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goji54
Reviews
Serial Killer (2002)
I feel your pain.
My film, "The Traveler," was released alongside yours on the "Crazed Killers" DVD and has also gotten mixed reviews. Mine is not a perfect film either. There are many things I wish I could change. I wish I'd had more money. I wish I could have shot on film and had better actors (I think some of them actually were pretty decent--Erica Highberg in particular). But the simple fact of the matter is that when you have nothing but the burning desire to make a movie, you do what you can with what you've got, despite the obstacles. I think there are many people who can't appreciate that. They're only happy if it looks like a Hollywood movie. When viewing movies like this, you have to put yourself in the mindset that someone struggled to make this movie with no resources, probably funding it out of his/her own finances. I applaud you for even FINISHING your movie! How many underground movies fizzle out, let alone get distributed?! So kudos to you! And by the way, my mom liked your movie and she's REALLY tough to please!!
The Traveler (2006)
Reposted from Rotten Tomatoes
I DID NOT WRITE THE FOLLOWING REVIEW BUT WANTED TO REPOST IT HERE TO PROVIDE A MORE BALANCED VIEWPOINT. THE STAR RATING WAS THEIRS ALSO....
Seven people are trapped in an abandoned house by a supernatural force, and an immortal man with monstrous strength (Burke) soon appears and forces them to torture each other to death. But he is keeping his most special, most terrible plans in reserve for young married couple Alan and Suzan (Skocik and D'Allesandro (with Hartely providing the voice of Suzan).
Once in a blue moon, I come upon a film that I can say is fairly decent, but that I will still never watch again and that I am hesitant to recommend to anyone else.
"The Traveler" is one such movie.
I have never seen violence this graphic and terrible in a movie before. I'm the first one to admit that I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to slasher-flicks and torture scenes--I know the reality of severe pain, so I can't stand watching it staged on-screen, and you'd probably laugh if you saw me squirm and look away while viewing many movies--but it's rare where I am shuttling past extended sequences because they are making my skin crawl and because they are just too horrible to watch.
"The Traveler" features six such terrible, extended, extremely graphic scenes. And the violence mostly looks horribly realistic--only once did I think "that looks fake"... but that could just have been because I was zooming past the guts spilling out from one of the characters at x4 speed.
I did watch snippets of each of the death sequences (yeah... most everyone in the house dies most terrible, anguishing deaths, and I don't consider that a spoiler in the day and age of "Saw" and the various imitators, of which this is one).
REPOSTER'S NOTE: THIS IS AN ERROR. "THE TRAVELER" WAS NEARING THE END OF POST-PRODUCTION WHEN "SAW" WAS RELEASED, SO THERE COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN AN INFLUENCE.
The violence looks horribly realistic and the well done sound effects make it even more stomach-turningly believable. The best (or most horrible) torture sequences were the one where the "host" takes a spike and a hammer and shatters a victim's teeth one by one--and we get a top view so we can see it happen-- the one where another victim gets hoisted into the air on a meat-hook that penetrates the roof of the mouth and exits through an eye-socket, and the one where a victim's face is literally shaved off.
Despite my revulsion at the graphic violence, despite the fact that I will never consider watching this movie again, I admire the technical know-how that went into creating it.
This is a well-made film over-all. There are a few clunky moments here and there--tinny dialog, flat acting, a special effect here and there that don't come off quite right--but overall it features decent camera-work and staging, it's free of all the padding and time-filling garbage that ruins so many horror movies, and it even offering a story that's interesting and engaging, What's more, the director has the ability to honestly assess what worked and what didn't work in the movie; the camera lingered on the gore and special effects that worked with terrible convincingness, while those that clearly didn't work as I'm sure was hoped are passed by with fairly quick cuts. (There's a "regenerating head" sequence that I think fits this bill.) Too often, low-budget filmmakers allow the audience to see their film's shortcomings too clearly by dwelling on them. Not so with Skocik... he's clearly a filmmaker with a good eye, and I'd be interested in seeing what he might come up with in the future (even if I have to shuttle past portions of the movie).
Project: Valkyrie (2002)
Obviously low-budget but insanely fun splat-fest similar in tone to "Bad Taste."
In an age where overblown, plotless, Hollywood dribble dominates the box-office, a movie like "Project: Valkyrie" is most welcome. Its low budget is evident from the first frame, but this very aspect makes its shortcomings entirely forgivable. There is some bad sound in spots and occasionally some shaky acting, but these elements are par for the course in such films, and any sensible viewer will either ignore them or accept them as part of the fun. Steve Foland is quite enjoyable in his Bruce Campbell-inspired role, but it's the robot, Valkyrie who ultimately steals the show. There's a scene when our heroes are in dire straits, surrounded by monster Nazis and Valkyrie bursts through a door, knocking Mr. Foland's character out in the process. After a brief glance at his fallen comrade, he turns, sword out, to face the bad guys. When I saw this movie in the theater, the entire audience cheered at that point. Such moments are at the core of this movie. It does not matter if the robot is obviously a guy in a suit. We root for him anyway. Highlighting the action are the fantastic special effects by up-and-coming artist Steve Tolin. With very little money and only a few days of preparation, Mr. Tolin whipped up some delightfully disgusting monster masks and managed to fill the frame with enough blood and mangled flesh to satiate any self-respecting gore-hound. The end result of all this is a wacky soup of over-the-top characters, witty dialogue, and hilariously excessive violence that fans of the genre can delight in. "Project: Valkyrie" stands alongside such films as "The Evil Dead" and "Bad Taste" as one of the superior low-budget horror/comedies and is destined to have a loyal cult following. I, for one, am most definitely a part of that following.