NYC Horror Film Fest: Sweatshop review "Stop. It's hammer time."

ANVIL HAMMER!

Okay, if you take nothing else out of this review, but are the kind of person that has said “What I need in my movie viewing repertoire are more films with a pelt covered, blowtorch mask wearing hulk of a man yielding an anvil hammer that he can use to pulverize human meat into tiny chunks of bone floating in a liquefied organ stew” then you have found your film.

The story is simple as it gets. A group of punk rockers are staging a rave in an abandoned sweatshop, and have arrived ahead of time to set up. Little do they know that this massive bulk of a man and his harem of disturbing looking female flunkies are lying in waiting, ready to maim, torture and kill each of them in turn. The film looks gorgeous, with exaggerated comic book colors that pop off the screen and a real gritty feel to the slaughterhouse areas of the ware house.

What set Sweatshop apart from say Blood Night, a similar movie screening at the fest, are the characters. A group of cosplay rejects from a Warriors convention make for a colorful looking group. While the acting is a bit all over the map-the DJ’s line delivery was memorably bad- for the most part it’s pretty solid. The film has come up with some incredibly hysterical characters and memorable one liners. I found myself writing down a bunch of the best quotes in the film. The bulk of them come from Wade (Brent Himes), a redneck character that resembles a dimmer, meaner version of Ethan Supplee’s character in My Name is Earl. He’s responsible for some of the best lines in the film that I won’t spoil here, because they’re so ridiculously awesome they’re best heard cold. His scene towards the climax where he pours his heart out to his dimwitted faux-mohawked brother is comedic gold. There was also the dreadlocked and baby-dolled up Miko (Julien) who seemed to have a million rules surrounding the question whether or not it was all right to “swallow the junk”. She delivered some deliciously funny lines and was great to watch until being flattened like a pancake.

Of course, we know the real reason to watch these movies is we want to a homicidal maniac dismember folks wile spilling copious amounts of the red stuff. This movie delivers the above in spades with a man simply known as “The Beast”. Towering over his cannon fodder, The Beast is simply a hulking bringer of mass destruction. His mask and pelt costume look awesomely brutal, and no one has swung a better hammer since John Henry. He reminded me a bit of Pylonhead from the silent Hill video game series. The anvil hammer makes for one of the coolest killing weapons on film as it absolutely PULVERIZES anyone that it makes contact with. While I went 0 for 2 in my Final Girl predictions, the consolation prize is a pair of memorable death scenes. Kim (Danielle Jones) was the obvious first choice, as she looked the part of the bookish good girl, not punk type. Well, one near garroting later and she’s strapped to a table with barbed wire before having her fingers sheared off one by one while pleading for her life. While that sequence made me squeamish (I hate watching torture scenes where someone is completely helpless) the scene is capped off is hysterically grisly fashion. Our next choice for FG, the lovely Jade (Melanie Donihoo) gets it just as bad. This kind of bummed me out a little as I really loved her character. She had a malicious prankster streak and sense of melancholy about her. After striking up a romance with the emo boy of the bunch, I thought she’d make it through with him until the end. Nope. Topping of a sequence that begins with the rare “Decapitation during a Beej” kill shot, the lovely Jade finds the liquefied remains of her head getting crushed trough a steel mesh elevator grate, like pumpkin innards going through a vegetable press. These are only two of the many scenes of mayhem, which include castration (the funny kind) and a young Michelle Rodriguez lookalike getting her lower jaw casually pulled off her face.

Special note goes out to Ashley Kay, our actual final girl Charlie. Far from the virginal type, she’s actually using the rave as a front to pimp out her friends and line her pockets with cash. If that wasn’t bad enough, she plans on keeping all the door money from the rave, allegedly being given to homeless shelters, saying, “Fuck the homeless. Bunch of street bums can suck my dick, I’m getting paid.” In spite of these traits, I still found her likeable. It’s great to root for a heroine which such a wide streak of nasty bitch in her.

After the film screened director Stacy Davidson, writer Ted Geoghegan and various cast members talked about the movie. Ted mentioned how the film was originally supposed to be one of a series of horror themed pornos he’d been hired to write for Hustler video. When they rejected the script, Davidson helped add more of the horror elements to the film, and boom, a splatter fest is born. The movie is shopping for a distributor and I really hope someone picks this up, because if any movie deserves to be viewed in a room full of friends with whiskey flowing freely amongst them, it’s Sweatshop.