In A Dark Place – Film Review

by Bob Freville

The following review originally appeared on the now-defunct horror website KillingBoxx in the Fall of 2011. It is shared here in the hopes that a new generation of readers will discover this woefully forgotten DtoDVD gem.

“How dare you…You made me feel like I was mad!”

The color yellow is symbolic of many things. To the eternal optimist it signifies bright rays of sunshine and exists as a “warm” color, one that represents the hope of a loved one’s return or the promise of a cheerful occasion. For the Egyptians it is a tone emblematic of mourning. For us horror fans it is, and will always be, related to the gialli (the Horror films of Argento, Bava and Fulci, and, quite literally, the Italian word whose translation means “Yellow”). Yellow is also, most significantly, the color which actors of the Middle Ages wore to connote the Dead.

Yellow is the color of Horror and of the Dead, a color of hazard and Danger. So it is no mere fashion statement for Anna Veigh (Leelee Sobieski) to wear yellow clothes in virtually every scene of Donato Rotunno’s In A Dark Place. Anna’s life is consumed by the dead and, more appropriately, Death.

In A Dark Place is a widely overlooked and sorely underrated 2006 adaptation of Henry James’ classic Turn of the Screw. And aside from earning four cleavers for so exquisitely displaying Ms. Sobieski’s ample bosom (without so much as one arbitrary topless scene), it scores plentiful points for purveying all the goods of a grand Gothic slash bash (a gorgeous alien-like female lead with no small semblance of complexity, a steamy but classy lesbian tryst worthy of a Tinto Brass-David Lynch foursome, two marvelous mammaries that act as scene stealers and hand in some understated acting of their own, a sprawling Victorian manse that straddles Art Nouveau and Contempo Creepy, enough vibrant colors to make Dario A. shoot his W., and so many twists and surprises it should be called a lemon meringue layer cake).

When first we meet Ms. Veigh, whose last name hints of the V-eight, a car known for its internal combustion, she is bent over on a cafeteria floor, picking up broken glass and licking blood from her fingers. The location is the lunch room of what looks to be an elementary school and Ms. Veigh’s curious action, not to mention her Grade A gams, are quickly noticed by a lecherous Principal. The Principal calls her away to his office where he ogles her further and informs of her dismissal.

In this instant, and her subsequent landing back on her feet at a job interview, Anna is wearing pink and she seems to embody the color with her wide smile and beaming eyes, as if she was sugar and spice incarnate. But in no time at all the earth tones are introduced after Anna is hired to be the new nanny for a pair of rich and weird little brats who live in the wealthy Countryside.

The rugrats are boarding school types whose Father is an absentee parent and a very powerful man. The only other adult guardian on the premises is Ms. Grose (Tara Fitzgerald), a British ice queen with an unreadable face and an unpredictable temperament. Ms. Grose doesn’t seem to like Ms. Veigh much, yet she, and the children’s father, are adamant about her staying on to supervise the kids.

This being a suspense-chiller, Ms. Veigh soon encounters bizarre behavior from the little tykes, is harassed by fleeting appearances from a threatening phantom and begins to suspect that the previous Nanny’s death was no mere accident. And it doesn’t seem to help matters that Anna brings a shadowy past of her own to the table.

Henry James’ book, on which Rotunno’s film is based, is one of the stalest, blandest and most bombastic ghost yarns ever written. As a student of the Arts I can, of course, see its value as part of History, but that doesn’t negate its chief allure—to provide a read that will put you to sleep or drive you crazy with pretentiously-penned run-on sentences.

This particular film adaptation, on the other hand, is anything but. A stylized, but never showy, shrewdly-paced and dexterously-photographed Expressionist noir-horror, In A Dark Place does what Hitchcock profferred as the chief purpose of a good film–It plays the audience like a piano. Or, rather, a violin, the instrument that figures into the action without much explanation.

In many ways it is a film as much about art as it is an invention of it. Anna implements Art Therapy as a means of feeling out her two young wards while providing them an optional catharsis. The results yield as many questions as they do answers and the once-molested Anna commences suspecting the children of either being sinister themselves or suffering abuse from a sinister figure similar to her own.

Like this year’s above-average human trafficking thriller and fellow adaptation And Soon The Darkness, In A Dark Place makes optimum use of its locations, using a soft lens on snow and quilted beanie to off-set the atmospheric iniquity of a frozen lake and cantankerous dead brush. It is a lens (thanks to D.P. Jean-Francois Hensgens) with a warmth for human texture and a detached fearfulness of interior and exterior space worthy of John Alcott and Roy Walker (The Shining).

And speaking of piano, Adam Pendse (scoring for the first time) gives us such incessant and eclectic sounds that we can’t help but feel like a jittery fly on the wall of this vast home of seclusion.

The snow falls as if in a holding pattern, in shock, as gelid as the lake beyond the woods. And it is as sad and beautiful as Rotunno’s film is as a whole. As alluded to before, ‘Dark Place’ is a picture with all the giallo juice, minus the unnecessary gore, a pic where nudity and sex, although sizzling hot, are handled with class and care, with the sensual being cut short to match the disquiet and fragmentation of the root of Anna Veigh’s experience.

Leelee Sobieski’s performance should go down in the annals of Horror History alongside Joan Crawford in Straight-Jacket, Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist, Barbara Steele in Castle of Blood and Brigitte Lahaie in La Nuit Des Traquees (or Night of the Hunted). Sadly, I doubt, given pic’s under-the-radar DVD release, that it will qualify to be celebrated alongside even something as modern and memorable as Lauren German’s turn in Hostel: Part II.

Nevertheless Sobieski and Fitzgerald own this ghastly gospel. It is seldom enough for two strong women to share the majority of a film’s running time (without the movie being a rom-com), but it is rarer still for those women to exude multidimensional personas, sentience, strength and resolve, even in scenes of vulnerability.

In A Dark Place is the first directorial endeavor of Mr. Rotunno, whose reputation is as the producer of at least 17 films (including Vinyan director Fabrice Du Welz’s awesome Calvaire: The Ordeal, starring previously-mentioned Brigitte Lahaie). After seeing this flick I will follow this man’s camera into the depths of any sort of cinematic Hell. Alas it is unlikely he will direct again, given that In A Dark Place was helmed in 2005 and distributed in 2006. Here’s hoping that I’m wrong.

Finally it is important to acknowledge the infrequent anomaly that In A Dark Place is—a picture which never falls prey to the trappings of the hackneyed ghost theme, instead opting to unsettle and excite by way of rationing out elaborate exposition, extolling intricate performances and deftly manufacturing uncanny atmosphere by virtue of gorgeous art direction and ace cinematography. As Ms. Grose says to Ms. Veigh midway through, “Don’t go yet.”

Four cleavers for Leelee’s tee-tees, four cleavers for hellish housing, three cleavers for genuine mystery and one cleaver for inspired ambiguity.

In A Dark Place can be streamed on Amazon Prime or stream it for free with ads on Popcornflix or VUDU Free.

November 4, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media

3 from Hell – Film Review

by Zakary McGaha

[NOTE: The passing of Sid Haig is quite a loss to the world of horror films. His iconic Captain Spaulding character from the original Firefly movie House of 1000 Corpses…created by Sid just as much as the person who wrote him into existence, Rob Zombie…was an icon. Everyone recognized the face. He was often-times quoted. For the early 2000s, he was basically Freddy Krueger for a short period of time. That being said, this review is not meant to be, in any way, disrespectful to Sid and his beloved character. Rather, it is a review of a film that, as fate would have it, didn’t feature Sid that much, despite the fact that he was originally going to be in it throughout the entire runtime. Health reasons prevented that from happening, and so we got Richard Brake’s new character: Foxy. Although I didn’t like 3 From Hell at all, it was worth it to see Sid in character as the demented, sadistic, business-savvy clown with a country drawl one last time.]

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah, Rob Zombie. I have a love-hate relationship with his movies and music. The gist of it is: I think he’s okay, and sometimes pretty awesome…when he doesn’t have his filthy mitts on the Halloween franchise. See, he has his own style; his own flare. He’s a distinctive creator, and his music branches into his movies. It’s all one, cohesive whole. However, if you take said distinctive flare and mix it in a witch’s cauldron with the already-established, and much beloved, Halloween franchise…you get a nasty concoction that shouldn’t be.

Halloween aside, you could call me a Rob Zombie fan. The Devil’s Rejects, in my opinion, is one of the standout horror-films of the 2000s, and it’s probably destined to be remembered as such. In many ways, it was a perfect movie. You had great, interesting, psychopathic characters who were accustomed to having all the power. Various victims never escaped the Firefly family’s brutality. These killers were remorseless, wise-cracking hillbilly-esque folks who were very good at winning. They contrasted usual slasher villains in that they simply didn’t get caught, and when they were confronted by force…such as the police officers in House of 1000 Corpses…they always wound up on top. But The Devil’s Rejects changed that: the whole point of the movie was to see how these characters fared when they were being hunted not just by a crazy, vengeful cop and his deputies, but also by bounty hunters who were just as viscous, if not MORE viscous, than them. The end result was an amazing film that keeps the viewer constantly on the edge of their seat as the plot barrels forward to a super-climactic, ultra-violent, CONCLUSION in the form of a final blaze-of-glory that will forever be known as one of the best endings in horror history…

…At least, that would have been the case had 3 From Hell not come along and completely destroyed everything built in the previous entry.

To call 3 From Hell pointless would be an understatement. It’s a continuation of a story that’s already reached its conclusion and is resting peacefully in the Horror Graveyard. However, Rob Zombie came along, dug up the corpse, and then resurrected it in Frankenstein-like fashion. The end result is a story that’s half-alive, half-dead, with absolutely no sense of direction.

The movie opens in a cool-enough way: news-footage reveals that the Firefly family beat the odds and survived the shootout at the end of Devil’s Rejects, and they’re all ALIVE save for the recently-executed Captain Spaulding.

Also, Otis has escaped prison: while on a chain-gang, his half-brother Foxy…previously unmentioned in the past two films…comes along, shoots up the scene, and frees Otis.

Another familiar face had been on the chain-gang as well: Rondo, played by Danny Trejo. Otis promptly gets revenge and kills the defenseless bounty-hunter…who, strangely, doesn’t even remember who Otis is…before running off into the woods.

This is really where the movie starts going downhill and stops being new. Every plot-point from here on out is ripped from the previous film, down to the minute details.

We get:

1. A clown, as opposed to the clown-wannabe of DR, unluckily interrupting the Firefly gang as they’re torturing their latest hostages. Like in DR, this clown also gets shot in the head.
2. As mentioned in the previous entry, hostages…two couples, again…are held in their quarters by the family.
3. One hostage, as opposed to the two in DR, is sent out to do the Firefly gang’s dirty-work while his loved-ones are held captive.
4. Every hostage dies. One said hostage’s death even plays homage to both the “run rabbit run” scene from House of 1000 Corpses and the girl with the face-mask from DR who gets hit by the truck.
5. The Firefly gang is on the lam.
6. The Firefly gang takes up shelter at a seedy hotel in Mexico, where they party with hookers…which, of course, is a direct rip from DR when they were at Charlie’s bordello.
7. The Firefly gang gets ambushed by Rondo’s son, who has been looking for them ever since Otis killed his father in the beginning. He is accompanied by his organized-crime outfit, The Black Satans, which run around wearing wrestling masks. Again, this is a direct rip from DR, when Sheriff Wydell, accompanied by his bounty-hunters, ambush the Devils at the bordello.
8. Instead of killing the Firefly gang, Rondo’s son ties them up and tries to act tough, with heavy talk of justice and family and shit. Again, this is directly ripped from the last part of DR where Sherriff Wydell does the same thing.
9. The Firefly gang escapes and kills the spurned family-member who’s only trying to avenge his father…which, OF COURSE, is what happened to Sherriff Wydell in DR, although he came closer to killing the Devils. If only he would’ve been privy to Tiny…

Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. There are probably some other things I missed. To call this movie a derivative waste of time would be accurate and neither under or overstated. Was it fun? Yeah, but it didn’t have the UMPH of a good story, like in Devil’s Rejects, to accompany it.

1/5 stars. I would’ve given it 2/5 had it not completely tarnished The Devil’s Rejects and negated its importance in the overarching Firefly-family story.

September 29, 2019 by Silent Motorist Media

“Attack in LA” is a Nihilistic Skullfuck That Everyone Needs to See

by Bob Freville

Inspired by John’s Colter’s Run, Attack in LA (formerly Parasites) is a harsh take on class war, culture shock, homelessness and blind hatred. Written and directed by our friend Chad Ferrin (the filmmaker behind Breaking Glass Pictures’ legendary cult horror epic Someone’s Knocking at the Door and the man at the helm of the forthcoming splatter comedy Exorcism at 60,000 Feet), ‘AiLA’ tells the story of three privileged friends who find themselves stranded on Skid Row after their luxury car gets a flat tire.

Of course, the plot is far more complex than all that; once you get past the amateurish and inaccurate cover art that suggests a triumphant uprising of the proletariat via assault rifles, you find yourself in an immersive picture where you are running right alongside the film’s terrified protagonist.

To say that Attack in LA is gritty would not be a fair description since critics hurl that word around so much that it’s lost all meaning. A better summation would be to say that Attack in LA looks and feels like a swim through a kiddie pool full of someone else’s sick…and that kiddie pool is brimming with syringes, spiked boards and piss.

The story follows Marshal Colter (newcomer Sean Samuels) as he and his pals are subject to a forcible search and seizure by a cadre of cruddy street people who live in the tunnels of Downtown Los Angeles.

Although it’s unlikely, we get the impression early on that Marshal and his friends might get off with little more than a protracted scare from these hobos and some soiled pairs of undies…if they could just keep their elitist opinions to themselves. Naturally, that’s not what happens.

I won’t spoil the details, but suffice it to say that things go sideways fast after their corpulent Frat boy friend Scottie (Sebastian Fernandez) runs off at the mouth and gets that mouth filled with more than he could have anticipated.

I’ve long loved flicks that explore the crazy shit that can happen when the average worker drones are asleep. Whether we’re talkin’ about Scorsese’s sublime and surreal After Hours, Joe Carnahan’s retro throwback Stretch or the 1993 urban crime thriller Judgment Night, the most exciting stories almost always occur after the sun goes into hiding.

Such is the case with Attack in LA, a sort of Judgment Night reboot that’s a more overt meditation on the caste system and racial politics. This might be Ferrin’s most fully realized picture and, certainly, his only film with a clear message—Be careful holding yourself in higher regards than others because you might end up in their position.

On a fundamental level, this movie is a classic story of a war waged between Good and Evil, except in this case “good” is an entitled, well-educated young black man and “evil” is an addle-brained old war veteran ironically named Wilco. The curmudgeonly vagrant is played with grimy vigor by the chameleon-like character actor Robert Miano (Donnie Brasco, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).

This pic is as ugly and nihilistic as most of its director’s canon, but it may also be his most beautifully shot and well-executed. That it was relegated to Amazon Prime without any proper fanfare is a crime worse than anything committed in its brief running time.

What we see as the film progresses is the sheer prevalence of abuse that people in the so-called underclass take and the “lows” that the privileged are willing to stoop to when they are put under pressure for the first time.

Ferrin’s choice to feature extensive full frontal male nudity was something I would have automatically applauded as someone who recognizes that the film industry has been both exploitative and hypocritical when it comes to gratuitous female nudity for far too long, but I applaud it here because I think he had a deeper reason for doing so.

So far as I can tell, Ferrin is saying that it doesn’t matter if you have a big, swinging dick…even if you’re packing a fucking war club between your legs there will always be someone out there ready to cut you down to size.

From a purely narrative standpoint, the filmmakers definitely owe a debt to John Carpenter’s cult actioner Assault on Precinct 13, but the gravity with which each kill is depicted owes more to Jean-François Richet’s 2005 remake of the same.

None of this is to say that Attack in LA is unoriginal; the picture’s unflinching treatment of the subject matter is something that is rarely seen in film today and in Ferrin’s hands it is presented with stark clarity. While the cinematography can be as dizzying as running for your life the picture is as sobering as brass knuckles to a drunken head.

The soundtrack is fire from the synth score to the incredibly subtle but totally on the nose cover songs (“House of the Rising Sun,” et al.) all the way down to the third act’s haunting originals.

What ‘Attack’ shows us more than anything is the importance of acceptance. Were it not for one unnecessary and badly timed comment the three boys central to the film’s first act would likely be okay. Nothing inflames more than ignorance. The sequence in which our protagonist is mistaken for a homeless person and is subject to a paint balling attack by millennial vloggers is painfully reminiscent of the Bum Wars craze.

The racism of Attack is nothing new, of course, but it seems particularly striking in 2019. Without getting at all political on the subject, I can say with some semblance of authority that the reason behind that racism is clear—the self-appointed messiah of these mole people is a man who was all too happy to be lord and personal savior to his fellow hobos. Once they questioned his instincts they became what they always really were in his eyes—“bitches,” “cunts,” “gooks,” “Taco eaters,” etc.

‘Attack’ has the ending that Get Out should have had, the kind of ending that doesn’t satisfy but pisses people off. And that’s saying something in an age where everyone plays it safe.

July 16, 2019October 28, 2021 by Silent Motorist Media

The Grim & the Grit: An Interview with Genre Veteran Chad Ferrin, Part I

By Bob Freville

A stoner med student receives a knock on his dorm room door. When he opens it a lanky woman, butt naked, stands before him, her pert nipples staring at him. This temptress wants to fuck and who’s this pipsqueak to say no?

The med student invites her in and they get right down to it, but you can imagine his disappointment when she takes the shape of a hunched little man with fiendish eyes, gnarly teeth and barnacles growing on his flesh. This terrible little man also has the distinction of possessing a monstrously large cock which he uses to defile and demolish his young prey.

Drugs, sex and murder. This was my introduction to the work of Chad Ferrin. The movie was Someone’s Knocking at the Door and I first became acquainted with this trippy, batshit horror flick and its mysterious director after Breaking Glass Pictures sent me a press kit.

At the time, I wasn’t thrilled about writing small caption reviews of indie movies for horror sites because I was itching to make my very own. Up until that point I had only directed one hour-long video, the avant-garde anti-love story Of Bitches & Hounds which would go on to become a cult hit on Berkeley TV. But I wanted to do something slightly bigger, I just couldn’t figure out how.

What Chad Ferrin, the director of ‘Someone’s Knocking‘ taught me was that you could make a micro-budget film look like it cost way more money than it did if you could learn to think on the spot. ‘Someone’s Knocking‘ may not have the look of a Hollywood picture, but it’s densely packed with one-of-a-kind imagery from the prosthetic genitalia of its two thrill killers to the bizarre black face funeral sequence that comes later in the pic.

After the film came out, I got in touch with Ferrin and we talked shop. He gave me copies of his other movies, Easter Bunny Kill! Kill! and The Chair, and I loved them, warts and all. Over the years, we lost touch as each of us suffered at the hands of an unmerciful film industry, but I recently had the opportunity to remedy that.

Looking like nothing so much as the oldest guy at a Frat party in Encino, Chad Ferrin struts into a room with all the swagger of Robert Mitchum in his prime. At 5′ 11” and with his sandy hair trailing behind him as he walks, he is somehow more imposing than any 6′ 3” ex-con you’ve ever met.

Perhaps this owes to his battle scars, ones that are not necessarily visible to the naked eye but reside within him. They can be glimpsed in his face which wears the furrowed mask of a gunfighter who’s been in a series of brush ups.

The former Minnesota native and longtime Angeleno has lived in the pits of smoggy California long enough to have not only seen beneath the facade of palm trees and palm pilots but to have been burned by its ersatz rays of light.

At 45 years young, Ferrin has gotten enough raw deals to inspire a Dostoyevsky novel. A lesser auteur would have left the city long ago and turned to writing novels or film criticism, but Ferrin isn’t a man who sees himself to the door when he’s asked to leave. He’s the guy with his boots up on your desk, refusing to step off until he’s gotten what he came for.

A true embodiment of the By All Means Necessary spirit of filmmaking spearheaded by Spike Lee and his NYU brethren (Jarmusch, Soderbergh, Alexandre Rockwell, etc.), Chad has been churning out underground movies for the better part of 20 years, starting with the no-budget feature The Ghouls and running right up to 2016’s Attack on L.A., formerly Parasites.

I ask him about when we first talked. “At the time, you had come off a series of bad experiences with film producers and distributors and I was gearing up to let Troma ass rape me without the courtesy of a reach-around. Do you remember what your first experience as a director was in terms of navigating the world of film distribution and acquisitions reps?”

Ferrin casts his mind back to the eve of the new millennium. “I had just finished the rough edit of Unspeakable (available from Troma) and with unbridled enthusiasm, I copied it onto countless VHS tapes and mailed one to every distributor from Artisan Entertainment to Warner Bros.

“To this day, almost twenty years later, I still remember the excitement of seeing the Paramount letter head before reading the rejection below it. You know, sometimes the best thing in this business is the anticipation of your dreams coming true just around the corner.”

The name Troma, once synonymous with the satirical revenge flick Mother’s Day and the punk rock hilarity of Tromeo & Juliet, now makes me cringe. That’s what bogus quarterly reports and a worthless net profit deal will give you.

“I know we were both screwed over by Troma,” I say. “But you were the first with Unspeakable. And to be fair, you warned me about working with Troma prior to them acquiring my film Hemo. I’m curious how our situations differed though and if you could shed some light on why young filmmakers should stay away from this famous cult movie house.”

To my surprise, Chad no longer shares my distaste. “Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the bulk of the blame falls on myself for not negotiating a better contract with them. If I had been more shrewd in working out the details of the contract, like fighting for a split of gross profits or capping expenses at $5k instead of $25k, then things would have turned out better on my end.

“I’m not saying they’re saints, I can’t imagine there are any in this business that are but; they worked the contract in their favor and you can’t fault ’em for that. When our term ended recently, I called up Michael Herz, we re-negotiated a new contract, and now every three months I get a check. Not a big check mind you, but hey, a little something is better than nothing, right? So, for the love of God, everyone reading this go to http://www.troma.com and a order a copy of Unspeakable right NOW!

“That said, let me take this moment, swallow my pride, and apologize to Troma for the years of ill will that I harbored against them. Now, if you want a warning of a horrible distributor, every filmmaker out there should stay far, far away from 108 Media!”

We’ll get to that in a moment, but first it is worth acknowledging how humble Ferrin is. As someone who’s been raw dogged by this industry more times than I care to recount, I can’t say that I possess even a modicum of Chad’s understanding. The fact that he could not only forgive but also apologize to the bastards that ripped him off speaks volumes about his character.

It’s a character which Ferrin brings to bear on his actors when developing a scene which goes far towards explaining why his particular brand of exploitation cinema works—there is a beating heart under the layer of grime.

“I reached out to you about two weeks ago to ask if you had a screener of your last movie Parasites and you shared some pretty unfortunate news with me. As I understand it, the film’s original distributor, 108 Media, breached contract by not paying the MG and then breached your subsequent termination agreement by selling rights away to the Netherlands. Can you talk more about that and why the film’s name has been changed to Attack In LA?”

Ferrin thinks. Ferrin is always thinking. “After Parasites screened at the Fantasia film festival in 2016, it had a buzz swirling around which caused a bidding war that 108 Media came out on top of, and we signed a deal. Then, they failed to pay the minimum guarantee, thus breaching the contract. We terminated the agreement, and I searched for a new distributor. Then to my shock, I find out 108 had released the DVD in the U.S. on Amazon!

“I called them up screaming, ‘What the fuck?! It’s on Amazon, what the hell are you doing?’ They said, ‘Oh, sorry, Amazon made a mistake by putting it.’ Ughhhh! ‘No shit!’ I exclaimed, then proceeded to threaten to sue them for breaching our termination agreement and doing damage to the value of the film.

“After an hour of yelling back and fourth, we made a new termination deal, they pulled the DVD off Amazon, but the fact that it had been released pretty much destroyed the title Parasites. The new distributor ITN decided to change the name to Attack In LA and see if that shakes the stink of the previous release. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really caught on under that title. It has been heartbreaking, soul crushing ordeal which doesn’t end yet…

“…a few months later, I find it being sold on the UK Amazon by Red Square Film in the Netherlands. A sale which 108 Media denied up and down, in fact, they denied making any foreign sales at all. After about a week of research, I dig up a company called Take 1 in Sweden who admits to buying it from 108. Take 1 then sold it to Red Square Film. I call up 108, and with this evidence, they finally admit to selling it, but say, ‘Chad, we didn’t make much money on it.’”

Ferrin growls. “I said enough is enough and I sued the bastards. And on November 16, a judge in Toronto ruled in my favor, ordering them to pay me $25,155.00. Score one for the little guy!”

Stay tuned for Part II in which Chad talks about how to make a movie among junkies, street racers and gang members.

January 15, 2019October 28, 2021 by Silent Motorist Media

Films That Fell Through the Cracks: Easter Bunny Kill! Kill!

By Bob Freville

The following review originally appeared in Kotori Magazine on June 27th, 2010. It is included here as part of our Films That Fell Through the Cracks column due to its relative obscurity. Like many of director Chad Ferrin’s delightfully warped grindhouse features, it has not been given the attention it deserves. 

Easter Bunny Kill! Kill! is one of those glorious gruefests that leaves you to your own emotional/moral devices, unaware of whether you should laugh or cringe or both. Director Chad Ferrin is a cat who likes to press the buttons of the sensitive. He is an adept at it. And it is that expert flourish that makes EBKK more than a horror movie, more than mere shock cinema–something seriously fucking spectacular and every bit as seldom as a lunar eclipse.

The story concerns a single mother and her mentally-retarded son Nicholas, who suffers from cerebral palsy and flights of furry fancy in which he believes a caged bunny rabbit to be the Easter Bunny incarnate. Nicholas’s mother has fallen, quite inexplicably, for a greasy brusque criminal with mutton chops by the name of Remington Rashkor (and appropriately purulent name for the bilious character played with gusto by Ferrin regular Timothy Muskatell).

When Remington coerces Nicholas into telling his mother they should all live together (with threats that he will break the easter bunny’s neck), Mom decides to leave Nicholas in Rem’s care while she scampers off to work as a candy stripe nurse. And this is where the demented whirlwind of craziness begins, having its end only when a series of sickos have met their maker at the hands of an apparent guardian angel in a bunny mask, a guardian angel with a serious axe to grind. Well, not an axe. More like power tools, ball peen hammers and anything other household item that can be wielded as a weapon.

As mentioned before, EBKK is a hoot, a really fun cinematic experience despite the touchy subject matter and gristly scenarios that play out. Remington’s song about hookers and cocaine is a tour-de-force, to be sure. And so, too, is the third act revelation. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Every review or interview I’ve come across regarding this little gem hoists major accolades at Timothy Muskatell for his hilariously perverted portrayal of Rem. But, strangely, nobody seems to have mentioned the Peter Lorre-worthy turn by David Z. Stamp as handi-capable sex toy-wielding child molestor Ray.

His labored breathing, Max Shreck fingernails and satchel of sex swag provide the first truly threatening moment in the film. It is Ray, not the equally menacing but already well-publicized Remington, who acts as the true catalyst that kickstarts the Hare from Hell’s battery of bloody outbursts.

There I said it. Props to Mr. Z. Stamp!

EBKK is a flick suitable for a drinking game. Take a shot every time something ribald is said or an eyeball is shed. You’ll probably be stone drunk by the time you hear Mr. Rashkor’s hilarious demand of, “Hey, keep the tops off! I got coke!”

The buzz saw scene is a tasty triumph of flawless editing and grue-oozing expressionism that will go down as one of the gnarliest kills of the decade.

The atmosphere when the hookers (you’ll see) are in the house is classic Carpenter, but Ferrin ups the ante with an awesome dose of absurdity as Remington beats the heck out of a man who has already suffered a similarly fatal bastinato at the hands of the Easter Bunny. And the unharmed whore makes an off-color and idiotic inquiry that will have you counting down to when, hopefully, she’ll just fucking die already.

Like the golden age of the slasher film each kill in EBKK is more fun than the last, with one in particular giving new meaning to the phrase, “Deep throat.”

EBKK is one of those flicks that words just can’t do justice (though we still try). When you refer it to a friend and they ask you what it’s about you tell ’em, “Just see the damn thing, it’s fucking nuts!” This flick is sure to satiate your funny bone, your blood lust and your thirst for wholesome good old-fangled midnight madness.

From Charlotte Marie as the hottest mom to ever don a nurse’s outfit, to Remington Rashkor’s ultimate handlebar mustache, Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill! is a killer cult film experience that revels in the kind of unorthodox irreverence that is beyond refreshing in these P.C. times.

December 27, 2018 by Silent Motorist Media