Fival's Corn Shank Productions

ZombieKeeper.com slams TW3 in a rant about independent filmmaking from some old guy who obviously doesn’t get it.

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The Story: A group of teens enjoying a hedonistic weekend run into trouble when one of them becomes murderously possessed.

Meet Violet (Nelson), a flighty artist looking to celebrate her birthday. Joining her are her sensitive roommate Lucie (Sabini), their gay friend Morris (Brunt) and several party pals which include a pair of Jay and Silent Bob-ish stoners named Chuck (King) and Joe (Halk). There’s no big secret as to what they have planned for the weekend, either; three days of pure, unadulterated boozing, drugging and down and dirty fornicatin’.

But what’s this? Someone has opted to give the massively inebriated and drugged up Violet a Ouija board as a birthday gift. With her supremely lowered mental state, this leaves Violet wide open for some good old fashioned spirit possession, the spirit in question being that of another murdered college-aged kid. It doesn’t take long for the blood to start flowing and the bodies to start piling up as Violet, doing her best “Evil Dead possessed” impersonation, commences to taking apart her fellow party goers.

There’s not much else to talk about plot-wise, as it’s nothing very original. But that’s the least of this film’s problems.

Firstly, with the film being an independent SOV flick you know the acting’s not going to be much of anything, but here it’s even worse. The single most shamefully acted character would be that of Morris, written and performed as a badly stereotypical homosexual character and the maturity of whose dialogue peaks with the line, “I enjoy pumping ass – I mean, pumping gas for a living.” That comes early on in the film, so you just know what kind of humor to look forward to. Not to mention that this character is played as Captain Limp Wrist Extraordinaire in that the method of acting used to portray him is much in the same vein as Eddie Murphy pretending to be an over-excitable girly girl. Only when Eddie did it, it was actually funny.

Next up is the writing. Believe it or not there was actually some potential here for an all-out indie gore fest, as the story is just coherent enough to keep a narrative going and there’s plenty of room for some massive on screen carnage. But one thing that ruins it is the really, really bad dialogue. Maybe I’m just getting old, but do kids these days really talk like this? If so, I have low hopes for the future generations of America. May as well not bother sending them to school and instead just let them run off and ass hump one another while tripping on barbiturates and magic marker fumes. Oh, you mean they do that already? My mistake.

How bad is the acting and dialogue? Here’s an example: at one point Violet is beset by ghostly images while taking a shower. She freaks out and says, “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here!” But what does she do? Finishes washing her hair as the scene dissolves to another. Not good enough for you? How about numerous references to bongs, cocaine and “cocks, dicks and nuts” to show you the level of intelligence to expect when you sit down to watch this thing.

The film’s strongest points are the effects, as executed by director/writer/producer/co-star David C. King. You can tell a lot of time was put into the gore and make up effects, as witnessed most especially during Violet’s full-on possessed sequences. Kudos to King for his work on the film, despite the rest of the production not being able to meet his FX standards.

Uh oh…I feel a rant coming on…

How many times are films like this going to be made before the people behind them realize that just because you have a camera and a buddy who can do gore effects does not mean you’re a filmmaker? Granted, this film is miles above anything done by Wilbur Scott (Mr. Irish), but come on! Don’t make a shit film and then distribute it, because all you’re doing is making people blow their hard-earned cash. I’m not saying to stop making films; I’m saying keep on making them, practice makes perfect. But what you don’t do is go dumping your practice work on an unsuspecting consumer. You can’t look at this film and say that there’s no room for improvement. You can’t watch this film and get the impression that the filmmakers put their heart and soul into it. I look at this film and I see a bunch of people who decided to blow a few years joking around in front of a camera, only with better-than-average-for-SOV special effects.

But I’m not speaking solely to the makers of this film. God bless you, brothers, you’re out there, you’re making films and not just talking about making them like the rest of us shmoes. I respect the hell out of that, regardless of how badly your film turns out.

But please, please, please perfect your art before selling it. And secondly, and this is directed at all those aspiring filmmakers with a DV Camera and a dream, use your own voice. Fuck what’s hip and trendy, stop trying to make films similar to what’s big at the moment. Stop trying to so blatantly rip off (you can say it’s an ‘homage’ but we all know better) already popular cult films like Evil Dead, Scream, Friday the 13th or Night of the Living Dead. All you’re accomplishing is showing us, the viewers, that you have no original thoughts and that all you can do is make inferior copies of what are mostly mediocre big budget films already littering our cinemas so grotesquely.

All filmmakers (well, except maybe Wilbur Scott and Bruno Mattei) have a story they want to tell. We all have that one idea that is uniquely ours; it’s just a matter of finding a way to tell it. If you’re a DV filmmaker, you already have a cheap way of doing it. But just because the method is cheap doesn’t mean you should refrain from putting your heart into it. So my advice is that if you want to be taken seriously as a filmmaker, SOV or not, stop fucking around and get serious. Show us what you can do. Wow us. Blow us away. And if you decide it’s not worth all the effort, if you decide you’d rather film your friends making funny faces and then sucker us into buying them with nifty cover art and not give half a damn about whether or not what you made was any good, then just plain blow us.

What it breaks down to is that the filmmakers behind Twisted Weekend III: Slacker Holocaust began this film in 1996 (or at least that’s the jist I get; the website doesn’t say if it was this film or the actual series, so I’m going with the film and apologize if I assume incorrectly) which means they worked on it for seven years. I find it incredibly hard to believe that this is the best they can do after over half a decade. Everything about this film screams less than half-assed. That makes it not only a waste of their time, but a waste of some unsuspecting horror fan who would purchase it. If you’re this kind of filmmaker, hope and pray your films don’t make it into the hands of this reviewer because I’ll do all I can to ensure no one ever buys your product. I respect myself as a viewer too much to let fellow fans take it up the ass by paying for your shit.

At any rate, despite some nice make up FX, I won’t recommend Twisted Weekend III: Slacker Holocaust. Not because of the fact that I’ve never even heard of the first two, but because to recommend this film would be to recommend every other half-witted rip-off…um, homage…to far superior films that you’d be better off watching instead.

Those still interested can take a look at the filmmakers’ website at http://www.twistedweekend.com.