LARSONRD

BLOOD TIES (Singapore, 2009; Huan Hun) A police officer being framed for corruption is brutally murdered (along with his wife) by gangsters possesses the body of his surviving sister in order to mete out justice on his killers. It's an intriguing and ultimately moving story effectively played out. The pacing is inconsistent and sometimes seems to take a long time to get from point L to point M as the story develops, and some flashback and repeat flashbacks go on a lot longer than need be, but the film has satisfactory production values and its story possesses an honest heart as it delineates the familial relationships that are at its heart.

Aided by legendary filmmaker Roger Christian (one of nearly a dozen producers or exec-producers assigned to this film), newbie director Lowell Dean has made a fairly good Canadian rage virus thriller out of this film. The title comes from a rural state penitentiary that used to house life-term inmates who were then experimented upon. Cut a few decades ahead to the present and it's the site of a field examination for six forensic undergraduate students, assembled to study prepares cadavers on the property to graduate the class and gain a coveted FBI position. With a dozen cadavers placed around the site for the three teams of two students each to investigate seems fine enough, until a few additional cadavers, dressed all in inmate orange, turn up – and then get up and attack with extreme prejudice – when all hell breaks loose. The cast, including such Canadian horror regulars as American MARY's Katherine Isabel and her fellow GINGER SNAPS 2 & 3 co-star Brendan Fletcher, does an excellent job, lending credibility to the characters and fluency to the story action. Makeup effects are pretty good and there's a workable score by Igor Vabrac and Ken Worth (the latter noted for Canadian TV series like GHOST TRACKERS and John Woo's ONCE A THIEF). Director Dean, mentored to one extent or another by Christian (see DVD Extras for some details on that) has a good sense of camera placement and movement and along with his cast gives the otherwise routine rage zombie story a satisfying value-added visual dimension.

In Ted V. Mikels' ultra low-budget saga of a small town cat food company that, to avoid bankruptcy, finds a new and cheap source of meat: the local graveyard. When bodies become scarce, murder is added to the menu. Mikels is a talented director and the film is well organized and well-paced, but the pocket-change budget of his film and the severe lack of talent among his players loses any opportunity to really make THE CORPSE GRINDERS an enjoyable film, even as a comedy. The same goes for the first sequel, which rehashed the original's storyline while adding cat-like aliens fighting against dog-like aliens into the mix. But with THE CORPSE GRINDERS 3 (which Mikels exec produced for second-time Spanish director Manolito Motosierra) inherits a competent and spirited cast of actors who give the continuing storyline the kind of natural performances that make the film's macabre humor actually effective. Other than that, it's essentially the same storyline with new set of managers for the Lotus Cat Food Company who face the same kind of problems as did their predecessors. But it's a much more tolerable and even more likable film than the previous pair.