The Landlord

I got a copy of this film from either the director or someone in the crew. 10$ for a factory DVD or if I paid 20$ I also got a homebrew Blu-Ray with it. Frankly so many people want to make a movie, but many die of "Natural Causes".

The best sales pitch I heard was from the seller who said to me "I Made this with 50 of my closest friends". It was enough for me to support the craft and schell out 20 bucks. I gave the DVD to a pal and opted to watch the burned Blu-Ray.

So what did I think? It was cheezy as I expected, with a flair of "I just spent 3 years in film school and need to make sure every scene follows the "WALLDO" method, the makeup is awful and some of the acting is downright amateurish.

But who cares? If 50 friends got together to help someone make a monster movie, that's 50 people who all got to sit down at a premiere in a hall or home and had a good time. If I can be a part of that, cool.

If you want to know what it is about, see it. A few years after it was made, South Park did a shockingly close story which explains that Kenny keeps coming back to life because his parents attended a cult meeting for free beer. That is kind of the background story of this movie, however the consequences of the satanic ritual result in an apartment being cursed with a goofy demon. Despite the cheezy makeup, I love the demon. I have not rewatched the movie in several years, but I still think fondly of that stupid demon!

If you can find it, check it out, but remember . . . It is a project of fun and fellowship, not necessarily art.

Through some friends on the net, at youtube, the told me that in the states a new independent movie was breaking records. It appeared at festivals and always got a big cheer. Then one of those friends send over to Europe some flyers about the movie, it was called The Landlord. Geeks out there who know me do know that when a independent is coming out I'm always trying to contact the director. So I had already a few DVD's over here signed. Anyway, the contact with Emil Hyde went smoothly so after a few weeks the DVD arrived. What I did knew so far was that it was a kind of comedy/horror. And in fact it is. The editing is really nicely done with some effects that reminded me of the 70's. Remember, Altered States. Although that it is a low budget flick the actors are really believable. Especially the woman who plays the cop, and the (demon)landlord itself. The fun part is that the ghosts/demons appear in bright daylight and that reminded me of Nightbreed. There isn't that much blood in it but when it flows it flows in a perfect gory way. So if you are in for a good entertainment then this one is your pick. Really, I was surprised that it is possible to attract the perfect score too. Did I say that the effects were done in a good way too, the only thing that I hated, but it's normal that they used it, was the CGI when the house explodes. I knew that they haven't got the budget too do it in real, but it''s only a few minutes in the movie, luckily that they didn't used it for the gory effects. Well done.

"The Landlord" has caught a lot of grief on some other sites (including NF) and so I was gratified to see that it has managed to rack up six stars here (so far). I enjoy independent movies that don't take themselves too seriously and TL certainly falls into this category. The acting is wildly variable, both from character to character and from scene to scene, and the FX (both practical and CGI) are pretty atrocious, but Hyde has his heart in the right place and he manages to eventually carry it off. The screenplay is pretty good and there are some real zingers here and there. You can tell in the first ten minutes that the writer(s) did not set out to write a script just for the money...everyone involved in the movie obviously just likes horror movies (especially "The Evil Dead" trilogy and "Beetlejuice"). This is definitely worth a watch if you have so me patience and can overlook the cheap latex face appliances.

Written and directed by Emil Hyde, The Landlord stars Derek Dziak as Tyler, a loser whose job is to find tenants and collect rent at the apartment building owned by his feisty policewoman sister Amy (Michelle Courvais). However, what seems like a rather cushy life for Tyler is actually much more demanding than it at first appears: the building is also home to two flesh-eating demons who feed on his tenants, something that arouses the suspicions of a pair of tough cops.

Meanwhile, Amy is having trouble of her own, juggling an adulterous relationship with her police partner, organising shady deals with a gang of local vampires, and keeping her brother from losing the plot.

Problems finally come to a head after Amy upsets her bloodsucking pals and Tyler attempts to prevent his latest tenant Donna (Erin Myers), an attractive, pregnant runaway wife, from becoming demon fodder.

One of the things I love most about horror is that it has a healthy independent scene made up of enthusiastic film-makers with almost non-existent budgets, but armed with a love of the genre and a strong enough resolve to bring their projects to life. You have to admire their spirit, even if you don't always enjoy the finished films.

Thankfully, the team behind comedy/horror The Landlord not only have the drive and determination, but also seem to have a pretty good grasp on what makes for a fun slice of entertainment: they deliver a well constructed, multi-layered story that effectively blends ghoulishness with laughs, a few reasonable visual effects, and some rather unrealistic but satisfyingly bloody gore.

The film also offers decent performances from its cast of unknowns: Dziak makes a likable protagonist, Courvais gives a particularly spirited and memorable performance, but it is Rom Barkhordar as green demon Rabisu who steals the show, hamming it up to just the right degree as he orders jerky machines and tacky statues from a shopping channel, spoons brains straight from his victim's head, and plays charades to spell out a magic phrase that he is forbidden to say.

Overall, this is a consistently engaging piece of macabre cinema that probably won't blow your socks off, but will still manage to pass the time very nicely, thank you. So if you're not too fussed about the unavoidable inadequacies inherent in today's zero-budget horror (poor sound quality, digital video picture quality etc.), I say give The Landlord a whirl.

I depend on IMDb viewer ratings more than any other website to determine if I should get a new movie sent to me from Netflix. Unfortunately, sometimes the 'average' user rating is often times too low, or vastly overrated as in the case of 'The Landlord'. I actually like the comedy horror genre, particularly comedy zombie movies, but this was simply total trash. Terrible script writing, bad acting, no continuity and cheesy graphics. It was so amateurish, it looked like it was some sort high school project for film class. It appears the 52 votes must of been from everyone involved with this trash that was occasionally funny only because it was so bad...