31 Nights of Terror 2015 #26 - Savaged (2013)

Savaged (2013) aka Avenged
Director: Michael S Ojeda
Starring: Amanda Adrienne Smith, Tom Ardavany, Ronnie Gene Blevins
Format: AVI

Plot: A deaf girl is brutalized by a murderous gang who are then hunted by her when the bloodthirsty spirit of an Apache warrior inhabits her lifeless body.

Rape revenge movies are a regular staple of the horror/exploitation market, with movies like Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave the most well-known of them. With this lower-budget offering, director Ojeda takes that familiar theme, adds a supernatural Native American element and produces a pretty damn good little watch. Think of it as a mix of The Crow and I Spit on Your Grave.

Amanda Adrienne Smith plays the raped girl and does a great job playing both the victim and then subsequently the avenger. Because her character is deaf she doesn't talk much except for in the beginning, but her expressions get the job done. In some ways she has a Marilyn Burns from TCM vibe about her.

The acting is one of the biggest assets of this movie. Along with Smith, the acting is great from the rest of the cast, which is mainly made up of scumbag rapists. Too often in low budget movies the "bad guys" aren't convincing, but these guys sure are. Trust me, by the end of proceedings you'll be cheering as they get their nasty comeuppance.

And nasty it is. Ojeda and company don't skimp on the gore, which I appreciate. They also do a good job with the many fight scenes, which isn't surprising given Ojeda's background in choreographing battle re-enactments in historical documentaries.

Savaged is a nice little spin on the rape revenge sub-genre. If that's not your thing give it a miss, but otherwise I recommend it.

Blastfighter (1984)

 The cover of my VHS copy of Blastfighter

Blastfighter (1984)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Starring: Michael Sopkiw, Valentina Forte, George Eastman

Format: VHS (Medusa)

Italian director Lamberto Bava is best known to most of us as the son of the great Mario Bava and for his gory horror movies Demons and Demons 2. But he dabbled in other genres as well. In 1984 he helmed two action movies, the much-maligned Devil Fish (victim of a MST3K lampooning) and the lesser-known Blastfighter.

Jake "Tiger" Sharp (Sopkiw, 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK) is an ex-cop just released from jail for the murder of the man who killed his wife. He heads to his old hometown in the mountains of Georgia, where he is soon butting heads with the redneck locals, led by former rival Tom (George Eastman, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS). Tom, his brother Wally (Stefano Mingardo, ATLANTIS INTERCEPTORS) and their hillbilly buddies are torturing wildlife for a Hong Kong businessman, who uses the animals to make aphrodisiacs for the Asian market.

Tiger's daughter Connie (Valentina Forte) shows up unexpectedly and after the war escalates father and daughter are soon fleeing the killer hillbillies through the mountain forest. With his back against the wall, Tiger retrieves a special gun given to him by a cop buddy and goes on the rampage, killing the rednecks off until he faces a final showdown with Tom.

Plot-wise, Blastfighter is a fairly predictable revenge-in-the-woods flick with elements of Deliverance, Walking Tall and First Blood. If it were an American production it would definitely be worth watching, but the Italian influence makes it even more fun. It's got the overdubbed voices we all love from Italian cinema (including some hiliarious redneck accents), a synth-heavy Euro soundtrack by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis (who did a bunch of Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill comedies), and even a cameo by another Italian director, Michele Soavi (CEMETERY MAN), who was assistant director for this film.

Most of the fun comes from the Italian take on American hillbillies, which is pretty campy, and there's more unintentional humour in famiiliar places (like vehicles exploding in huge fireballs from just a small crash into a ditch). There's also a really cool action set piece towards the end, with lots of explosions, smoke and spotlights, and the final shot (playing off an earlier scene of a truck full of animal carcasses) is well done.

Blastfighter is an excellent revenge flick and well worth hunting down, if you'll excuse the pun.

August 5 - Backwoods (2008)

Backwoods (2008)
Director: Marty Weiss
Format: DVD

Backwoods is one those dime-a-dozen 2000s horror flicks, the kind that don't offer much in the way of originality but can still be worth watching if you're in the right mood.

It has elements of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wrong Turn, Hills Have Eyes and even Masterblaster (the obscure-ish paintball game slasher I reviewed in May).

A group of workmates head into the forest for a team-building game of paintball, but stumble on a group of crazed hillbilly types that are intent on making their game a matter of life and death.

Yep, your basic survival horror slasher. With a semi-recognisable hollywood lead (Haylie Duff, sister of singer/actor Hilary Duff) and a bunch of nobodies filling all the pre-requisite roles (loudmouth party animal, token black guy, Asian guy, ditzy chick etc).

One recognisable face is Jonathon Slavin, who has a regular gig as a quirky geek on TV comedy show BETTER OFF TED. Also popping up are Robert Allen Mukes (HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES) as a hulking freak and veterans Mark Rolston (ALIENS) as a park ranger and Deborah Van Valkenburgh (DEVIL'S REJECTS) as the matriach of the redneck family, Mother Ruth.

There's no real gore, but Backwoods doesn't really suffer because of it. It still manages to be violent and brutal in places. The acting is good and the one piece of originality in the plot offers a variation on the usual hillbilly inbred bad guys by making them a religious cult.

Along the same lines as Wrong Turn and countless other recent survival horror slashers, Backwoods is fun enough and worth watching if you like this type of movie.