Honey Britches

(1971) Demented Death Farm Massacre/ Honey Britches THRILLER/ COMEDY DRAMA

Co-produced and directed by Donn Davison that has four convicts on the run from the police riding their jeep until it runs out of gas. Leading the group is Phillip Courtney (Jim Peck) and his girlfriend, Karen (Trudy Moore) and Kirk Taylor ( Mike Coolik) and his girlfriend, Suzanne (Pepper Thurston) as their jeep runs out of gas. They are then forced to walk and soon stumble onto a farm with a single hillbilly wife, Reba Sue Craven (Ashley Brooke) waiting at home for her husband, Horlon (George Ellis). Complicating matters is when one of the criminals holds them hostage and begins to seduce Horlon's wife, Reba Sue The movie has poor acting, low budget, using an idea used a dozen times, and just when one presumes there is nudity in there, there is perhaps a breast scene and that is basically it.

Demented Death Farm Massacre (1971/86)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

This is yet another low-budget drive-in flick where it's history is a lot more interesting than the actual film. In 1972 a movie called SHANTYTOWN HONEYMOON was made but found very limited distribution so it was forgotten until director Fred Olen Ray bought it and tried to sell it to the video market. No one wanted it unless Ray could get a "star" to appear so he hired John Carradine for a day and filmed the added scenes of him pretty much telling us the story of what happened. It turned out that Carradine filmed these scenes in an hour and since Ray hired him for a full day of work, the low-budget filmmaker decided to take advantage of his star by having him act out other scenes, which would eventually be used in films such as STAR SLAMMER, EVIL SPAWN and JACK-O, which would actually be released nearly seven years after the death of Carradine.

Four jewel thieves make a daring robbery but along the way of their escape they must get rid of their vehicle and take off on foot. They come across a redneck man (George Ellis) and his younger, sexy white trash wife (Ashley Brooks) and take them hostage but the rednecks have their own idea of how things are going to go. Those wanting to see the original film will have a pretty simple time doing so because the newly shot Ray/Carradine footage doesn't last over a couple minutes. We see Carradine at the very start for under a minute and then he pops up briefly throughout the film for about another minute total. Those just watching this for Carradine will probably feel cheated. The "real" movie here isn't that bad and in fact it contains some rather campy, fun moments but sadly even at 80-minutes this thing runs way too long. I'll admit that I found plenty of the redneck humor to be fun and a large part of this is due to the performances by Brooks and Ellis as the redneck couple. Ellis is the old, bearded man who is constantly preaching about sins while at the same time paying a black woman for sex and selling moonshine. I found Ellis to be pretty good at screaming off these Bible quotes and it made me laugh several times. Brooks is certainly easy on the eyes in her little redneck dress and her silly accent just really makes you love her. The four actors playing the thieves all give bad performances but thankfully they're all so over-the-top that you can't help but laugh. I really loved it when they tried to get dramatic or "scary" because of the way they'd carry on was just downright hilarious at times. There are a couple quick nude shots as well as some minor gore including one pitchfork sequence. Fans of the horror genre might get a chuckle out of those scenes but it's those looking for low-budget hicksploitation that are going to be the ones finding this most appealing. The biggest problem with the film is its extended running time plus there are way too many moments where the film stops dead in its tracks as it seems the screenplay just wants to talk and talk and talk without the dialogue ever moving the story along.

This film essentially begins with 4 people robbing a jewelry store of approximate $1 million in stolen merchandise and then finding themselves somewhere deep in Appalachia after their car runs out of gas. To that effect, the leader of the group "Phillip" (Jim Peck) recommends that they hide the car and then find an isolated house where they can hole up for a couple of days until things have cooled off sufficiently for them to refuel the car and head back out on the open roads. A reasonable solution. What he doesn't count on, however, is the problems they will eventually face when they select a house owned by the local moonshiner named "Horlon P. Craven" (George Ellis) and his attractive young wife "Reba Sue Craven" (Ashley Brooks). Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was one of those low-budget comedies that suffered, to a great extent, from bad acting and a very poor overall script. To be sure, both Ashley Brooks and Pepper Thurston (as "Suzanne") definitely improved the overall scenery to a certain degree. No question about that. Unfortunately, it simply wasn't enough to overcome the other obvious faults just mentioned, and I have rated this movie accordingly. Below average.

In HONEY BRITCHES, four bickering travelers wind up at a farm, where they encounter a pair of female rustics. Soon, the hillbilly males return, and backwoods insanity commences.

This movie scrapes the bottom of the barrel, crashes through it, only to emerge in a cesspit on the other side of the Earth!

Meant primarily to showcase the cleavage and mountainous hairstyles of the women involved, all else, including plot, dialogue, acting, etc., has been ignored.

There is an obligatory rape scene, followed by a "catfight", and death. The remaining 95% of this "film" is filler. Outhouse filler to be exact. Sitting through it is an agonizing experience, like wearing cactus pants!

Even the finale is awful!...

I rented this movie a few months ago. My brother, his friend and I were on a cheesy horror flick kick, and we thought this movie would be funny. We were very wrong. It was a waste of my money and a waste of my time. After barely 10 minutes we were already falling asleep and losing all interest. It got so bad that we eventually decided to fast forward through the whole movie, and see if there were any interesting scenes. Not once did I take my finger off that fast forward button. A day later I actually attempted to watch the full movie. After watching it all the way through I realized one thing. It was 100 times more interesting when we were fast forwarding it. Don't be fooled into renting this low budget crapfest called Honey Britches. You don't want to make the same mistake I did.