Tommyknockers

There's "A", "B" and then this thing which is chock full of bad acting, horrible special effects and no direction. Bad lighting contributes as does the acting which is just pitiful. Watched 5 minutes and wish I could get this time back. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in for a good "B" movie but this looks like a bad grade school production. Some actors I recognize from 90's movies and I know have some talent. I guess they need the work but for this movie, I think they should have passed. The other "actors" seem to forget their lines at times. I'm certain queue cards were behind the camera. WHY did I try this!

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'.

There are not a lot of scary westerns to choose from so I thought I would give it a try.

This was bad, I mean really bad.

Bad story, Very Bad Acting, Overall Bad Movie.

I have sat through bad movies (and I have seen my share) but I couldn't even watch this one to the end.

About halfway through the movie is about as far as I could watch.

The storyline had potential BUT the acting was truly that bad. It wasn't just one or two actors, but all of the actors were that bad. I was surprised that Tom Sizemore agreed to do this move.

If you choose to ignore this review and watch this movie, do not say that you were not warned!!

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.

Tons of micro-budget westerns flood the DTV space yearly, most best left unseen, but sometimes worthwhile fare emerges. The itch for more horror-westerns led me to Night of the Tommyknockers. Not good but not a disaster; it's under 90 minutes and doesn't shy away from monster gore once the bandits-vs-lawmen first half leaves its outlaws in a gold-rush ghost town besieged by gnarled Descent rejects.

If you can accept the meager production values this kind of film must scrounge up today, then this is an overly-talky obviously-cheap yet still enjoyable creature feature. Just mind the acting; although even that in regard, the actual character dynamics were fun in spite of the bad-to-average performances but I got to grade on a curve considering how rare horror-westerns are, let alone ones as relatively focused and action-filled as this.