When the time comes to find a reviewer for shot-on-video splatter, Doug Waltz is my man! A longtime contributor to ER, Doug will also be making his Hungover Gourmet debut with a look at the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes animated series for our upcoming print edition.
A pair of twin teenage boys are making their way to their Aunt Lacey's farm to help out for the summer. One of them isn't all that keen on going because Aunt Lacey seems a little too "grabby" for his taste. Maybe if she was his hot aunt instead of the pizza-dough-fleshed Aunt Lacey it might be okay, but she ain't so it isn't.
Anyway, when they get there Aunt Lacey has a new handyman working for her. His name is Jeremy and, well we know from the get go that Jeremy is not quite right in the head. The movie opens with him dismembering a corpse with an axe and the 80s gore flies everywhere. To make sure that we are thoroughly offended, Jeremy grabs one of the severed hands and shoves it into his pants and masturbates with it.
Say it with me people: Ewwwwwwwwww!
Later, to maintain that level of offensiveness we get to watch Jeremy receive head from a severed head and he seems awfully fond of self-mutilation. In one scene he slits his wrist and after one of the boys sees it he runs out of the barn and retches up his guts. To make that even worse, the DVD's accompanying documentary and commentary track explain that the stuff they used for puke was rotten so the first part of the vomit is fake, but there rest of it is quite real.
Those wacky Polonia Brothers!
Once the boys get there the atrocities continue. From Aunt Lacey drugging her favorite one and raping him to Jeremy taking the other twin out to the barn, pissing on his face and then fisting him. Of course with all that fisting you end up with a pretty dirty hand. No worries there as Jeremy wipes the excrement on the kid's face.
That's right, folks! It's the 20th anniversary of the Polonia Brothers classic SPLATTER FARM. Don't know who the Polonia Brothers are? Well, shame on you. The brothers hail from Pennsylvania and have been producing micro-budget films for quite some time. They gave us the classic alien invasion flick FEEDERS with the requisite sequel entitled FEEDERS 2 (guest starring Santa Claus). They have given us psychotic bunnies in PETER ROTTENTAIL and killer Sasquatch in AMONG US. Nobody does it cheaper than the Polonia Brothers and it shows. But, not so much in this flick. It's just one cheesy gore piece after another and it looks just like all the shot-on-video stuff from the 80's looked. There are some very nice shots done in the movie and you can tell they had come from shooting on film.
It's important to note that this is a 20th anniversary print so it is not the original one that haunted the mom and pop video stores of yesteryear. The brothers Polonia edited it down, added some music and made it look much better than it ever did.
Included on the DVD are a nice little set of extras. We get a commentary with Mark and John and if you have never listened to a Polonia Brothers commentary then your life is not complete. What they do to accomplish what you see on screen is nothing short of amazing.
There's also a documentary where they go back to the original locations and see how much things have changed. Other extras include some history of both the film and the shot-on-video business from the time period. Good stuff.
While The Polonia Brothers' newer endeavors come across as slicker and better shot – if that's possible – SPLATTER FARM has a certain energy that makes it (probably) one of their better flicks. – Douglas Waltz
SPLATTER FARM is available at Amazon.
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