Hollow Gate

Okay this is the plot of this movie; a young kid named Mark has a bad encounter with his father in which he almost drowns. Due to this one incident he goes comlepetely insane and starts butchering all the residents of a small town and some unlucky teenagers from out of town that are making a delivery on Halloween night.

No real story to speak of of, no acting or directing talent in sight, and no budget all add to one of the worst films ever made. Makes "Jack-O and Plan 9 From Outer Space" look like "Citizen Kane." That is just how bad this inept and how mind numbingly awful this piece of mess is.

DO NOT RENT THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!

Hollow Gate is the story of a young boy, Mark, who almost gets killed by his drunk and abusive father on Halloween. Ten years later, he is released from a mental hospital and decides to go on a murder spree.

Hal Roach's grandson, Addison Randall, plays Mark as an adult. He does a good job as the psycho although the acting in this film is really bad. It is still an entertaining film to watch but I recommend it only to die hard fans of the horror genre.

I find myself writing this review a day after viewing, not because it inspired me so much I couldn't wait, but because if I leave it much longer the film is pretty much guaranteed to vacate my memory. A quivering slab of SOV junk that neither glistens with home movie crapulence nor captures any genuine freakishness or gruesome laughs, Hollow Gate is pretty far from memorable, though it does at least carve out a more or less bearable path for its 87 minutes or so. We have the sad tale of Mark Nelson here, humiliated by his boozy step dad and thusly bound for insanity and subsequent murder, it's a message film clothed in the inimitable rags of 80's video technology. Child mockery makes for ticking time bombs, unwatched cars may be set to explode, unwatched pills may remain untaken, even with assurances that they have been. Be nice, be attentive, writer/director Ray Di Zazzo seems to say. Or maybe not, but you can never tell. Anyhoo, this is worse than average for a late 80's slasher, witless padding by idiot cops bulks out a pretty thin set up, there are only 4 kids about for the offing in the bulk of the film and the blood and gore is very thin on the ground. At least Addison Randall conjures up some enthusiastic unhingement to make up for being utterly unscary, while the two ladies in peril of the film are easy enough on the eye. Randall seemed to pop up in a fair few straight to video roles, though of the aforementioned womenfolk the most interesting sounding later film role is Katrina Alexy being "Head in a Bowl" in the likely never seen by anybody short film Oatmeal. Achievement! Best (or worst, depending on how you look at these things) for acting in this one is Richard Dry, who perhaps anticipating never appearing in anything else builds up a head of steam before really blowing loose the last stages of the film. His madly profane panic and acclamations of love to his girlfriend carry a remarkable energy, almost as if his very life depended on it, and its an almost awesome thing to behold. There isn't much reason to watch this one altogether, I wouldn't recommend it. Inane killer, daft costumes (though his soldier scene is pretty funny) little violence, this is something of a failure, of interest only to the real geeks out there. Dig in if you feel you must and you might not get burned too bad, but there are still tons of worthwhile obscure slashers out there that you likely haven't seen, so try them instead.

Hollow Gate is so unoriginal, so cheap and shoddily produced, so very badly acted, and so dark at times, that it will come across as a complete and utter waste of time. The plot is so low budget horror based that it degenerates into the same fate as other late 80's horror, and that is as a rip-off. I mean at least Jason and Freddy had motives. The sicko that slays in this one is supposedly "crazy" due to an abusive childhood. In flashback, we see the boy's (named Mark) father dunk his head in water...ooooooohhh. I can see how he turned into a homicidal maniac, running over helpless girls with tractors and playing war veteran, throwing axes and knives with robot like proficiency. Hardly.....The film is so inept that you almost come to see that the teens are so unintelligent to walk into this sicko's house that they deserve what they get. Well, not exactly, but the film is terrible. Even as a low-budget (or should it be known, NO budget) late 80's horror film, this one tanks. It is that bad. Don't rent this movie unless you are fond of cheap horror films with no plot and an overbearing air of familiarity. 2 out of 10

I know it's a long shot but in case you're desperately looking for the most retarded movie ever made…. this is it! Hollow Gate represents EVERYTHING that went wrong with the horror business during the 80's. There's not even a slight attempt to bring depth, character drawing or tension and the whole film is just a series of ineptness. Hollow Gate tells the heart-breaking plot of a young boy whose daddy wasn't capable of loving. Awwww… During a stupid Halloween party, daddy humiliates little Mark Walters and 10 years later he goes berserk on Halloween's eve. Dressed in ridiculous (not necessarily Halloween-related) costumes, he slaughters some of the most stupid teenagers you've ever seen while the local cops are outside his fence, chatting about how deranged he is. Words fail to describe how awful this movie is. I hope everyone involved in this production is still too embarrassed to leave his/her house. Rating 10 out of 10 for being so painfully hilarious. Rating 0 out of 10 for wasting yet another hour and a half of my (not-so) precious life.