Acid Head: The Buzzard Nuts County Slaughter – review

Director: Tony Watt

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

J. Gordon Melton, I blame you – in the nicest sort of way but I came across this due to some correspondence we had!

There has been an increasing tendency for films, especially blockbusters, to go on considerably longer than the (oft-considered) standard of 90 minutes. Sometimes this can cause a film to outstay its welcome, and the pacing of the film becomes slower, perhaps too slow. At 2.5 hours I might have said the same about this but it had outstayed its welcome after the first ten minutes.

Now, director Tony Watt is no stranger to long films. Currently (at time of review) in my ”to watch” list is his earlier film Frankenpimp, which comes in at an eye-shattering 3 hours 15 minutes. This film has not made me want to hurry up and watch it.

robbery

It starts in Ontario and some random wall and door is turned into Bank of Brampton by superimposing the name over the shot. Two characters, the false moustached and bewigged Bo (Luke van Belkom) and Lewis Mercer (himself) rob the bank. Bo has a shoot out with a cop and is shot in the heart. Lewis is given his gun and throws it away, causing it to go off and accidentally killing the cop. He gets away as the camera jerks all over the place in some extremely poor camera work. The off-yellowed tint carries through the film making it look turgid and unappealing.

Tony Watt as Dracula

So, the story is pretty much irrelevant but there is a sorority house that is a front for student escorts/prostitutes. It had previously been the site of the murders by Acid Head (Vivita), a serial killing Goth girl (noted on the DVD blurb to be a blood drinking cannibal) who happens to be making her way back. It later transpires that the house is built over the grave of Dracula (Tony Watt) who makes an appearance a couple of times but is also named as a vampiric poltergeist who possessed Acid Head.

They actually used blackface

Acid Head herself was the daughter of a movie producer and actress. The actress cheated with the gardener and in an intervening fight with her husband acid was accidentally thrown over the daughter's face. Plastic surgery did wonders for one side of her face but there is still scarring hidden by her fringe. However if the film is meant to be an absurdist, misogynistic bad taste comedy (that fails to be funny) I was even less than impressed when they called the gardener Ni**er Charlie and had the actor (credited as Trenchmouth Colitis, a name used by Tony Watt in another production) wearing blackface.

Vivita as Acid Head

Beyond shoddy camera work and the filter from Hell, the SFX is terrible, the blood splatter being layered onto shots afterwards, and the acting and dialogue worse. Ridiculous sound effects are presumably meant to be comedy but are just awful. False moustaches, teeth and ill-fitting wigs are the order of the day. The blurb suggests that this is in a “grind-house style” but really, in this case, that is an excuse for lack of any discernible redeeming feature. This was awful, though perhaps if it had been shorter it would have been a more watchable form of awful – though, honestly, I doubt it. 0 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.