Tommyknockers

After participating in a bank robbery, a group of outlaws hides out in a remote town to decide their next move when they're suddenly confronted by a race of humanoid creatures known as Tommyknockers revived from a local gold mine and must band together with the remaining townsfolk to survive.

This was quite the fun and solid creature feature. One of the better elements of this one comes from the rather fun setup that gets this going rather nicely. The initial discovery of the creatures inside the mine through the accidental discovery of the gold supply stored there and being released through the excavation of the gold provides a decent enough explanation to have the creatures be released while also offering up enough of a reason for why no one knows anything about them. The secondary subplot involving the posse setting out to find the robbers who have control of the money from inside the bank and finding them in the same town where the creatures are decimating the local population offers quite an enjoyable starting point for this one. As well, there's also the rather fun creature action built up from this setup. With their humanoid stance and appearance, they look impressive enough without taking their claws and teeth which manage to allow the proper kind of graphic gore in the Action sequences. Those allow for a solid series of encounters in the various recesses of the town with a lot of sequences in the local bar or out on the streets of the town which offers some stellar scenes overall. The frantic final half, featuring a slew of different encounters within the town as the creatures launch an attack on the townspeople while they race to get the creatures stopped gives this several solid action scenes in the mine which combine to give this a lot to like. There's not much to dislike here but it does have some minor issues. The main drawback with this one is a rather underwhelming middle half where it tends to stumble around to several different sidestories without doing much of anything with the main characters. Since it introduces a slew of characters in the residents of the old town that got robbed, the series of characters on their trailer to stop them, and then the resident of the new town they arrive at, everything tends to be dropped to a standstill that halts the momentum of the film quite early on. There's also the issue of what we know about the creatures being quite limited even though that's clearly not that important due to no real reason who would know anything about them but can be seen as something holding it back for some.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Bried Nudity, and a sex scene.

Oh my, I can't believe I wasted my time on this. The intro was just PAINFUL ... I have seen better acting at the community playhouse downtown.

Then the meat of the movie started. I am not sure what was worse, the absolutely waste of a script, the poor timing of the directing, the even poorer camera work, or the even worse scene staging.

Sad too. It seemed a few of the actors actually had some talent and were hoping to make a go of it. And unlike many low budget films, this one actually sported more than just 4 people for the entirety of the movie. There were actually moments of good acting, but a VERY few bright spots can't make up for the rest of the problems.

Hope no one was hoping this film was gong to be their 'big break'.

Watched this film since the same team made another film with an actress I adore. She wasn't in this one, unfortunately. SHE would have elevated it, no doubt.

Man, was this worse than expected.

Script was all over the place. Lighting who? DAY/NIGHT? Light poured through windows when it was night outside.

Costumes were straight out of a high school performance of Oklahoma, along with the acting performances. Aside from the plethora of non-actors all whom paid for their few lines, the leads were all over the place. No one seemed to be in the same movie- tone ranged from over the top stage musical-like theatrics to barely-there performing. Tough to find any real substance in the muck.

So I like catching bloopers in movies! This movie of course is set in the 1800's. There's a scene where they're in the dark and use a Dietz oil lantern WITH the Dietz decal on it!!! Ok oil lanterns didn't exist until 1935 and vinyl decals didn't exist until 1943! Their lines were poorly spoken and I mean poorly! I didn't care about the tommy knockers costumes also stupid looking! I only watched because I thought it might be related to Steven King's Tommy knockers like a prequel, boy was I wrong! I wonder if this is plagiarism? It is a b rated movie after all. It only cost about $4 to watch....

The movie opens with the Dirk Gang robbing a bank somewhere. One of them guts the bank manager because he's a psycho and likes to stab people I guess. They get away with the loot but a bounty hunter is on their trail and the brother of the murdered bank manager vows revenge. They decide to head to the town of...(Google)...the generically named town of Deer Creek because there's supposed to be gold there. They arrive in town to find it apparently deserted. Their plan to rob the bank fails because there's no one there to open the safe. They soon find some survivors holed up in the saloon and some monsters attack. They are supposed to be Tommyknockers but they bear pretty much no resemblance to the Tommyknockers of folklore.

This movie is all over the place. Some of the cast are veteran actors like Robert LaSordo while others seem like friends of the filmmakers that were given small parts. Some of the gore effects are passable and some are laughable. The monster costumes are not bad for a low budget movie but they aren't very good either. The story is really disjointed. There are little Western movie vignettes that don't really have much to do with anything. Characters appear only to get killed off almost immediately. Things just happen without a lot of rhyme or reason. At one point, a character has a revelation about the monsters that isn't really based on anything and makes no sense considering what they have been doing but is, of course, entirely correct. Things happen that leave you wondering why that didn't happen a while ago. The ending is really rushed.

The movie isn't terrible. I have certainly seen much worse Western horror movies. It's just kind of disjointed and meandering. There's a lot of stuff that seems to have been just thrown in to pad the run time or because Western movies have this.