Drainiac!

My 9 year old brother picked this movie up from Hollywood Video today, and we watched it together (No, I wouldn't recommend this movie for most 9 year olds, but my little brother is...different). If you rent this movie, you need to know what to expect. This was a low-budget film. It's not going to have the kind of special effects you see in theatres. If you can't dig a good independent film, don't bother renting this.

The storyline was cute...and so were the actresses, I mean WOW! The lead actress found a new reason to take her clothes off like every five minutes, and this guy had his genitals mutilated by a toilet (he had it coming though). Good stuff man.

Well I've been suffering from insomnia for the last couple of months but after watching this film on DVD I have found a cure. Like I said its not the worst film I've ever seen but it is extremely dull and I found my mind drifting off before I nodded off. The story involves a bunch of kids a haunted house with some gooey green stuff and thats about all I can remember of it. Maybe the film would benefit a little from some decent editing as certain scenes where nothing interesting happened seemed to go for too long but then again it is such a short film without cutting it, it would probably come in at under an hour that way. So if you have to watch every cheap horror film it might be worth a look otherwise save your time and cash.

Even though this isn't a good movie (bad acting, boom mic visible, etc.), Brett Piper did gain some of my appreciation in recent years (this is the 3rd movie I've seen of him, after "Bite Me!" and "Arachnia"). The man always brings a certain flair to his Z-grade world of horror and amps up his material with imaginative & very enjoyable low-budget special effects (plus, most of his movies seem to be shot on real film, so no SOV stuff here). And it works wonders, as his efforts become more watchable than you'd expect. "Drainiac!" feels a bit like as if a drunk Frank Henenlotter would have had his own take on the material of "The Evil Dead". This time we have an abandoned house possessed by a water-demon. Some teens come to clean the place up, and the madness begins. You may also include some female nudity, so we have something most B-movie horror fans can enjoy.

Ultra-low budget Evil Dead stylings here from Brett Piper, the man who brought us the head-scratching "Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell". This one involves Julie, stuck with an angry father who makes her clean up derelict houses in order to sell them, but this time the house he's chosen seems to have a Water Elemental living in it, which plays with Julie and her friend's minds before turning deadly. Who can help them? Well, maybe the exorcist that turns out of the blue...maybe him.

This film looks to have been made for around £1000, but, despite a lot of waffle and dead air, Piper certainly throws in as much as possible at the screen. From the real FX (rather than CGI) to the charming stop motion animation, I was pretty entertained for the most part. You've got tentacles rising from pipes to emasculate a moron, someone being pumped with water so much they explode, demons and spiders crawling about the place, and people being melted by slime. It's all skid row but if half the low-budget films I watched had this energy, I'd be a much happier man.

The pacing is a little off, however, and sometimes the film stops dead for no reason whatsoever, but I for one am happy that I watched this. Brings back memories of the Evil Dead (only on even less of a budget).

Not everyone will like Drainiac, or even appreciate it for what it is. This was obviously a very low-budget production, but that helps it out a great deal in my opinion.

Brett Piper knows how to make a great movie on a shoe-string budget. This is welcome, because most low-budget horror movies I've seen in the last few years have been average or just plain dreadful. With the advent of Digital Video (a.k.a. cheap, cheap) it seems like any Joe can try to make a lame film and get it released in a video store.

I have seen only one other movie directed by Brett Piper, which was a little gem called "Psyclops". It's also a very original low-budget movie that is somewhat horror, but mostly in the sci-fi genre. I hope to see more of his films in the future, he can work wonders where there is little to work with.

Check out Drainiac if you can find it, you just might like it. But make sure you like low-budget horror movies with a comedy twist....otherwise you probably won't appreciate what Drainiac set out to do.