The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell

I also attended the midnight screening at the LA Film Festival on Friday, June 23, 2006. I liked the film and got the impression that most everyone else did as well.

For a midnight showing, I was impressed that nearly every seat was filled. There was also more audience participation than I'm accustomed to, for the audience cheered when the title appeared, laughed and clapped during the film, and stayed for the credits. More so, about three-quarters stayed to learn more about the film during the Q&A that followed -- an impressive audience at 2:30 a.m.

I've never seen a movie quite like this one. It had a quick pace, over-the-top violence and gore, a sarcastic wit, and at least a dozen characters. It's one of those films you wish you could see again, in not to simply catch and appreciate all of its humor.

This is an incomprehensible horribly low budget piece of awfulness.

I don't even have the vocabulary to say how dire, turgid, boring, confusing, and just plain strange this effort is (Hey what d'ya know I do....) Set in a post-Apocalyptic America some guys meet on a beach and slaughter and chaos ensue - it was all so incomprehensible I couldn't make head or tail of any of it.

Seriously how this got picked up by National Lampoon totally defeats me: it really is awful.

And not in a its so bad it's good cult way.

It is just awful, awful, awful, awful.

Honestly. If you still don't believe me then watch it with every intention of loving it then come back here and tell me what you think. Even gerbils on acid couldn't hope to understand this.

Avoid or even better destroy...

Starting with the title, this campy, hilarious, New American film is gushing with the zeal of the youthful, hip, and edgy filmmakers. Charting a primordial course towards a new genre, Writer/Director/Lead Kevin Wheatley and his directing collaborator Johnny Gillette, along with co-conspirator Cameron Pierce, have touched on something quite new and fresh. Hearkening back to the multi-format style of some of their predecessors like Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, the filmmakers lucidly blend time-shifting storytelling with "expert" testimony, hand drawn animation and graphics with live action, and clever writing with strong performances.

A first attempt at making a feature film is usually marred with over-acting, technical blunders, and misguided "post-fixes". This film, however, is an overachiever for these first time filmmakers. Their strong storytelling skills shine through in their History Channel-on-mescaline style, and the wait for their next foray has already been too long.

{ {d(-_-)b} }

This movie was made by a bunch of white guys that went to school together. Well there's nothing wrong with that, except it looks like it was made by a bunch of white guys that went to school together. 90 percent of the cast are white males about same age. It's almost like watching a bunch of guys at boys camp who turned the camera on themselves. The movie has no plot. It simply repeats the same action of blood bath after blood bath. There are some funny scenes and comedic bits. But they don't redeem the flat monotony.

The graphic cartoon scenes are used to cover the stuff that was obviously beyond their budget or resources to do, and not done very well at that. Anything that can't be done with white guys running around on the beach covered in blood is done with cheap animation.

I went to see this film after seeing the trailer, which makes it look like a Tarrentino piece. Well, the trailer scenes are as good as they ever get. Ther rest of it just repeats the same kind of mundane, inane comedy. It works at times, but it gets boring after the same stuff comes at you over and over. It's more like a string of Satuday Night Live skits than a movie. It's a hit-you-over-the-head-with-it kind of comedy. I can see where the story idea is intriguing. But, in this film post apocalyptic America is much like Medevil England. In fact Wheatlry says the story ideas came from that era. He plans to make a Part 2. I guess he thinks he's Tarrentino or maybe doing a parody thing.

At the opening in LA, Wheatley mentioned he will bring back pretty much the same cast in part 2. He was asked if he might consider a more diverse cast in the next one, to which he replied, well yea, sure.

Went to a midnight screening at the Crest in Westwood with some of my UCLA buds. Gotta say, I thought I might fall asleep since it started at 12am, but that wasn't the case. The movie's frenetic pace made for an exhilaration from beginning to end. It's akin to that rare sort of novel where you find yourself checking to see how many pages are left and hoping there are more, not fewer. A less imaginative movie coddles the audience. This movie opens up and says, "Here we go. You better hold on tight." The confidence the filmmaker's show in its audience's ability to follow every turn was such a breath of fresh air. But I could see a less savvy audience being turned off by this same confidence. If you like to try new things... If you like to challenge yourself... If you're sick of the tripe Hollywood is producing... You should see this film. With an embarrassment of riches at the filmmaker's fingertips, my only gripe is I will have to see it again to catch all the references and allusions.