Customer Reviews

A Brush With Death

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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I tried to come up with something pithy about this movie, about how bad it was but the words just don't come. It isn't even bad enough to draw out creative insults.

The plot is pretty straight forward. Five 20 something girls, we're told they are cheerleaders but that doesn't enter into this, are off for a weekend away at a country estate one of their rich daddys owns.

Along the way they run into local characters and the local haunted house where rumor says a murder took place and is still considered creepy.

Well the girls decide this would be a cool place to visit in the night. You can, I'm sure, see what's coming. They are of course picked off one by one along with assorted guys they've picked up and one incredibly creepy inbred local by the local wack job who likes to paint pictures in human blood. Hense the title 'brush' with death.

OK this is pretty standard as a low budget slasher flick but these can have charm. This does not. The girls are attractive and dress well but realistically. However camera angles are often odd and sound quality is all over the place, like the boom wasn't always where it should have been. An early flash back to a weirdo shop owner is supposed to set up a red herring but it's just confusing.

It's not the low production values that finalize this production's doom but continuity issues that fall flat and prevent the willing suspension of disbelief.

For example in the "haunted" house the electricity is still on. Something that the locals and even the girl who's father owns a nearby house should have noticed. Most importantly there is no explanation why the killer is able to overwhealm most of the girls and even a grown man. He's not some hulking mass or armed with narcotic drugs. When he's revealed he looks like a younger version of Les Nesman who'd have trouble with my 2 year old niece, never mind grown adults. Maybe the first girl could be surprise but as others know their fate, seeing their companion's bodies, they don't put up enough of a fight to even upset the furniture.

The only reason to rent this movie, for goodness' sake don't buy it, is if you're teaching a class on film and want to show 'what not to do.' Otherwise, leave this drek alone.

Well, the girls were nice to look at. They weren't too bright and it took forever to get to the house where all the action was to take place. I don't see this one ever making anybody's must-see list. In fact, it was so slow moving that it was hard to sit through the whole thing. I did however, and the climax was much like the rest of the film...slooow. It lacked any kind of impact and then two words popped up on the screen that said: "The End" and I thought 'Really? That's it?" The bottom line is, this film is watchable but not fun in any way at any level. If you must watch it, rent it. You probably would only watch it once anyway.

"This item has been discontinued by the manufacturer"!??! Aw, say it ain't so!

I've heard it said that if you give 100 monkeys 100 typewriters and have them randomly clacking away, they will eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.

Well, the monkeys haven't gotten that far yet. In the meantime, this is what they have to offer.

The thing that's mysterious about this crud is not how it got to be so bad, but HOW IT GOT SUCH A WIDE DISTRIBUTION! Holy smokes! Every year there's dozens of bad movies of this ilk being made by self-deluded independent filmmakers, yet every time they take their finished product into a distributor, some low-level functionary has the unenviable job of telling such goofs what time of day it is.

But not in this case. This movie is utterly without merit: it is every bit as bad, cheesy, awfully directed, atrociously acted, etc. etc., as the worst independent movie you've ever seen. The thing that makes this one remarkable was that the addlepates behind it got an even more addlepated distributor to distribute this (in this case, Vivendi Visual Entertainment). Thus it was that copies of this wound up in video rental chains all over this great nation. Needless to say, it was direct-to-video.

Some points:

1. I'm willing to bet Vivendi extensively re-edited this before agreeing to release it. There seems to be a dramatic divergence between the inept vision of the director, Brad Wiebe, the the occasional flashes of superslick editing. My guess is that they heavily reworked his turd.

2. The "five cheerleaders" are ugly. Not a one of them is a looker. As if this weren't reason enough to physically burn this DVD, there is no T&A! Isn't this the sine qua non of a low-budget horror flick? True, a couple of them get into bikinis midway through, but other than that, there's nothing. I'm guessing this is because these girls were probably related either to those who funded or distributed this movie, so when it came time to deliver the goods, they demurred, "Uncle Ronnie, you're not really gonna make me . . ."

3. The back of the DVD books reads, "Five cheerleaders spend the night in an abandoned farmhouse and find themselves up against a vengeful ghost. They soon find out that spirit is from a dead boy who painted a portrait of the brother he killed forty years earlier." Uh, that's not the story at all! Who wrote that? Sheesh.

4. It was a bit sad that there weren't many extra features on the DVD, such as a commentary track or something. I had hoped that there would be footage of someone like Jane Goodall interviewing the filmmakers, but no such luck.

5. The most mind-blowing moment of this film is when the lead character, Rankin, is alone in the house with two randy girls. They're on the floor . . . they're getting drunk . . . the girls wanna play a game. Neverthless, Rankin blurts out, "I gotta go!" WHOT?! ARE YOU JOKING?! Go do what? File your taxes? Organize your sock drawer? I don't care what this guy had to do: in a situation like that, any guy with a pair would quit his job, let his family be swept away in a landslide, let his mother be eaten by crocodiles -- whatever -- before telling a couple of hot and horny girls, "I gotta go!" Who wrote this?

Wow. Just...wow. Normally, I love campy horror movies. Somehow this movie doesn't even allow that. I feel drained.

Five tight-bodied, air-headed cheerleaders drive their Jeep to a remote mansion owned by one of their rich relatives. They run into a perverted mechanic shop-keeper named Walter - who for the purposes of this review I'll call Chester. Chester has a simple assistant named Caleb, portrayed by one of the worst actors in cinema history. Finally there's Ranken, a neighbor named so because his acting is rank. They're all horrible actors, with no sense of timing, delivery, volume, or, well, anything. Look for their bright futures at a convenience store or strip-club near you.

Interspersed pointlessly throughout the movie are flashbacks to the Rue Family farmhouse, where a family of morons once lived, committed murder, and probably engaged in the pastime of determining just how deep a person could jam a finger up a bodily orifice without giggling and/or wincing. I don't know if the name of the house is supposed to be ironic or not, because everyone involved in this steaming pile of horse dung should rue all potential viewers. Naturally, Ranken tells the haunted house story with about the same gravitas as former Information Minister of Iraq Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob, aka Comical Ali).

During constantly vapid conversation, awkward games of Truth or Dare, and scenes that made me want to check for a pulse, one of the imbeciles orally excretes that it would be fun to have a slumber party inside the local haunted house. Groupthink ensues.

Bad is predictable. What's not predictable, however, is the fact that nearly every aspect of the film-making is top-ten awful. The camera work looks to be done someone with cataracts and Parkinson's. The audio and score by someone with a malfunctioning hearing aid. The dialogue thought up by the bimbos at a nail salon: "Like, we should totally say something about tampons!" Cue the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys for how I should have watched this fetid embarrassment. I've seen better overall production in stop-motion animation videos on YouTube.

Other than T&A, which NEVER gets shown, this movie has nothing going for it. It's as if the film-makers don't even know the rules of B-horror! Make bad movie = show T&A! Them's the rules! Add that to pacing which requires the patience of a marathon runner, literally no concept of scene transition, and the results are abysmal. After a cursory review of each actor's IMDB page, it came as no shock that this travesty is the first time most have been anywhere near a camera.

Viewing this is a suitable replacement for water-boarding.

I rented this because hey, cheerleaders and slashers go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Don't bother.

The girls are good looking but there's no nudity or sex. Or cheerleading for that matter.

The camera work and sound are very poor.

The killer is neither scary nor cheesy, he's barely even in the film.

So with no scares, no gore, and no plot there is no reason to ever watch this.

The title is a pun as a paint brush is used to paint pictures of the victims with their blood. The cheerleaders are never in cheerleader outfits, nor do they ever take a shower. The do parade around in swim suits for a large part of the movie, which held my attention as well as their playing an idiotic game of "Truth or Dare." But alas, without a pillow fight, their antics failed to provide the right stimulation. Roger Corman where are you?

This movie was incorrectly listed as Science Fiction at my local store (now out of business). Whenever that happens I expect aliens. They never showed up, even during the horribly done flashback scenes which contained some of the worse acting since "Twilight." Did you count how many pictures the pervert took before he had to reload his camera? What was that, about 200 pictures?

There's not too much to say. I would rather "bob for doodies" in my toilet than watch this garbage again.

This movie is so terrible it's actually quite entertaining. I don't regret watching it.

WHAT a joke!!! I can't believe someone actually had the audacity to make this piece of trash!!!!!!!!!!!!