Customer Reviews

KatieBird*Certifiable Crazy Person

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

 

 

I saw a bunch of great reviews for this movie all over the web and read about it in Fangoria and was very curious to check it out. This movie is awesome! If you like serial killer movies, if you like lots of gore that will make you cringe (including some teeth pulling scenes that are way more intense than Marathon Man...man, it'll be a long time before I go to a dentist) but most importantly if you like movies with substance, a plot and great cinematography this is the movie for you. Most horror movies these days are so formulaic - this one really is different. A truly unique, yet completely insance, film. I can't wait for the sequel!

Looks like someone showed the director how to do split screen and partial screen shots on his computer, and he went absolutely nuts. The WHOLE movie is presented in this manner. It becomes very distracting, it's hard to emerse yourself in a story when you are constantly reminded that you are watching a film due to the overuse of a particual technique. That alone pretty much ruined the film for me. I guess you have to do something to cover up for a poorly written, shot and directed mess. Oh, and the music sucks too, unless you like guitar notes and chords held into lengthy sustained feedback. Gave me a headache.

Writer/director Justin Paul Ritter gives us truly artful film filled with interesting characters, he doesn't shy away from style or violence. The acting in KatieBird was just spectacular, there's not a thing I can say about the acting. Ritter delivers big budget acting in a low budget film. I was especially impressed with Lee Perkins performance. He had this very low key Midwestern feel that's just hard to explain. Taylor M. Dooley also gave her all and was truly an interesting character, as did Helene Udy. Both women have created a terrifying character. Gorehounds take note, the torture and special FX were also done extremely well. This film is certainly not for the casual viewer. KatieBird is an unflinching look into the creation of a serial killer and her downward spiral of self-destruction. To say this film is nihilistic would be an understatement.

Heretic Films DVD release is phenomenal. It's packed with extras, comes packaged in a foil embossed slipcase and the first run of DVDs even include a free CD soundtrack! If you're a serial killer cinema fan you need to buy this; this is one of those "buy before watching" kinds of cinema. Don't expect to see this on cable anytime soon. Justin Paul Ritter is a force to be reckoned with. Not only has the man proven he can make a movie but he can undoubtedly make monsters. This comes highly recommended!

KatieBird* Certifiable Crazy Person: 2 out of 10: On the surface Katiebird has a lot of redeeming qualities. The story, while not original, is somewhat fresh. (Female serial killer mixed with Fraility like family touch.) The acting is well above average for a low budget horror film. (Even a poor performance such as Todd Gordon's stiff psychiatrist is still better than most.) The make up effects and original musical score, again despite some small faults, are also well above average.

So what went so horribly wrong?

Well for starters the film is a talky affair with not nearly enough plot to fill the 100 minute running time. For a serial killer Katiebird seems to have fallen a couple of victims short. The main (only) victim's killing is graphic but goes on way to long and lacks any punch. These scenes almost resemble a tedious Japanese snuff film (Guinea Pig Devil's Experiment for example) rather than a proper movie.

Oh and if the pictures are not enough of a clue the entire film is shot with split screen shifting windowpanes that take up maybe three quarters to as little as a third of your screen. Do not adjust your set. No really spend all the time you want fiddling with the aspect ratio on your remote it won't help. If you don't have a nice large screen plasma TV the film is simply unwatchable. If you do have a nice big screen the film is headache inducing. Even Woodstock didn't use this much split screen and Brian De Palma seems like a restrained TV sitcom director by comparison.

This is a shame because what little we can discern of cinematographer Josh Fong's works seems top notch. But it is lost in this look three places at once stylistic nightmare. Really you would have to be nuts to purposely torture your audience like this. Writer/director/editor Justin Paul Ritter is plainly nuts. Come to think of it he is a certified crazy person.

KatieBird: Certifiable Crazy Person (Justin Paul Ritter, 2005)

Corman film factory graduate Justin Paul Ritter presents his first movie, and for someone who was involved with some of Corman's worst recent offerings (including the Black Scorpion TV show), his managing to stay away from the horrible scripts, unintentional humor, and awful acting that characterized so much of his second-unit work is pretty amazing. In fact, that this movie is anything other than horrendous is pretty much reason to rejoice. It's not a great film by any means, but given his background, it does presage great things for Mr. Ritter in the future (and, four years after KatieBird, Ritter is set to release two new films in 2009; I'm looking forward to them).

The title character in this film (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman's Helene Udy) lives up to her subtitle; in the present-day scenes we see, KatieBird has brought her psychiatrist and would-be suitor (Point Blank's Todd Gordon) back to her place, where she slowly tortures him while telling him the story of her life (the character is played in flashback by Nicole Jarvis, in her first film role, as a child, and Rufus' Taylor Dooley as a teen), giving us a look at how her father, played by Into the Arms of Strangers' Lee Perkins (who, actually, is a professional race car driver who acts on the side), shaped her into the psychotic she is today.

Okay, so everyone and his mom had complained about the split-screen effect that's vastly overused in this movie. But you know what? Compared to Timecode, probably the most famous movie to use the technique, this is a triumph. Yeah, I grant you, it still kind of sucks, but it's done so much better here than I've ever seen it before. Part of this is because the use of the split-screen technique has nothing, really to do with what's actually going on onscreen. Most of the time it's simply a stylistic choice, rather than being used to show multiple storylines at once. It wasn't an absolute necessity to try and focus on multiple storylines, so it didn't really matter which screen I watched, I was still getting what I needed to know about the plot.

The script is solid, and there's some darned fine acting here (Udy, is excellent, and some mention should be made of Jun Hee Lee as a teen KatieBird's crush who comes to a very bad end), and it's interesting to see a film that's not a horror movie get the gore treatment. It seems most people who have watched this are unable to get by the split-screen thing; if you can, there's a lot to like with this one. ***

From the camera work,story,acting,visually & (wow!)the music Justin Paul Ritter's "KatieBird*Certifiable Crazy Person" is truly one of the best horror films that I have ever seen. In a day & age of horror films filled with alot of the same-ol same-ol(wich can be very nice at times-but not all the time) this film rears its beautifully ugly & uniquely artistic head & shines like a pussed up soar thumb cooking like a hotdog on a grill in the hot sunny mid-day of august & I loved it! Like Eric Stanze's "ScrapBook" & Wes Craven's "Last House On The Left" This film is so viciously relentless(or realistic) that you feel like taking a shower after watching it or you question yourself for watching it & the scary thing is that this film has more substance in one of it's pinky fingers than both of the movies I just named above. This is a brilliantly vulgar horror masterpiece that builds & builds throughout until it erupts like a steaming hot blood spitting volcano. This is the definition of real life horror!

This is a story about one girl's coming of age and her father who passes down to her that old family tradition of being a serial killer. It's an artsy type of horror film. The cinematics in it were great. I found the acting to be suprisingly good. I thought that the actors who played teenage Katiebird and her father did an especially good job. I 1st rented this movie thinking that it would either be entertaining enough or really suck. I liked it so much that I decided to buy it after.