Splatter Farm

I read the first review, and I agree - total home movie. Decent first amateur effort but GOD what bad acting (and I LOVE bad horror/monster movies). If you go into this movie knowing that it's a home movie, you'll be impressed; but if you go in thinking that it's a "studio" movie (like I did and most people probably do), you'll be disappointed from the very first scene. Amateur special effects, amateur "scary" music, bad lighting, HORRIBLE amateur acting (especially by the old woman)...but it ventures into a ton of "taboo" subjects (incest, gay oral sex, using a severed arm/hand to masturbate and a severed head to perform fellatio, rape, anal fisting and ingesting the results, etc.). The ironic thing is, there's an interesting plot twist revealed at the very end that is pretty mature for a home movie.

See if it you can find it free/cheap, but go in knowing that this is a home movie.

This is another scummy shot on video feature resurrected for DVD that plays on what other more marketable movies of the '80s were too afraid or weren't aloud to show due to moral crusaders at the MPAA. It's a simple film that doesn't have layers and since '87 the shock has been more effectively exploited. At the gory heart of it, "Splatter Farm" plays on taboos: thrill kills, mutilation of the dead, same sex acts with the dead, collecting dead parts, cannibalism, coprophilia, self-mutilation, animal slaughter, flagrant masturbation and, last but not least, incestuous overtones. As amateur and sometimes clumsily put together as it is, it's going to play on a viewer's nerves one way or another.

This truly is a DIY affair with only four main actors who did just about everything else behind the scenes also. Two of them are twins who are visiting their elderly aunt and late teens cousin on an isolated farm for their summer vacation. Their cousin is a make-up wearing sociopath who has no one to stop him from giving in to his sadistic urges. The movie started out pretty unsettling and strange with more focus on the demented cousin with too much time on his hands. As it progressed, it started to give the audience a break and lean towards the level-headed twins who are getting suspicious and attempting to put it all together. The aunt is caught in the middle and starts to make excuses either from blind motherly love or something of her own to hide.

As terrible as the production values go--including fake bodies that wouldn't fool the near-sighted even without their specs--this is unsettling in the dark ideas it brings to the chopping table. This gets right down to the nitty gritty of amoral without hesitation and with the help of the video quality makes you think there could be a case somewhere like this as out there as it is. Instead of lazily stomping on a synthesizer, the music helps stir up some mood by treating certain scenes with piano melodies and other abstract sounds. "Splatter Farm" had a number of flaws, but underneath the atrocious film quality this has what other underground and even mainstream horror films miss out on from time to time: a little bit of genuine creepiness. It could have faired better with a bigger budget and more time but all and all it's worth a single watch if that's your cup of bitter tea, otherwise the movie is more than likely going to be horrendous if you're only used to horror on a bigger scale. (Also submitted on http://fromblacktoredfilmreviews.blogspot.com/)

There is a scene in "Splatter Farm" where, after making a ghastly discovery in a barn, one of our twin protagonists stumbles outside and vomits. He runs off, and a delighted cat runs over and we get an up-close scene of him happily lapping it up. He really digs in to them chunks of turnip! I could say that this sums up the debut film from the infamous Polonia brothers but I would be lying. Not when there are multiple scenes of dismemberment, some incest and torture to boot. All cheaply done, I may add, but very visceral. Which is not to say that "Splatter Farm" is a dismissible, straight-to-video exploitation film. On the contrary, it is quit the shocker, and is high on the creative energy of the Polonia brothers, who wrote the script, starred and directed along with their pal Todd Smith.

The film sees foul-mouthed brothers Alan and Joseph driving out in to the countryside to spend the summer at their Aunt's farm. She is a disgusting old pervert of a woman, who can't take her eyes off of these two young men, even though they are her nephews! Alan and Joseph are perturbed by the half-wit and creepy handyman that their auntie has plodding around the farm and lurking around the house. "What exactly does he do around here?" one of the brothers demands, in one of many hilarious outbursts. Well, when he isn't listlessly hacking weeds around the farm, Jeremy is exuberantly hacking people to pieces and making masks and ornaments out of their dead bodies (Such a blatant "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" rip-off but I'll let it slide). Pretty soon, the brothers find that they are on Jeremy's radar as well as their auntie's, and they'll be doing well to survive the week out here, let alone the entire summer.

Although the special effects are outrageously cheap, they are actually effective and I found some scenes stomach-churning. I believe the Polonia brothers were only about 19 when they made this, and you can see that they really had a flare for it and what they lacked in budget and experience, they more than made-up for when it came to visceral horror. The auntie is one of the most naturally terrifying and disgusting characters I've ever come across, so well done Marion Costly for that performance.

During my time living in the Netherlands-a country known for its broad cultural tolerance and often audacious programming choices-I encountered an experience that would forever alter my understanding of the grotesque and the marginal. One seemingly ordinary afternoon, while having lunch with Dutch colleagues, a local television channel-mainstream, not thematic or specialized in exploitation cinema-broadcast Splatter Farm (1987). There were no content warnings. No disclaimers. Just the raw intrusion of the abject, right between spoonfuls of erwtensoep.

Splatter Farm is, to be blunt, a cinematic anomaly. Shot on home video, featuring performances of near-archaeological ineptitude and a script that seems to have been regurgitated by a disturbed insomniac, the film operates in a state of decayed aesthetics that borders on snuff rather than traditional slasher. And yet, in its execution, there is an undeniable sincerity-an unfiltered commitment to the most scatological horror-that could almost be compared to Pasolini's provocations, if one is willing to descend deep enough into analytical depravity.

The plot-if it can be called that-revolves around two brothers visiting their aunt at a decrepit farm plagued by rot and violence. What follows is a grotesque parade of mutilation, necrophilia, cannibalism, and bodily fluids, all captured by a camera that never flinches. There is something almost pornographic here-not of desire, but of decay. One might interpret Splatter Farm as a visual essay on the decomposition of family bonds and the symbolic rot of post-Reagan rural America.

From an academic perspective, the film deserves a degree of attention for its value as a primitive artifact of extreme DIY cinema. Its brutalist aesthetic, rudimentary editing, and unapologetic dedication to excess make it a vital reference in the study of underground splatter and the history of amateur American video. But to witness it unintentionally, in daylight hours, surrounded by polite citizens watching it as calmly as one might a rerun of Baantjer, was a cultural trauma bordering on surreal.

Is it a good film? Hardly.

Is it an authentic cinematic experience? Absolutely.

I'll skip the analysis and get right to the important stuff. Here are some of the scenes included in the 1987 no-budget home video classic "Splatter Farm." (1) A 19 year old boy having sex with a 65 year old woman. (2) A man crapping out a knife. (3) A boy performing fellatio on himself with a severed head. (4)gay rape. (5) the human consumption of feces. Need I say more? The only thing that limits this movie from being the most shocking of all time is it's lousy direction and film stock. Granted, the ideas are nothing short of nauseatingly disgusting, however they just don't look real, which is obviously the result of an extremely low budget. Bottom line: Cheap White Trash Gore at it's best. Just rent it....when you're drunk perhaps. Have a good laugh, or vomit.