my face, things don't turn out well. Let's put it this way: This is the worst film I've watched since 9 ½ Ninjas.

The story is this: Our six victims are going camping in the hills and end up somewhere they shouldn't. If you like annoying people, then get ready to meet this lot because you're going to be spending a long time with them. You've got your smart arse outdoors type, his girlfriend the neurotic one, an opinionated lawyer and her dopey boyfriend, a 'sensitive' type girl and her annoying boyfriend Deuce, and I can only name him because I wanted to throttle him after about five minutes.

But that's the way with horror films, right? We meet our annoying folk and then they're massacred and everybody goes home happy. That doesn't happen here. This film, believe it or not, is all about our annoying folk driving, talking, joking, arguing, looking for water, moaning, bickering, joshing, and very briefly making out, none of which has any bearing whatsoever on what happens in the end anyway.

Seriously – the lawyer chick gives her boyfriend a hard time because he's not committed enough to his employer (?), Deuce gives him a hard time for not being able to swim (?), the lawyer comes out with the longest speech about some guy appearing in her room with a knife, and the sensitive girl 'feels' that something is wrong while the filmmakers occasionally remember they're making a horror film and try badly to inject a sense of dread into the film, using the usual clichés of POV shots of someone watching the group (which once again has no bearing on the ending).

After being actively enraged by the 'antics' of these 'actors', the film pulls the final insult of making you realise about forty-five minutes in that nothing at all is going to happen until the end. Let me state this plainly to anyone tempted to watch this: Nothing happens until the last ten minutes of the film. That's how long you're stuck with this lot walking haemorrhoids Story wise they want to go to a campsite but end up needing gas and go to a creepy station where the attendant gives them directions and tell them not to go a certain way, so of course they go that way, spend hours of film setting up camp, then something turns up and forces them all to kill themselves. You'll want to do the same thing after wasting your time watching this kack.

Deuce is by far the worst here. I had no idea if he was meant to be dumb, 'wacky' or mentally ill. The rest aren't much better but all of them are all over the place emoting wise. Just check out the lawyers speech, which manages to start off with "You don't know what fear is" then includes "I wasn't scared" then "I was scared but I wasn't" then "but I was scared". This is followed by the outdoors guy coming out with something that made no sense, followed by a Jack Nicholson impression that was so bad it caused an earthquake in the Suriname.

Watching a film like this is the sensory equivalent of going outside and headbutting a dog sh!t over and over again. Truly dreadful.

A creepy gas station attendant tricks six campers into setting up their tents in a haunted woodland clearing that, decades earlier, was the site of a mass suicide.

The Attendant is a title that's been gathering dust on my DVD shelf for quite some time: directed by Corbin Timbrook (whose previous film was the unimpressive A Crack in the Floor), released on the crappy 'Hard Gore' label, and sporting a real cheap and nasty cover, it wasn't exactly screaming out 'watch me!'.

Needless to say, I was very surprised when, after spotting The Attendant listed by an IMDb'er on his Top 100 of gory movies and checking out the film here on IMDb, I discovered that it had a current rating of 7.6/10. Encouraged further by the fact that one of the existing two comments reckoned it delivered 'lots of guts and gore' (and ignoring the fact that the other comment called the film 'wretched junk'), I decided to finally bust this one out of its cellophane and give it a go.

And having just finished the film, I can honestly say that describing The Attendant as 'wretched junk' is being far too kind: it's shot on video and looks bloody terrible; the first hour consists primarily of very dull (and probably improvised) conversation between the six campers; the supernatural aspects are poorly developed and make little sense; and the gory scenes.... well, they are hardly what you would describe as plentiful—a man swallows a hatchet handle-first, coughing up blood in the process, and a girl cuts her throat—and the 'effects' utilised are notable only for their sheer ineptitude.

About the only thing that the film really has going for it is the quality totty: the three women are all very easy on the eye, and the two lovely brunettes, played by Onika Fiori and Tennison Hightower, both happily get their jugs out, which helps to alleviate the boredom slightly. Two pairs of tits and a few really weak death scenes, however, aren't worth the energy I expended removing the wrapper.

Not even worth the one star and I just could not find any merrit anywhere in the whole movie. Is the IMDB rating of 7.6 correct? Everyone has the same viewpoint on this one.