The Summer of Massacre

Years ago I told a friend that I would love to see a movie that was nothing but action. Guns, explosions, martial arts and fighting everywhere with no plot, no good guys or bad guys, no main characters, just non-stop action. I called it an exercise in "movie minimalism". It would get to the good stuff, cutting out the "pork" of drama, useless plot lines and bad acting. Truth be told, I would still like to see it.

But my desire for it is somewhat tempered now that I have seen this piece of work. The first 4th of the movie is exactly what I was talking about so long ago: Killing, sans everything else (including good special effects). And now that I have seen it, I confess that it was pretty useless in terms of entertainment.

But as for the rest of the film? It's garbage. I don't know what else to say. I could talk about it's developmental virtues, but it has none. And chances are if you've read this far you are getting bored with this review anyway.

So I want to just mention that this movie is designed to entertain people with gratuitous violence and murder, and not much else. You aren't supposed to watch it and cringe, you are supposed to empathize with the killers and let your evil side rise to the surface. You are supposed to laugh and glorify in the people getting ripped apart and hi-five the killers on the way out, assuring them that you really love their work.

For those of us without the ability to empathize with psychopaths, this film offers nothing.

This movie was great I mean yes it is a lower budget film but it's amazing. The film had had the most kills in a slasher film and is even in Guinness Book of Records. Enjoy trying to count all of them or better yer several of us have made a drinking game out of this film. Every time a person dies you take a drink of beer. It's amazing! This true cinema on the lower budget end but really shows that anything is possible.

I discovered this movie while searching for cinema related to nuclear war. Wikipedia led me by the horns to this hysterically inept production. I microwaved the popcorn and didn't cringe for a second of the wanton bloodshed. CGI-sore in every grab, stab, mauling, and mutilation. A horror show of a horror movie but not as bad as Disney's "Frozen". Now THAT movie's a diggity-dang NIGHTMARE. "Summer of Massacre" gets a mediocre rating for ambition. Warren Zevon might've liked it.

Without exaggeration, this is quite possibly the WORST film I have EVER seen in my entire life. I want whomever may be reading this to take a moment to let that really sink in. I have easily seen thousands,(if not hundreds of thousands) of films in my life, and this one actually manages to be the worst. First of all, there is no plot to speak of, just a bunch of random murder going on... and these murders - again no exaggeration - are done with the absolute worst CGI I have ever had the displeasure of seeing. I have seriously seen children who did better CGI effects on free software for zero-budget Star Trek fan films. Hell, a child could do better than this on Windows 95 with Paintbrush.

The simple fact that this film holds a world record for anything other than biggest waste of my time as a viewer is frankly disgusting. I know there are some movies out there that you'll read a bad review for and be like "oh, I bet this is so bad it's good or at least kind of funny", but I assure you, it's not. It's a miracle in that it has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

Blood Pigs, Zombie 90: Extreme Pestilence, The Burning Moon, Das Komabrutal Duell, Bone Sickness, VS trilogy...these are great ultra-gorefests but The Summer of Massacre is just retarded. It's fatal flaw is that 99% of the blood and gore is CGI. And CGI alone is bad enough but this is really, really bad CGI. And the filmmakers blatantly lie about the bodycount of 155. There's maybe 55 on screen kills. Already dead bodies laying around shouldn't count towards the body count and I hope Guinness revokes their world record for body count in a slasher film (if this isn't a blatant lie). I thought Joe Castro was a practical FX man? I've enjoyed his films such as Evil Unleashed, Legend of the Chupacabra and Jackhammer Massacre which if I remember correctly had almost 100% practical gore fx. Why couldn't he do that here? Is he that lazy? This film with all practical gore and blood would have been awesome. No one has ever liked CGI and it's even more hated when it comes to blood and gore. Not only were the fx horrid but the death scenes were stupid. A guy getting a remote control pushed through his mouth and splitting his head? A guy's head getting crushed with a seatbelt? Some of the stuff in the burn story was kinda neat despite still being very dodgy fx wise. Another knock on the film is the complete lack of female nudity and that wouldn't be a big deal if there wasn't any male nudity which unfortunately there was. There was even a sex scene with no nudity. The male nudity wasn't confined to the behind either...trying to tell us something Joe? This is an anthology by the way and none of the stories are worth mentioning. I dare you next time to top this film Joe, but with 100% practical blood and gore fx. Brian Paulin made 3 films just as gory as this and much, much better without any CGI at all and probably even less money than you wasted on this disappointment.