La cabaña del bosque

A horror film that takes place on the set of a porn movie production, sounds just brilliant, though quickly degenerates into a huge 'damp squib'. neither sexy or scary. Such a throw away movie.

The cast and crew of a porno movie travel to a remote woodland location where they find themselves menaced by a boy and girl who live in the forest.

When you think about them, some children's fairy tales are pretty messed up, Hansel & Gretel being a prime example: a brother and sister are abandoned by their parents in a forest, left to die of exposure or starvation, but find themselves rescued by an old woman who lives in a gingerbread house. What they don't realise is that the lady is a cannibalistic witch who intends to eat them. It's enough to give kids sleepless nights.

BreadCrumbs, which is inspired by Hansel and Gretel, is the opposite: it's likely to send its viewers soundly off to sleep. Directed by Mike Nichols (NOT the one who gave us The Graduate), the film is about as bland and forgettable as horror gets, with unlikeable characters, dull kills, and an uninspired plot that provides little exposition (why are the kids homicidal, how are they able to pop up anywhere at any time, and where are they getting their candy from?). The porn shoot plot device at least promises copious nookie and nudity from several good looking women, but barring one brief sex scene and the gratuitous exposing of the same actress's tits later on in the film, BreadCrumbs disappoints on that count as well.

Gore is only half the reason you buy a ticket to a horror movie, and I think you know where I'm going with this. Sex and nudity is the other half, and just as the rules of cinema dictate, the price you pay for good sex is death. In "Bread Crumbs", directed by Mike Nichols (not the one you're thinking of) sex is on everyone's mind, as the cast of characters is working on a quasi-professional porn shoot. It's "Boogie Nights" meets "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and the greatest risk of the film might very well be that the sex storyline eclipses the horror. Depending on how much you buy the performances, you may start rooting for fewer scares and more sex (though, sorry to let you down, there's not much of the latter after all).

Horror and Gore

Bread Crumbs' violent peaks are fairly graphic and the suffering of maimed characters is painful enough to watch, so you at least have to give kudos to the creative team's use of the camera and editing. What truly redeems Bread Crumbs is the fact that the film's logic is completely believable, since there is no need for "suspension of disbelief" when you're dealing with a bunch of porn stars, who would probably not make the most educated guesses when it comes to eluding knife-wielding maniacs.

How to Watch It

Bread Crumbs' villains, an homage to Hansel and Gretel, are in the hillbilly horror vein, and thus may need a few drinks to impress. Dan Shaked is a bit green, and not quite up to Deliverance quality, but keep in mind his range may have been purposely limited since he's essentially playing a mentally handicapped maniac with a drawl. If you're a fan of old school horror you may catch some very subtle similarities to a 1970's film called "Girly". Whenever someone says you're playing Cowboys and Indians, it's usually time to take cover!

BREADCRUMBS is yet ANOTHER slasher-in-the-woods low budget horror flick made with a paucity of imagination or style. It's dull beyond belief, and I'm not going to give the film-makers a break just because they didn't have any money to shoot; the British film-makers behind HAROLD'S GOING STIFF had nothing to work with either and they made a funny, genuinely heartwarming zombie film.

The cartoon credits are the best thing about BREADCRUMBS and it all goes downhill from there. The storyline sees a modern-day Hansel and Gretel lurking in the woods, where they encounter the cast and crew of a porn shoot taking place in an EVIL DEAD-style cabin. What follows is a mildly gruesome slasher flick, with the deaths all happening in the most predictable way imaginable.

The characters are poorly written and unlikeable and most of the plotting in the second half evolves around the most obvious and unworkable twist ever, so I don't know why they even bothered. Needless to say the cast and crew are all sub-par as well, making this a virtually worthless viewing experience.

A group of porn filmmakers are systematically attacked by two children on the set of a remote shoot.

We have actress Kristina Klebe here, and a whole lot of unknowns in the woods being preyed upon by "kids" (more like young adults) who think they are Hansel and Gretel. It fails on many levels. The first, and most obvious, was not using kids to play the kids.

The porn aspect is done decently, including a nice parody of the "Big Sausage Pizza" series of films. But I am not really sure why they had to be porn stars. It could have been any random group of people -- the only difference here being that we have a sex scene. But the porn is not central to the plot like (the much better) "One Eyed Monster".

There probably is no reason to see this one. People in the woods getting killed. We have seen this before. Sure, it has a few new angles, and there is a lot of potential for a good Hansel and Gretel story. This just was not the right one.