GARDEN TOOL MASSACRE

Garden Tool Massacre Movie Review

Charles Scavolini is sent to a mental institution after killing his wife. Seven years later, he escapes, and returns to his home, which is now filled with partying teenage boys. Chuck is none too happy about this new arrangement, and the youths soon pay...in blood! The zero dollar budget film was shot in the UK in 1997, but didn't get an official release until SRS Cinema brought it to the world in 2020. If you are adding zero budget plus 1997, your sum may be "a group of friends shooting something on a camcorder". If this was your calculation, well done! 

Bonus points if you also pictured this

This movie was indeed shot (at least partially) on glorious VHS, and if you remember watching movies this way, you may find yourself searching for the tracking button a time or two while watching this one. If you read my review of City of the Vampires, you know a bit about my own personal experience shooting on VHS. You also know of "parties" my friend Brian would throw, and that they were always nights of guys wondering out loud where all the girls are (the true battle cry of teenage guys at parties)--Garden Tool Massacre has a lot of that going on as well. 

"I swear I invited some!"

This movie starts off surprisingly well--we see Charles killing his wife, and get a very slow moving warning about what is to come. There is little speaking at the start, and the first ten minutes set a wonderful atmosphere. We know this won't last, however, and as soon as the lads living the house are introduced, the interest level plummets. Nobody expects any great acting from a movie such as this, so I won't even touch on that. No, the downfall isn't in the acting, but in the lack of anything of substance happening for much of the movie. The boys wonder where the girls and pizza are. One dances like Crispin Glover in Friday the 13th Part IV. One insists everybody call him "Psycho". They wonder where the girls are. You get the picture--there's a whole lot of filler between the opening and when Scavolini inevitably makes his way to the house to kill the victims with, yes, garden tools. Once he arrives, the death scenes are quite impressive for a group of people with no money to work with. The ending is a bit anti-climatic, but to be honest, your interest has likely left by then anyway. At just 70 minutes, the movie seems much longer, as it is clear they were throwing stuff in just to get to what would be considered a feature-length film. Still, you have to give writer/director/producer/one-man-band David Hinds credit for doing what he did with the limited resources he had--there are many, many similar films that are much worse than this one. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5

Garden Tool Massacre Movie Trailer

CIRCUS OF THE DEAD

Circus of the Dead Movie Review

A group of clowns from a travelling circus kidnap a family, forcing the father, Donald (Parrish Randall), to make some tough choices in order to save his daughters. Along the way, the painted psychopaths go on a killing spree, and the blood pours in buckets. This movie was shot in 2014, released in 2017, and is the product of Billy Pon. Nicknamed "Bloody Bill", Pon is a veteran in the haunted house industry, and Circus of the Dead is his feature length debut. If you are automatically assuming a guy with extensive experience working on haunted houses would know how to bring some rad visuals to the screen...well, you're right. There is a lot to like about how this movie looks, and at times, you sense you are walking through a really good Halloween attraction. 

Now would be a good time to turn around

The clowns are a mixed bag--Bill Oberst Jr. shines as Papa Corn, the leader of the outfit. Oberst brings a very unsettling presence to the character--I've always believed the quiet, meticulous villain to be scarier than the loud, screaming type, and as a calm killer, Papa Corn is as creepy as any character you'll come across--unfortunately, this is shattered when, for some reason, the character becomes more the loud, obnoxious clown you would expect, and a character that just screams iconic becomes throwaway. As for the rest of our clowns, we have a giant who laughs incessantly, a dwarf who barks or yelps instead of talking, and one who smoke cigarettes the entire time--none are developed beyond this. Randall is a horrendous actor, making it hard to get behind his character, or even care what happens to him...or his family, for that matter.

2000 called, Donnie Boy

There's not much bordering on suspense here--the laughing and yelping kill any hope of it building up. The violence is amped up to extreme levels--if I didn't know any better, I would think Bloody Bill was making a political statement, or even delving into the media coverage of violence as a theme, ala Natural Born Killers, by using it to such excess...I suspect Pon's nickname would lead us to believe otherwise, and that nothing more than a gorefest was intended. There's nothing wrong with this amount of violence in a film, of course, but when the shock factor is used to this extent, every move after becomes predictable, and that certainly hinders this film, all the way to the ending we see coming for at least an hour. As disappointing is the very dark, almost grindhouse feel of the film in the beginning being traded in for horror and even action film cliché shots, such as the entire gang walking in slow motion, the camera mounted on the hood of the car and looking in, and the sped up shots to enhance the madness unfolding. Circus of the Dead is a movie filled with potential, and one with a fantastic start--once it gives in to the tried and true, the potential dies, and we are left with a fairly forgettable film. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5

Circus of the Dead Movie Trailer