Customer Reviews

Johnny Sunshine

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

It's beyond me how anyone could make a movie this awful. This could be one of the worse flicks I've ever seen, maybe the second, after "Lancelot de Luc". Even if one is into gore/slasher flicks, this movie still sucks. When I have to fast-forward in parts, I know something is really wrong. It's got some overdone, really stupid violent scenes that didn't really gross me out because they were so dumb. It's like this movie was made by undergrad college kids for either hardcore felons in prison, or extremely mentally dull persons. Not really much of a story, pieced together in a crude fashion, with long extended scenes that got to be so boring that I almost puked. There were zombies in it, but of the lowest order, just stupid zombies. I watched it via Netflex, and I would suggest that one should never rent nor buy it unless one wants to throw money away. It's really beyond me how anyone can even get a DVD as horrible as this one into the marketplace. I realize that they only spent a few bucks making it, but I can't see how they can recoup their money from this disaster. The producers/director should be locked up along with all the actors in it.

Hands down. I wish I could rate this on a negative scale. Look, I love terrible movies. Few things make me happier than settling down with a long-forgotten B-movie. But this.....this is an abomination. There is nothing redeeming here. The acting is godawful, the story seems to be the same three scenes playing over and over, and while it is clear that the makers of this trash (I won't disparage a century of film history by calling this a "film")thought they were shocking their audience by challenging conventions, they were really just indulging in the worst kind of ego stroking. This is supposedly a zombie flick, but that subplot is superfluous at best. It's really about torture porn, and even those scenes are so boring and devoid of anything resembling a human story that one can't help but yawn. If you are anywhere near this movie, run. Run far, and run fast. And never look back.

The only reason "Johnny Sunshine" runs 1:20 is because of all the needlessly long scenes of the lead character doing someone ("doing" meaning both killing and rutting with, and sometimes both at once). That time would have been better spent on developing the plot. Or A plot, I should say. The story is woefully threadbare and the characters aren't deep enough to qualify as one-dimensional. This is nearly an hour and a half of unimpressive set pieces meant to shock and titillate, and they fail to do either.

I understand that it's a no-budget film and I should perhaps expect only so much, but people have done a lot more with a lot less.

The concept for this movie was awesome. I just loved it. I recommend this one to all the horror fans out there who love movies with revenge, zombies covered in blood and a hot lead actress. Five stars! Johnny Sunshine Maximum Violence was a blast!

Johnny Sunshine: Maximum Violence (Matt Yeager, 2008)

Both director Matt Yeager and screenwriter Sean-Michael Argo were taking their first cracks at their respective jobs with Johnny Sunshine: Maximum Violence, and it shows, but that doesn't make it the painfully horrid piece of film that the thirty-two raters on IMDB--who have given the film a collective rating of 1.2--would have you believe. While the film was made with almost no budget, there's a lot to be liked here, as long as you're not expecting much when you dive into it.

In the post-apocalyptic world the film inhabits, zombies have basically taken over, and the humans who remained have learned to co-exist with them in an odd sort of way. (Zombies, after all, are slow and stupid.) Johnny Sunshine (the ferally beautiful Shey Bland) makes her living alternating between hunting zombies and making low-rent snuff porn. Her boss, Max (Eric Halsell), is trying to use the profits he's made from Johnny's various exploits to buy his way into the walled, high-security city where the rich live. (The framing device used in the movie is Max's video application for acceptance in the community, actually, and it's worth the price of admission by itself.) Problem is that Johnny has outlived her usefulness; her popularity has plateaued, and Max wants to get her out of the way to make room for his next star. (Oddly, that particular character never turns up; one would have thought the producers, given that they're lampooning cheap exploitation flicks even as they're making one, would have welcomed the chance to put another set of breasts in the movie.) Combine this with a few subplots and a random zombie attack or two, and you've got yourself a no-budget horror movie.

It's all a lot of fun if you take it in the proper manner. No one who was making this movie went into it expecting to come out with another Citizen Kane, and I would hope no one who sees it would be expecting such, either. This is a simple, no-budget exploitation/gore film, and as such, it delivers on every count. The gore effects are low-key, which isn't necessarily a bad thing when you've got no budget (that's how Lewton and Tourneur pulled off some great movies, and really, how many no-budget gorefests have you seen where you spent more time laughing at the bad gore effects than being sickened by them?), and the acting, while obviously amateur, is still at least slightly above average for the movies that you're going to find at this level of the food chain. No, I'm not ashamed to admit it--I had a very good time with Johnny Sunshine: Maximum Violence, and if you give it a shot without expecting too much, I think you will too. ***

The video was recieved two days ago. It was mailed the day I requested it. 100% satisfied!!! :-)