A swedish slasher made on a micro-budget. It's summer. A group of teenagers decide to go on a camping trip. They drive far up in the country until they find a small place were they rent canoe's for a cheap price. The group paddle for a long time before they find the perfect island to set up camp on. They have sex, do drugs and drink alcohol. But the next morning they notice that one of them has disappeared. They split up to go looking for her...
Murder Island is directed by Joakim S. Hammond who also co wrote the script and you can se that the film has potential. The soundtrack isn´t very fitting, it mainly consists of death metal (which included on a bonus cd) which is a poor choice, a instrumental and creepy soundtrack would have been nice and added to creating a suitable atmosphere.
The pacing is pretty high and there are very few dead spots in the film but keep in mind that it is only 46 minutes long. A nice bonus is that the teenagers look like teenagers. The acting isn´t very good but this is low budget so I didn´t have too high expectations.
There is sadly almost no special fx or gore which is important in slashers in my opinion. Almost all the violence happens off screen which is a big misstake, Murder Island needs some blood and guts. I guess the lack of special fx might be because of the low budget.
Rating: 1½ out of 7. Murder Island has potential to be a really nice slasher, it would have benefitted from more gore, some nudity and a better and more fitting soundtrack.
/JL
We have come to Violent Shit 3 - Infantry of Doom, the third film in the Violent Shit series. Once again Andreas Schnass writes, directs and plays Karl The Butcher. Karl and his father leads a sect/ a small army on an island. Three guys gets stranded on the island and are captured, one of them gets killed whereas the others and a young asian guy, an outcast of Karls troops, become the subject of a manhunt. They decide to fight back.
Yet again it´s made on micro-budget and I guess most of the budget was spent on the special fx.
In this film we get war, zombies, ninjas, martial arts and a lot of over the top gore.
The quality of picture and sound varies throughout the film, they seem to have used different equipment or it´s perhaps a intentional move by Andreas Schnass but either way it looks really weird as the flick shifts between video quality and Super 8.. The acting is very bad as in the previous films, the plot is very thin but the pacing is ok as the film thankfully moves along at good speed. The sets and props look incredibly fake..
The scene where the three asian men fight a group of ninjas is hilarously badly choreographed but quite enjoyable... :)
Overall the quality of the special fx, this time handled by Sven Petersen and Andrea Pollak, has improved since the earlier films.
Rating: 1 out of 7. Violent Shit 3 is bad but it´s better than it´s predecessors but that doesn´t mean very much..
/JL
War Dog is a independently produced actionfilm from Sweden, it´s directed by Björn Carlström and Daniel Hübenbecher who also wrote the screenplay. It´s suppoesed to take place in the USA but it doesn't look at all like the US, for instance all the cars are Volvos. Charles Stewart (Timothy Earle) is a Vietnam vet who wants answers about his brother Rick who disappeared in Vietnam and recently has been declared dead. With the help of a friend he comes in contact with Dean Daniels (Ernblad), a reporter interested in missing Vietnam soldiers. Charles gets a hold of a videotape documenting a massacre where several people are killed, and amongst the killers Charles recognizes his brother and his former commanding officer, Spacek. Rick is now part of a group of super soldiers that are brainwashed, emotionless and unstoppable killing machines led by Spacek.
I like the plot, Charles is a unlikely action hero and the super soldiers are totally ruthless. Now before any of you yell Universal Soldier I should remind you that War Dog came several years before the Roland Emmerich flick and is´s not to hard to imagine that Emmerich might have seen this flick and been inspired by it. The acting is pretty good and is actually a little better than can be expected but beware that that they use voice over for all the actors which sometimes feels a little weird.
It´s well made, you can tell that its limited budget is used the fullest and the pacing is good. Make no misstake about it, this is a very violent film. There is a lot of big juicy squibs in this movie and no one is safe, not even children are spared.
Beware that the DVD released in the UK is cut, you should try to get hold of the german DVD release which is uncut with all the shoot outs, blood and gore intact.
Rating: 6 out of 7. This piece of swedish ultra violence is very highly recommend,
This is an old favorite of mine, I´ve owned different editions through the years. First the swedish VHS ex rental (which was cut), then a danish VHS ex rental (uncut), after that I bought the DVD released in the UK and now I have the german DVD release.
/JL
