Star Vehicle (2010) User Reviews

A Disappointment From Ryan Nicholson

[gavin6942 · 4/10 · 17 March 2011]

Frustrated Teamster driver Donald Q. Cardini (Dan Ellis), abused by spoiled stars and arrogant students, who becomes a ticking time-bomb of revenge. As Don goes on the rampage, his favorite scream queen, Riversa Red (Sindy Faraguna), finds herself up for a new role in the greatest gorefest of all: real life.

A noticeably lower quality than "Gutterballs", which I would consider one of the greatest slasher films ever made. Was the budget not there? I do not know, but the video quality looks very amateurish, and the acting is questionable from many of the bit parts.

Sometimes ultra low budget works. One of my all-time favorite films is "The Janitor", which pushed the low budget to an extreme. This film does not seem to realize that to capture an audience, you need to make up for the low budget with a sense of humor. This films lacks it, with even less humor than "Gutterballs". And it does not help that the review copy I received seems to be the wrong dimensions (the screen is squished in).

The score is repetitive and uninteresting. This was the same man who did the "Gutterballs" score, I believe. However, that films had a rocking soundtrack of Loverboy and Trooper to carry it. Here, no real music to speak of, just the same riff over and over and over. Could the sound be partially to blame for my dislike of this film? Oh, heck yes.

Nudity is always a plus, and the girl with the lotion is sexier than she ought to be for what she was paid. But that, sadly, may have been the highlight of the film for me. Two minutes of young breasts. Which is either an incredible insult to myself, or an incredible insult to this film. I am not sure which, but I will probably never see this one again.

Nicholson slams his directorial career into reverse.

[BA_Harrison · 4/10 · 12 November 2013]

Ryan Nicholson's low budget short Torched was a satisfyingly brutal rape/revenge tale. His torture flick Live Feed failed to impress as a whole, but at least had lots of top notch mutilation and female nudity. Gutterballs was an enjoyable slice of retro-slasher deviancy. Hanger was utterly crude and totally bonkers—and consequently a lot of twisted fun.

Other than the fact that two of its actresses strip off for the camera, it's hard to find anything nice to say about Star Vehicle.

At little over an hour long the film should fly by, but with terrible pacing, a lousy script boasting dire dialogue, and very little in the way of decent gore, the going is really hard. Even when it does happen, the savagery lacks the sense of realism necessary to make it truly disturbing, largely thanks to the dreadful performances, but also because, on this occasion, Nicholson's special effects aren't up to his usual gruesome standard. Blood gets splashed about liberally, but the violence fails to churn the stomach as much as one would expect—surprising when you think that Nicholson's primary line of work is make-up FX.

Not one of Ryan Nicholson's better projects...but

[Mike_T-Little_Mtn_Sound_Archive · 4/10 · 16 February 2019]

The other reviews are spot on. This is not one of Ryan's Nicholson's better works. That said, if the entire movie was as captivating and stylish as the last 1/3, it would be rated higher. No synopsis provided here, but comments on production.

The first 2/3 of the movie moves at a slow pace and is marred with some poor acting performances by at least half the characters. Not in the way that typifies other Nicholson movies, which is usually part camp part scene, rather just bad acting. The lead actors performances are fairly solid throughout and more indicative of what is expected from Nicholson's people.

Along with the acting and pace, there is no real action of any kind in the first 2/3. Thankfully the entire movie is less than 75 minutes from start to finish, but it does drag through the first part.

Once the movie reaches the place of interest - and the viewer knows immediately, based on dialog - the flow, script, and acting all pick up, as does the action. This is not to say that it suddenly becomes good, only that it is an improvement over earlier scenes. Plus, the climax offers a unique occurrence (I'll leave it at that).

The special fx are, for the most part, very cheesy and unrealistic, though there are a couple scenes with decent examples. These scenes also, coincidentally, are the only places with gore, and while they are not over the top, they are certainly more graphic than much of the early scenes with only blood.

In all, Star Vehicle is not a complete waste, as there are some redeeming qualities to it, but it should be noted that expectations should be tapered if compared to other Nicholson flicks. As noted multiple times, the last 1/3 of the flick is better. In actuality, had it not been for this development of pace and on-screen action, the movie would have been a bust; the last 1/3 literally saved the entire flick.

Regarding content:

• only moderate violence, most of which is not directly visible onscreen, and only a couple scenes of (light) "gore."
• there are multiple scenes of nudity, but it is not rampant throughout the film. Multiple shots with female breasts, and one brief scene of full front female nudity.
• moderate to slightly above moderate profanity. The last 1/3 yields increased profanity, as is fitting to the pace of the film.

Low budget movie with a twist

[jdsalas · 5/10 · 12 April 2011]

Bad acting, bad directing, which is consistent with low budget filming. The only reason why I rated it a 5 is due to the fact that towards the ending of the movie I was caught off guard with its interesting twist. If the acting, the directing and the script was polished, I would have scored it high and I'd watch it more than once. The quality of the film was something to be desired (sarcastic remark). While I was watching the movie, I nodded off a couple of times. I also was irritated at the director's acceptance of some actors' performance. But like I was saying about the script, if Ryan Nicholson polished up the script a little more and let a more seasoned director make the movie, it may have been a hit. Also, he could get a better understanding in directing a film.

This vehicle lost it's wheels.

[Greenzombidog · 3/10 · 26 April 2011]

The quality just plummets further in Ryan Nicholson's new film.

The plot is actually a good idea. A guy who drives actors and actresses to and from their filming locations finally gets to meet his favourite actress but things soon turn dark when he decides he's going to make his own movie.

The movie kicks off with some ridiculous scene which is neither explained or has any relevance on the plot other than to put some blood and guts in there to keep the gore-hounds happy. The film then just crawls along with terrible dialogue until the next gore scene is just shoehorned in to stop you from getting bored or falling asleep. The acting from the start as you'd expect in this grade of movie isn't the best. The two main leads are acceptable but everyone else is pretty bad. The film really suffers in its pacing which is further hampered by lots of static camera shots. Sometimes almost whole scenes filmed from one angle. Some of the gore effects are also spoilt by some terrible editing.

I don't know if Nicholson is trying to move away from his earlier films over the top set pieces. But the fact that they're not in here makes you notice how bad the script is. It neither stays truly gritty or goes all out over the top. So you're left wondering what the films trying to do.

I remember when I was a kid in a drama lesson at school. The teacher got us to make up a little play. They only gave us twenty minutes to come up with something. When the twenty minutes were up we hadn't come up with an ending. We thought, well we can sort something out while the other groups are showing there's. Well we were first. So we started and when we got to the ending we just started making stuff up. It was a complete mess but we got through it. The reason I'm telling this story is because the last twenty minutes of this film reminded me of that. It's a complete mess that just seems made up as it's going along. Just a real disappointment. I hope if Ryan Nicholson gets to make another film he spends a little more time actually writing a script rather than letting his actors improvise the film.

An enjoyable and dark genre effort

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 8/10 · 6 October 2021]

Tasked with driving stars to and from movie sets, a driver taking the cast and crew of a low-budget horror shoot to and from their lodgings discovers his favorite actress is involved and tries to win her over, but when his actions anger and upset the crew takes out his anger in graphic ways.

Overall, this was quite an intriguing and enjoyable genre effort. Among the films' better features is the strong setup that gives us an intriguing psychological character study on the guy throughout here. Giving this one an incredibly thorough take on his obsession and demented attraction to the genre and the art of movie-making from the very start with the amount of trivia and knowledge about the industry he provides that should send off clues about who he is but doesn't, there's a very strong grip on his character and personality quite earlier on that works quite well here. Even the later scenes of him trying to worm his way into her life, while perhaps done innocently with the attempts to initiate a conversation about her career and the resulting shoot, go even further towards enhancing that factor of the film. Since this all manages to provide a sense of who he is and what he's all about, the longer the shoot carries on and the more time he spends around her the eventual snap becomes all the more obvious and fun. The fact that he spends as much time talking smack about the film and the history of the girls' work to anyone and everyone on set gives this a perfect point to bring about how his instability eventually leads to the deranged rampage he carries out in the second half where he goes crazy through the cast and crew killing them one-by-one before finally abducting the main group that upset him which results in a psychotic spree torturing and killing them which is quite over-the-top and features tons of great splattery gore overall. These here give this one a lot to like that holds it up overall. There isn't much to dislike here with the film. The main drawback is the seemingly bizarre manner in which his antics go unreprimanded for as long as he is as the kind of interaction he provides on a film set would've gotten him kicked off far earlier than what he did. Picking fights with anyone on the set of a film shoot, openly calling the director's work trash and uninspired, or just generally giving off a creeper's vibe is all questionable that would automatically make any crew suspicious of him and there's little he does to fix it so why he lasted as long as he did before the snap is a little questionable. As well, there's the random reveal of the stalker at the end of the film which just seems thrown in for no reason other than to have a hero's redemption sequence when it would be highly suspicious someone who carry out the plan they do at the point it occurs which isn't realistic. Otherwise, there's quite a lot to like with this one.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Full Nudity, and a Rape.