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Gut-Pile
The DVD:
While stalking the wild asparagus somewhere in upstate New York, Dan the hunter takes a pot shot at the local citizenry and bags that most dangerous of all game, a 195 lb. Northern Americanus Innocent Bystanderous. Realizing that killing the average inhabitant will put him over the license limit of this still rather liberal locale, Dan buries the body and forgets about it. Fast forward an entire year and Dan returns to the scene of the slaughter with pals/potential corpses, Bob and Mike. The sometimes-bearded Bob is an always-cold kook who lives to play chef and stoke the fireplace on a minute-by-minute basis. Mike, on the other hand, has got hunting down to a sweet science. If it doesn't involve smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day and downing several quarts of potent pilsner, this fellow won't even consider a trip to the duck blind. While coping a squat in the outhouse (can't call yourself a hunter unless you leave your spore with Mother Nature) Bob is attacked by a "presence". Sadly, it fails to scare anything stinky out of him. But when the spirit ends up slicing and dicing the odd outdoorsmen, it's time to start rethinking this whole non-erotic male bonding business once and for all. Something is in the forest and it's after Dan. Could be a case of revenge from beyond the shallow grave. Could also be a case of watching one too many modern horror movies.
Question: when is a 45-minute short film, fleshed out by 12 minutes of opening and closing credits, still not a full-fledged slasher shocker "movie"? When it's the 1997 attempt at terror called Gut-Pile. Taking the thinnest of premises (a hunting accident gone haunted) and making it even more emaciated, there is a real desire on the part of director Jerry O'Sullivan to make a monument to home made horror. Problem is, Gut-Pile can't quite figure out what it wants to be. It begins like a standard backwoods gothic, a spiritual spook show in the vein of Wendigo or Deliverance. The notion of the calm of nature mixing with the chaos of death holds some major promise. But just as we are getting used to the cold, craven countryside setting, we're tossed into a typical man vs. the supernatural scenario that's incredibly irritating. Dan and his dumbass buddies show up, all pumping with testosterone and a faulty desire to kill Bambi, and Gut-Pile starts to stumble. This cabin full of goys element, as longtime friends find new and nauseating ways of making each other feel uncomfortable, pitches the film way off onto the scrap heap woodpile. By the time a zombie scarecrow living dead demon psycho killer shows up to enact some freakish farmland justice, we've lost our will to live as well. Gut-Pile is so under-developed, so slapdash in its narrative approach that we never get completely involved in the story (what little there is). Instead, we get the distinct feeling of being rushed through a highlight reel of a Hollywood hopeful, a moti0n picture pretender presenting his best bits in hopes that the gaffer job on Pauly Shore's latest comeback flick is still available.
Gut-Pile deserves some credit, if only for O'Sullivan's able attempts at mood and atmosphere. Most directors forget that good horror works best in a realm of ambient unreality, where doom and gloom mate to formulate friction and tension. Sully, on the other hand, has an easy grasp of the dynamics of dread. The initial shots of Dan in the woods, and the aftermath of his "accident" are excellent; silent scream filmmaking at its best. Just watching the 380-degree tracking shot around the slaughter site (and the beautifully bleak landscape it highlights) inspires the type of spinal tingles that a fan of fright looks for. Even an obvious ploy, like the "suddenly alive" scarecrow quick cut, works because O'Sullivan has tone by the tonnage. But the first sign of slippage comes in the cabin. Unless you think that every scary movie should be populated by disagreeable dickheads who rip on each other in a homoerotic fashion, the beer guzzling goofiness of the victims in waiting is just plain annoying. And by the time Bob is attacked in the external toilet, Gut-Pile has pissed away a great deal of its precious mood. Throughout the rest of the narrative, O'Sullivan tries to win it back. But instead of finding original ways to create apprehension, he digs down deep into Evil Dead's bag of tricks (attacking trees, demonic POV shots, flying body parts) and hopes we forgive his five-finger dramatic discounting.
There are really several things working against O'Sullivan here. The movie, and it seems really unfair to call it that, is far too short. There is really only about 15 minutes of actual story, with another 25 taken up with lots of long, languishing establishing shots and derivative directing behavior. Homage is usually hard to pull off, since most filmmakers only capture the basics of the slight of hand their idol employs. O'Sullivan's nods to Sam Raimi are far too blatant and outright borrowed to be genuine. It's like he swallowed Sam's extreme essence and spit it back onto the screen for this own amusement. And Jerry fails to place any of the Fake Shemp's famous humor into his film. Everything is taken so serious (unless it involves the outdoor plumbing facilities) that you'd think these hunters were part of a chain gang, not a weekend excursion. And then there is the acting. O'Sullivan is obviously employing friends, family and co-workers to get his movie made, and some of the substantive shortcuts are obvious. The thespian bringing Bob "to life" (named Ed Mastin, in reality) has a beard that keeps thinning an/or growing depending on the scene he is in. This is not a continuity problem as much as a sign that scenes were shot so far apart that everyone just forgot what the moron's facial hair actually looked like. Producer Ron Bonk (whose video game adventures we all enjoyed in the TurboGrafx 16 system a few years back) plays Mike like that archetypal ending to the proverbial phrase "with friends like these." Only Jeffrey Forsyth as the main protagonist Dan shows any real range, trying to invoke shock and dismay at the macabre mayhem around him.
Like most low budget horror helmers, O'Sullivan hopes F/X will get him through a few of the rough parts in his production. And indeed, when we see a head on a wall like a diseased trophy or the title entrails mound in all its intestinal goodness, Gut-Pile starts to deliver. Undeniably, what this movie should have done is dispense with all the tone and temperament and just ladle on the gore. Fright fans (this critic included) will forgive a whole Hell of a lot if you simple give with the slice and dice and show it in all its detailed disgust. Got some bad actors or non-existent characters? No problem, just pluck out their eyes and let us visually feast on the funkiness within. Not quite sure how to get your plot to amble from scene to scene? Simple: forget all the fancy filmmaking crap and decapitate a few people (with mandatory shots of arterial sprays spewing from severed necks). Blood hath charms to soothe the savage slasher fan and as long as you let us linger and lick it up, we'll champion even your crappiest efforts (just ask someone like Herschell Gordon Lewis). But in keeping with his bait and switch desire to make something both expressive and exploitative, O'Sullivan fails to deliver on the disgust and therefore undermines all his instincts. His beloved idol, Spiderman's main manipulator Sam, believed in the 'bucket of bile' dynamic to successful horror hokum. It's too bad that Jerry forgot some of his make believe mentor's most viable choices.
And this is why Gut-Pile is so disappointing. It starts off with promise, slips into an episode of The Man Show Goes Camping and ends up trying to paint the frame red to save its sinister schema. But it doesn't work. Maybe it's because Gut-Pile is so reminiscent of Raimi's far better work. Perhaps the paltry pay-off to the whole story, which is never really explained or tied directly to the death that opens the movie, undermines the menace. But it's the micro-mini length of the film that gives away its error. Gut-Pile is a good idea executed in outline form, the motion picture equivalent of a script treatment. Had some more care and confidence, plus a whole barnyard full of imagination, been pumped into this paltry offering, it could have found a way to maintain and manipulate its fright. But since 40 minutes was all Jerry O'Sullivan had in him, and the majority of that screen time is taken up with tributes to Bruce Campbell's personal nightmare, what we end up with is a reminder of better, more brazen horror films. Gut-Pile has a great title and a minor penchant for mood and atmosphere. Here's hoping that, the next time behind the lens, Jerry O'Sullivan leaves his obsessive stalker fanaticism at home.
The Video:
Dealing with a movie made in the late 90s with some rather substandard video equipment, Sub Rosa is to be given credit for Gut-Pile looking as professional as it does. There is still a lot of grain and compression defects in the decided low budget look to the film, but most of the time Gut-Pile is an imminently watchable 1.33:1 full screen experience. Night, however, is not nice to this movie and the overwhelming darkness of some of the scenes will make you wonder why the director even bothered including them. Then you're reminded on the scant running time and it all makes sense again.
The Audio:
There is a very moody, if sometimes derivative, soundtrack to this film that is featured nicely in the Dolby Digital Stereo mix. The dialogue, however, suffers from being recorded on inferior paraphernalia and, as such, is lost or indistinguishable most of the time. Turning up the volume on your home theater will only render the ancillary noises and brooding keyboard noodling that much more overwhelming.
The Extras:
Just like they did with their DVD release of Creep a few weeks back, Sub Rosa Studios makes the bonus content on the Gut-Pile disc more compelling than the actual movie itself. First, we get 10 minutes on the making of this movie featuring interviews with director O'Sullivan and producer/actor Bonk. Both gentlemen are very informative regarding this movie and how it was made. They also describe some of the elements that "inspired" them (though they deny that they lifted anything directly from Raimi or The Evil Dead. Right). Perhaps the best bits in this behind the scenes segment are a look at Sully's old home movies and cinematic shorts that ended up feeding footage ideas for Gut-Pile. The juxtaposition between the juvenile shots and the matching adult versions is very insightful. We are also treated to several trailers for other Sub Rosa product and it has to be said that this independent horror distributor really knows how to cut an ad. You almost want to go revisit this, and other tainted terror titles from the company, after sitting through these compelling previews.
To add further heft to his package, a couple of short films, each over 30 minutes in length, have been added to this DVD. Both are interesting if incredibly unprofessional. Of the two, Stumped is perhaps the best. In this story of a hand model that loses her left meal ticket ($20 says it comes back for revenge...NO FAIR, you've seen this before, haven't you?) there is an attempt to traverse that dead dinosaur of a death device, the reanimated body part, for some good old-fashioned fright fun. And the film is almost successful. Featuring Debbie Rochon as the only recognizable face amongst a cast of nobodies, Stumped's only saving grace is the novel way in which the hand's victims are done away with. We get nails to the eyes, acid to the face and a goofy strangulation. The twist ending is rather unrealistic and very poorly set up, but if you simply go with the flow and suspend your disbelief, you may have a good time with this amputated entity.
I Have Killed Before, on the other hand, is really some half-assed crap. It's strange to see this short on this DVD, since it was previously available on Tempe Entertainments release of Bloodletting, which only makes sense: I Have Killed Before was the experiment in exposition that lead to Bloodletting being made. They're basically the same film. J.R. Bookwalter regulars James L. Edwards and Ariana Albright spend a lot of time chewing at the scenery and trying to sell this unusual take on the serial killer storyline without a great deal of success. The notion that a mass murdered would want to train a female version of himself, and that there would be some passion between the perverts just never rings true. The full-blown version of this saga is better, but not by much, and this means I Have Killed Before is a one shot viewing experience. There won't be much to hold your attention after the first few minutes.
Final Thoughts:
It's always hard to hate on a horror fan that is trying to take a turn at the theater of the macabre. So many of his fellow fright knights are pulling for him. Gut-Pile, had it ditched a lot of its nonsensical elements and focused on hunting as an allegory for the atrocity involved in the indiscriminant taking of life, might have had something special to say. What we get instead is Evil Dead Lite, a living forest farce where floorboards creak, outhouses explode and hopes are dashed as one Sam Raimi shot after another is repeated (too bad our man from Michigan couldn't copyright those flying camera and peculiar POV shots. He wouldn't need Spidey's F-You money). If you want to revisit the story of the Necronomicon, the Kandarian demons and a joking jerkass whose as loveable as he is lamentable, then grab one of Anchor Bay's several incarnations of the Dead films and partake of their true originality (and bevy of Bruce Campbell goodness). But if all you're interested in is a retread of Sammy's greatest tricks, then run this Pile of Guts through your digital decoder. You probably won't be frightened. But you may just find a few moments of atmospheric uniqueness buried in all the borrowing.
Want more Gibron Goodness? Come to Bill's TINSEL TORN REBORN Blog (Updated Frequently) and Enjoy! Click Here
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