The Land of College Prophets

This film is amazing. Somehow these guys made a comic-book film epic on an independent level. It's like Sin City's little brother but set in a seemingly alternate present where people beat each other up and giant wishing wells come alive and eat people. The film speeds along at a ridiculous pace introducing eight or so character that look as if they came right from some messed up Lovecraftian fantasy camp.There's an Irish thug, a hundred year old Ex-Nazi, punk-ed out priest, a jar head, a bad ass Zen master and the list goes on and on. The characters are dark, cool, violent and funny. You want to hate them but you feel for them too. The fight scenes are great. Lot's of gore lots of jokes. This film has got to be the next Army of darkness

Wow. The DV revolution has spawned this. Digital Film Tree's Founder Ramy Katrib stated the other night while presenting that the DV revolution has done nothing but put powerful creative tools in the hands of mediocre to horrible story tellers. I present to you Exhibit #1: Land of the College Prophets. I applaud the effort of the young digital movie makers as the effort to produce a feature length project is not an easy thing to do. Especially when there is little to no money. That being said, the focus of said projects should be on dynamic story telling and rich character driven dialog. Keep the scope of the project within reasonable limits. This would include not attempting a large scale sci-fi/horror movie without the means to get it to viewable standards. One scene that springs to mind is the "climactic battle" on the front lawn of Tunxis Community College. Here we have "scary monsters" in broad daylight, with college students milling to and from class unfazed by the oncoming holocaust. This scene sums up the trouble with handing newbies cameras and computers. Jeff Goldblum's line from Jurassic Park springs to mind, "Just because you could, doesn't mean you should". I could go on and on pulling each scene apart as common mistakes are made over & over such as 180 rule breaks for no reason, mismatched misenscene, mismatched eyelines, and no match action edits. My advice to the young "filmmakers" is to get into some kind of storytelling school, tighten your aesthetic approaches, and put Adobe Aftereffects away.

This is a pretty funny film. It is very strange almost like a Cronenberg Film but with a lot more humor. It's a cult film in the deepest sense of the meaning so honestly if you don't like cult films stay the heck away. On the other hand you like Camp Horror and action all rolled into one this is your film. The stories a little confusing here and there but it's really more about the characters, their interaction. It's a cool concept something like back yard super hero's or something like that. You can tell it had a low budget but it has great costumes and sets like the well. For such a small film it's leaps and bounds above other shoe string films. It's worth a rental, worth a rental indeed.

This is one of those movies that looks promising. But it really lets that promise down. It's neither good or bad good (in the campy sense), merely very very boring. And that's how a film really fails.

The apparent aim was to make a campy sort of movie - you have a cast of ridiculous characters seemingly out of various animated comedies like Sealab, King of the Hill and possibly South Park. You have one bald guy who likes to dress like a priest, another guy who wears army fatigues (and looks like the guy who mutters from King of the Hill), a goofy Science Teacher, another bald guy who wears a deck of cards on his arm.

The trouble is, none of the concepts really works. All of the actors play their roles too tightly, and it comes off as more pretentious than anything else. The only exception would be the campus cop leader.

The plot apparently revolves around a romantic dispute over a guy in drag. This was when I started putting the DVD player on "x4". Nothing much happens, but near the end we get sort of a surreal sort of fight with a guy painted blue and wearing a helmet and everyone else.

Great film, which demonstrates what can be achieved on a budget.

There's credible acting, fantastic fight choreography.

There's also some unexpectedly serious gore and gorgeous cinematography - all of which combines to make you realise LAND OF COLLEGE PROPHETS is a masterpiece of low budget, independent cinema.

Great fun, and surprisingly moving at times too. A muscle fest for the main part though ... recommended!

Good luck to Tom, Phil and the guys on their next project.

Please support the collective, as there is huge promise in films like this.