Demon Slaughter (2003) — Triskaidekafiles

DEMON SLAUGHTER

WRITER: Ryan Cavalline

DIRECTOR: Ryan Cavalline

STARRING: Adam Berasi as Jimmy
Vic Badger as Satan
Peter Blessel as Thug 2/Red Demon
Shannon Johnson as Wife
Bill Wittman as Little Joey

QUICK CUT: A man retires from his work, and takes some time off at a friend’s cabin to relax.

THE MORGUE

Jimmy - A hitman for the local rural mob. Your average guy with a gun. A crackshot, sleeps around, only cares about himself. Will do anything to survive.

You can’t spell slaughter without laughter.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! May begins with me opening up another Pendulum Films 50 pack, and plucking out Demon's Laughter at random. Let's see what we've got here.

The movie opens up with Jimmy walking with a guy down a forest path, until he makes him stop. He pulls out a toy gun, and points it playfully at the other guy's head. Wait...what? That's supposed to be a real gun? Eh, low budget movies, what're you gonna do?

His victim owed Jimmy's boss some money, but he says it's all in the car, except Jimmy kills him anyways.

Jimmy’s got a gun. Whole film’s just begun.

Jimmy takes the money, and is gonna use it to escape and start a new life. And we all know how that goes. He heads to a trailer and tells a woman he's been shacking up with his plan, when a couple of goons show up.

I also can't help noticing every shot is at a low angle, and it feels less artistic, and more 'we don't want to show the location because reasons'.

Jimmy wants Tracy to come with him, but she can't leave her life behind. She tells him her grandfather has a cabin upstate, but now he can't have anyone knowing where he is, so Jimmy shoots her.

He quickly takes out one of the goons, and plays solo Russian roulette with the other, until he gives up the name of the man who sent them, Little Joey.

Jimmy heads to the...bar? Club? Waffle House?? where Little Joey is, and straps a gun to his back, because the guy at the door is an idiot who does a half ass job of frisking people for guns.

He has a chat with the boss, and tells him he's not handing over his money. But Little Joey thought this might happen, so he sent some more goons to deal with Jimmy's wife.

And to be clear, his wife is an entirely distinct person from the woman Jimmy shot earlier, that he asked to run away with him. Far be it for me to be shocked that Jimmy is a multiple time scumbag...

Tempers rise until the guns come out, and we have a firefight. Although everyone here is an absolute TERRIBLE shot, because bullets fly everywhere, and no one is getting hit, in these very close quarters.

Fortunately, Jimmy is a professional, and finally manages to kill everyone in the bar, with the help of a hand grenade he left behind for Little Joey. Which the boss hilariously looks down at for a ridiculously long time. DON'T JUST STAND THERE!

With that taken care of, Jimmy rushes home, hoping he's not too late to save his wife he's been sleeping around on.

Unfortunately, Little Joey’s goons are already there, and quickly kill her. And because what's a low budget mobster movie without a lot of machismo overkill, they shoot her three or four more times after she's already very dead.

Since they figure Jimmy's gonna show up, they rig the place with grenades placed against the doors to...uh, go off when he opens them and, um...I'm not sure grenades work that way??

When Jimmy arrives, he almost uses the door, but he's too smart for that, or he read the script. So he goes around back to climb in a window.

A neighbour or whatever interrupts him, and he gives her a good story about losing his keys. But, then he shoots her anyways, because he's so baaad.

So he climbs into his house, finds his dead wife, has a good cry, and we get a few flashbacks to establish the relationship after the fact.

It's been awhile since anyone added in dodgy muzzle flashes, so we have another gunfight at the Bro-K Corral, and this time, things don't go so well for Jimmy.

One of the goons gives him some gentle love taps to the noggin, and he shortly wakes up tied to a chair. Things don't look good for our Jimmy! At least this is a short movie...

Before he kills Jimmy, the goon asks, "What does a man think in his final moment?" ...but then, suddenly, he has disappeared!

Oooh no. Oh no, I think I see where this is going. Jimmy just died, didn't he, and the rest of the movie is gonna be a low budget existential nightmare, isn't it??

Is that supposed to be a shitty Christmas tree? Is this a Christmas movie?!

Jimmy undoes his bonds, grabs his gun, heads upstairs, and again confronts the goons. Except they disappear mid gunfight. Oh yeah, at least one of us is in Hell.

But hey! Now that he's not fighting for his life, Jimmy slides back out the bathroom window, and heads up to Tina's cabin.

When he arrives, he looks around and grumps, "this fuckin' dump," like every location before this hasn't already been some level of sketch.

He takes a break and has a vision of very blurry naked glowing women urging him to come with them, and I bet he would love to do just that.

Taking me back to my days staring at the scrambled porn channels on cable trying to see something.

The nekkid vision ladies tell him "he's not like them" and to look inside himself, and 1) this guy is still a bastard, if for no other reason than murdering the neighbour And B) since when did God use naked ladies as his messenger? ...Not that I'm complaining.

As if that wasn't enough, then there's a ranty preacher on tv telling Jimmy to "let the soul rest". If I hadn't clocked this before, the movie is being very heavy handed at this point.

Suddenly, a random severed head rolls into the cabin, and Jimmy disposes of it in the microwave. The movie is suddenly very camp, and very Raimi. And not as good as Bloody Muscle Body Builder.

Jimmy heads outside, and finds some guy sitting on his porch, dressed like he just blew in from Columbine, who seems to know more than anyone else in this movie. He makes some interesting acting choices, whomever he is.

Long story short, the dude is Satan, and he wants Jimmy to join his unholy army. Not that Jimbo has much choice in the matter.

Satan scampers off to run through the forest like a sprightly wood nymph, and when Jimmy chases him, he runs into a red skinned demon. I'm not entirely clear if this is Satan in another form, or just a minion. I'm going with the latter, for now.

I think it might be a demonified version of the goon Jimmy killed at the start of the movie, and dumped in his trunk?

Jimmy shoots and kills the demon, then gets an axe to hack him up. Meanwhile, the demon gurgles Alka Seltzer out his mouth.

We get a cheesy early 2000s morph effect to show the landscape changing, to keep Jimmy trapped here and unable to drive away. So instead, he...runs away.

And because this is all a non Euclidean hellscape, Jimmy just keeps arriving back at the cabin, no matter how hard he tries. He also runs into the tv preacher set up in the middle of the woods, because why not?

I cannot put into words how insulted I am by this awful compositing.

The movie continues to go around in circles until the camera starts chasing Jimmy, like this is Evil Dumb.

He gets back to the cabin, and confronts himself, because the homages are drifting across that fine line to rip off territory.

Jimmy can't take it anymore, and puts the shotgun under his chin. But, I see we have 20 minutes left, so I know he's not gonna kill himself and spare me.

He hears some noises from outside, and when Jimmy goes to look...now there's zombies shambling up the walkway.

So we spend a good long while with Jimmy just shooting zombies because now it's a siege movie on top of everything else.

There is at least plenty of blood, some fun effects, and also some really clunky chunks of makeup cheek appliances applied to the zombies' faces to make them look more skull like.

Aside from the obvious Evil Dead *ahem* homages, the influences here are also pretty clear, as a lot of shots are very first person shooter. Using Doom shotgun sound effects are not helping.

The zombie slaughter goes on for a solid six minutes. Which wouldn't be bad in a normal movie, but that is like, a tenth of this movie's runtime.

Finally, Satan shows back up looking like his mom told him to wear his raincoat today, and Jimmy declares he still has his soul, and drives an axe into Satan's chest.

And points to the movie, the death is, while low budget, kinda glorious.

Jimmy wakes up back in the cabin, Satan sitting pretty on the couch, and...wait, is it...are they...

CALLED IT. Jimmy died in his wife's basement, and this is him fighting for his soul. In fact, the zombies return, and oh no, the movie is looping back on itself, this IS Hell.

So the movie closes out by repeating the earlier quote about what he'll say to god on judgment day, but now his answer is, "I'll say nothing because my soul has already been judged".

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s fine, but about what you’d expect from a low budget movie on a 50 pack. I was tempted to buy the solo release, but I need to stop doing that with the Pendulum 50 packs, it defeats the purpose!

Audio: The sound is okay enough.

Sound Bite: “What will I tell God, on my day of judgment? I'll tell him, go FUCK yourself! I did it MY way!"

Body Count: Things get a little dodgy once zombies appear, but at least for a movie about a mob hitman, it’s got a decent body count.

1 - Barely over a minute in, and Jimmy kills a guy
2 - Next he shoots Tina
3 - Then he kills the first hitman sent after him.
4 - And then the second
5 - Jimmy shoots the bartender
6 - And then the uh, let's call him the doorman
7 - Little Joey go boom
8 - One of Little Joey's goons kills Jimmy's wife
9 - Jimmy shoots his neighbour
10 - Sure, I'll count the random decapitated head getting microwaved
11 - Jimmy shoots and axes up the demon
12 - The zombie slaughter occurs.
13 - Jimmy kills the head demon, again
14 - Then Jimmy is killed in flashback

Best Corpse: When Satan explodes and melts.

Blood Type - B: For a low budget movie, it has it’s makeup effects flaws, but not for lack of trying. I enjoyed the amount of blood this movie threw around. An aside from seeing the edges, the makeup is all right.

Sex Appeal: If you squint real hard, you can see some naked glowing nipples.

Drink Up! Every time the movie shoots from a low angle

Movie Review: Okay, there’s not much too this movie, it’s a fairly straightforward plot, even with it’s twist. But it’s not the worst thing, for this budget of a movie. The acting is hammy, but that’s half the fun. Scenes that in other movies would look great in a nice set or location, instead here end up at the local pub. Which works in its favour. I almost dig the local charm. Everything here shows a level of competence, but also has a faint level of ridiculousness to it. And at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Two out of five suburban zombies.

Entertainment Value: I love the performances in this. Jimmy is an over the top hitman with no reason to be. The other goons are ridiculous tough guys. Satan makes some fun choices, and while he might not be the most memorable cinematic Satan, he brings at least a pinch of gravitas to the role. And I bet no one has ever talked about this movie and used the word “gravitas” before. The mob half of the movie is fine, but maybe a bit slow, and once we hit the cabin, at least things get interesting with the WTFery and zombie hordes. It also brings in the fun special effects. A ridiculous movie that is at least fun to watch at times, three out of five hand grenade.