Live Animals

By success I mean it succeeds at showing prospective future film producers and directors how not to make a movie.

It showcases some great ways to save $$$ on movies too:

1) Make a low budget movie by showing the same scenes over and over with different dialog played over them each time. This will serve to nauseate your viewers while also giving you what appears to be an hour and a half of movie.

2) Hire small time, unknown actors for the roles then film then for just 20 minutes each so you have the footage to replay multiple times.

3) Don't pay to see this movie, that's the best money-saving tip of them all!

A group of lively college kids are on break, dancing and romancing and generally fooling around when they are hunted down by burly, menacing Edgar (Patrick Cox) who shoots them full of tranquilizers. The young people awake chained in horse stalls. These would-be yuppies realize that they are now the property of human trafficker Wayne (John Still). With his white hair and beard and roly poly big belly, Wayne appears a kind of perversely demonic Santa Claus. More concretely, he comes across as a psychopathic business executive when he announces to the young people in the stalls, "You are my property!" The ruthless capitalist aspect is underlined when he is depicted at his desk, filling out forms and keeping track of funds like any efficient executive. But he is as ruthless as they come as poor Josh (Scott Fletcher) soon discovers. Letting out a series of loud cries at being chained, he faces Wayne's wrath, which is, of course, expressed in torture and mutilation.

The primary protagonists of the film are brother and sister Nick (Christian Walker) and Erin (Jeanette Comans). Nick is the youth with, as Wayne notes, "spirit," who desperately seeks a way out of enslavement, Erin is the sister of whom he is protective and who, in her turn, is protective of her friend Vicky (Scarlet Williams), the first to be toyed with by Edgar, and the first to be sold. Almost as striking as a torture or mutilation scene is the scene in which this pretty twenty-something female is locked inside a wooden box with the words "Live Animal" on it. We are told she is to be shipped overseas where she will be imprisoned in a brothel.

Perhaps the most interesting character is Kathy (Stacy Still) who is not one of the college kids but whom they are surprised find already there in one of the stalls. She appears to have been kidnapped some prior but has not been sold and instead gone insane from the sheer boredom of her surroundings. She spends her days reciting children's nursery rhymes, repeating phrases she hears from other people, and talking ambiguously about a husband who might be about to rescue her.

Directed by Jeremy Benson, with a screenplay he co-wrote with Mark Williams, "Live Animals" is a fast-paced, interestingly nasty piece of work. I enjoyed watching as these unfortunate young people sought so desperately to find a way out of their horrifying situation and fight against their heartless captors. Although others have faulted the acting, I found it satisfactory, particularly by John Still, Stacy Still, and and Christian Walker - the three performers who really count. A lot of blood is splattered around and the cinematography gives the whole thing an appropriately gritty and sleazy look to it. There is a startling twist toward the end. Does it make sense? Maybe. Maybe not. But it hardly matters because it ramps up the horror and fits perfectly in a film that wallows in the grisly.

A group of college kids must decide what price they will pay to gain their freedom after being kidnapped by a ruthless White Slave trader.

This film is described on the DVD case as "gutsy", but that's just about the last word I would use to describe it. The film quality is low, seemingly on purpose to give it a gritty look, and this only adds to the frustration of trying to watch it. Aside from the film quality itself, the movie is just plain bad.

If you like watching people being tortured, there are a few scenes you may enjoy. I, for one, have grown bored with it. I wasn't a big fan in the first place, and if you want to cover up a weak plot with torture, that's just a poor idea and you shouldn't have made the film in the first place. "Saw" and "Hostel" said it all.

There's a plot twist here or there that is kind of interesting, but hardly worth getting excited about. Personally, I think it would be in your best interest to just keep walking and forget this film was ever made. I know I will soon forget.

The premise had promise (human capture and slavery in middle America) unfortunately the execution was off. Stilted characters that reeked of horror movie clichés and an overly long tedious opening that almost made me turn the movie off in boredom did not help the film (and continuity issues with blood covered ripped up shirts don't help either).

Buckets of blood do not make a good movie, no matter how many teenagers tell you it does. Perhaps given better actors, editors, writer and director, this would have been a decent film, but in this case, it was poorly executed by the cast and crew that were in over their heads from the very start. And the goofy twists in the last fifteen minutes are simply that…goofy.

And as a note to the writer: if you are going to make a point of the main protagonist saying that he can break a human in a mere three days...please follow through with it. Nothing happened to even remotely break anyone.

This is a low budget horror if you aren't into this then this isn't for you. For most fans of horror it's the low budget movies that are the best because they're usually pretty fun and creative. We know this isn't going to be a Hollywood blockbuster film but that's why we enjoy it. The same reason you see people watch highschool football games. They're not nfl or even college games but they're fun and full of spirit. That's what three cheap horror flicks are like.

The worst past of this movie was the beginning for me as it was hard to tell what was going on and why. Soon as we get to the barn where everything takes places the movie gets 1,000 better. I actually almost turned this one off at first because it seemed like it was just going to be a time waster but it picked up.

The barn is where we get to the root of horror in this movie about human trafficking. Most of the gory stuff takes place here and it's actually pretty well done.

What I found most annoying though is that all the female characters look a like. They all have black hair and dark circles around their eyes and similar facial features. I really couldn't tell who was who or if the same actor was playing multiple parts there how bad it was.

The special effects is good in areas where it needs to be but the makeup wow. It's really bad. Everyone has dark raccoon circles around their eyes and it makes them all look like hobos or something. It's really weird.

The good parts are the story is decent. I liked the torture segments they were better than some other films where it becomes cheesy. In this film they sort of cut away and then come back to it which is good if you don't have the fx budget to fully film the actually torture scene.

Acting I mean it's horror acting. It's not required to be amazing. It's the screams and terror that sell the movie and this movie had some great screamers and terror faces. Without that a horror movie just doesn't sell well to the audience.

This movie also has a twist ending I guess you either like or won't. I didn't for some reason. Didn't seem like it was really needed for a movie like this.

Overall the movie kept my interest. It had some good scenes but the early part of the movie was just unwatchable. It seems like the movie would be great with more characters and time to establish who they were. The movie also strangely seems to show characters and then forget them.

I swear there was a red headed woman locked up and a guy they punished by throwing in a punishment room that the movie forgot to never address or show again.

Either way this was an ok b stock movie.