Greed

(2004) Axe/ Greed THRILLER/ HORROR

Super low budget and straight to rental version of "No Country For Old Men" centering on some stolen cash by a couple of biker girls of Raven (Darlena Tejeiro) and Ashley (Andrea Bogart) from a different bike, and the inhuman serial killer who cannot be killed who does whatever it takes to retrieve it, even if it means taking on the whole biker gang. Besides whatever I mentioned above from the movie that won the Coens Brothers some Oscars of "No Country...", it also makes use of the desert settings, back stabbings and the double crossings. And the serial killer, Ivan (Tim Sitarz) who cannot be killed, who looks like a Steve Austin look-a-like who just wavers an axe and for some reason, he cannot even be traced, regardless of the orange prison outfit he has on, whose also called the axe man. I felt dumb after watching this, theirs a realistic poorly photographed motorcycle chase that isn't going to come any more real than the bad acting and unconvincing fight scenes happening throughout.

I am not a big fan of horror films. This one is really different. It is a very campy approach to the horror genre. It is really more of an action film. I enjoyed the action, which was a lot of fun. I found the character to be very campy, and it seems like the director really had fun with it. It is not that gory. It seems like it is more suggestive in nature. I love Jason London. He plays a really different character here. Ned was my favorite character, and I also enjoyed the relationship between the two female leads. It reminds me of the old Roger Corman films, campy and a bit over the top. The story can not be taken too seriously, but what action/horror movie can be taken seriously...I had a great time watching it with my girlfriends...one of them is a climber too, so we had to listen to her and HER achievements after we watched the tape....that was a bit less fun, but still entertaining... Linda

I bought this miserable and ludicrous excuse for a motion picture as part of a three DVD box set named "The Ultimate Horror Collection". Now that's a joke! Not just because all three titles (this one together with something called "South of Hell" and "Sasquatch Hunters") are downright terrible movies, but also because this "Greed" can hardly even be considered as horror. It's more of an action/adventure thriller about a whole bunch of uninteresting people trying to get their filthy hands on a large sum of stolen money. And, oh yeah, coincidentally there's also a guy with an axe butchering everyone as well. As shallow and childish as it may sound, the only remotely good reason to give this lousy flick a go is because the main actresses Andrea Bogart and – particularly – Darlene Tejeiro are parading around in tight sportive outfits the entire movie. And it just has to be said that Tejeiro has a beautiful pair of big round breasts. These ladies depict two friends out on an adventurous rock-climbing trip. When they stop for a rest in the bar of the handsome bartender Robert, the girls are harassed and threatened by a vicious gang of bikers. You can tell these dudes are bad to the bone, because they wear leather outfits and have tattoos, yet they're driving dirt bikes, ha! Our jezebels flee and accidentally recover the $300.000 loot, which makes them a luscious prey for a whole bunch of people. Meanwhile, the deranged axe-wielding killer Ivan escaped from prison and seemingly has a score to settle with many of the thugs that are chasing our wenches. Admittedly this sounds like a convoluted and ambitious plot, but it's all a bunch of derivative and clichéd nonsense instead. Literally every character in the film is a either a greedy double-crossing weasel or a selfish backstabber (hence the title, I presume) and the dialogs and shootouts are incredibly inept. There are way too many idiotic sequences, like the chase between a station wagon and a quad, and despite of the massive body count there's never any suspenseful moment or imaginative killing. The psychopath is apparently even more indestructible than Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers combined, as he cheerfully stands back up after being hit by car, shot numerous times and fallen from large heights. Oh well, it doesn't matter, since I will solely remember Darlene Tejeiro's tight black top.

Now this is a seriously decent thriller with a vicious, relentless bad guy:a sort of homicidal Energiser Bunny who weighs 280 pounds and whose brain has long since died. There is great deal of ax-work and lots of tension. Jessica Biel had a way of filling blue jeans in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and now please welcome slender, blonde Andrea Bogart whose nether cheeks are tightly packaged in a pair of size 0 low-rise snuggies and, in a couple of motel scenes, a pair of tight boy-shorts. In a supporting role, Fiona Loewi is extremely hot and shamefully underused even though she does bring the curtain down. Well worth buying or renting. Exciting and well-acted.

You can find this in a bargain bin as AXE on DVD, like I did, for $3 or so, and it's not a bad buy. It's a quasi-horror film with action sequences, and a rather interesting plot with a lot of twists and turns. Enough to keep you guessing, sort of, and a few pretty good shock moments. Some really decent acting and some just ordinary, but nothing terrible, and you won't finish it by being bored for sure. The maniacal axe murderer is not developed as well as I'd like, probably due to so many other plot contrivances that left little time. Some fairly unbelievable resurrections, but nothing less than any other slasher film has had. The killer is pretty scary, but would have been better with a little more mania, and a little less visibility. There's not really anyone here who is wholesome, just varying degrees of corruption, which makes this like one of those quirky noir-style films of recent times.