Left for Dead

I'm still going over the film in my head and I've watched the DVD twice as well. No spoilers as I just wanted to comment on the cast. I thought it was refreshing to see real women in a desperate situation unlike so many horror films which feature nubile bikini wearing females in desperate situations. The cast felt like women struggling to survive in the Mexico frontier in 1890. Hard, half daft, angry and frighteningly ruthless. They quite embodied what it must have been like and they also looked like the type that could believably survive. No cutesy starlet bimbo types, but tough, rugged women who look they live through much abuse.

The feminine anger of betrayal and being degraded was etched into each character almost painfully.

I thought the odd speech patterns worked as it revealed damaged minds and souls.

The film wasn't perfect. The special effects could've been better and the action slowed a bit too much in the middle. Very sad and filled with a great helping of pain and grief. I found it riveting and much more enjoyable on the second watching.

So, I finally got to see Albert Pyun's most recent effort. A strange western about a foreign woman (along with a bunch of local women) hunting down her ex (who happens to have impregnated the daughter of one of them) into a town haunted by a ghost who's sworn revenge over those women.

I was drawn by this film. Firstly, because it's Albert Pyun, and no matter how bizarre the film is, there's always something I find cool in his film. Secondly, the movie was shot in my country, and now checking with IMDb, it has an almost completely local cast.

Pyun abuses of the slow-motion effect in this movie. That and an excess of cutting during the "action" scenes produces annoyance. Other than that, the story was good, and it could have been improved with a better budget (no, I didn't say director). THere're tons of blood, deaths and gore too, which will please fans of horror/slasher movies.

Victoria Maurette, of whom I've noticed in stupid teen flicks, has left me stunned. I didn't know she could actually act, and matter of fact, I didn't even recognise her (again, thanks IMDb). The rest of the actors are OK too, especially the one playing Moebius Lockwood (who looks terrific), but she delivered quite a good performance. Too good actually.

This film should be held in the same light as Pyun's "Omega Doom". It has its resemblances and differences, some more noticeable than others. But they're both unusual, peculiar movies, which depart from standards.

Overall, it's watchable. Not a film to watch again, though. So much for a film which was supposedly the second part of a trilogy started with "Mean Guns", which is a film that I personally have watched at least 20 times, and I'd watch it 20 times more if I had the opportunity.

Albie, get back to that sort of flicks!

Whilst searching for her missing husband Blake (Javier De la Vega), tough, pistol packing babe Clementine (Victoria Maurette) runs across a community of outcast whores who have fled the town of Amnesty after murdering the townsfolk, including its preacher (Andres Bagg) and his pregnant wife. These murderous women are also keen to lay their hands on Blake, for they believe him to be a rapist, but are unwilling to follow him into the deserted town, for this is where the spirit of the preacher patiently waits for revenge...

In my opinion, director Albert Pyun must suffer from severe Hollywooditis, a condition that causes untalented hacks to believe that they are actually successful Hollywood directors. The results are never pretty.

In this instance, poor Mr.Pyun is clearly under the delusion that he is Tony Scott, circa 2004, which explains why his low budget western/horror Left For Dead attempts to mimic Scott's dreadful, self-indulgent movie 'Man on Fire' so closely in style. Unfortunately for Pyun (and his audience), not only is he stricken with the urge to emulate one of Scott's most dire efforts, utilising all of the horrible visual trickery that made that movie such a chore to sit through (flickering imagery, desaturated colours, distressed filters, unnecessary freeze-frames, slow-motion, and even novelty subtitles for both Spanish and English dialogue), but the absence of a mega budget, A-list cast, and, more pointedly, any talent whatsoever behind the camera or in the editing room, makes this project an infinitely more painful viewing experience than anything Scott has ever dished up.

A lengthy prologue attempts to explain the back story to this steaming crap-fest, but is so poorly written that it does little to help viewers' understanding of the movie. The dreadful script, combined with equally awful acting and an over-reliance on absurd visual gimmickry, all go to make this one hell of a bad film which I genuinely believe deserves the lowest rating possible (others have rated this a 'one' to try and counteract the fake positive reviews, whereas I rate it that low simply because I genuinely hated it!).

Still, as much as I have suffered whilst watching this cack, I'm still able to spare a thought for poor old Pyun—if only his affliction had left him thinking he was Scorsese or Spielberg in their prime, things might have been different.

In the past 5 years the independent cinema here in Argentina and throughout South America has become quite accomplished. This is another example of taking an ordinary story and providing a artistic touch. The images are magnificent! And Victoria Maurette is amazing as Clem. She looks like she stepped into the film from a Sergio Leone movie. Wonderful eyes and face. She has amazing intensity and belief. She is a new star I think. The others were good but some like Marianna Seligman were just okay. At times she seemed embarrassing but Victoria overcomes the others and keeps the film a head above.

This film has been playing around Buenos Ares in a bad copy so I would very much like to watch with a good copy. The crew did a good job as well and the visuals, sound music were all A level. I hope they make a sequel to this as more Maurette is very good!

I don't know how to describe Left for Dead. A western? A horror western? A paranormal western? a Ghosts western? no, just a piece of trash. This movie is a boring non sense from start to finish. Pyun direction is lazy and generic (he made some stylish action movies back in the 90s but here he flops). The script is awful, the acting is near as bad as in Zombieggedon and the worst thing here is the edition. Man!, the editor is an evil hack! All those stop motion scenes, fast motion, image freezing... they wanted to make the movie "cool", this is like a retarded no budget version of Domino(and Domino was indeed retarded). If you like Nemesis or some of those martial arts-sci fi Albert Pyun movies, stay away from this piece of boring, lazy and non sense crap. You will be very disappointed. 2/10