Customer Reviews

The Rockville Slayer

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

SPOILER ALERT!: The producers tried to hide the bad reviews this film received under its original title "Unaware" by changing the name to "Rockville Slayer". A rose by any other name would smell as sweet but a stinker is a stinker no matter what you call it. It's direct to video films like this that have become the new last stomping grounds for ex-stars on their way to retirement. Joe Estevez tries his best and he's the only thing "Rockville Slayer" has going for it. Robert Z'Dar looks and acts like he didn't care. At times you'll think he was looking around to make sure the paymaster was on the set. Linnea Quigley was a beautiful starlet in classics like "Return of the Living Dead" but those salad days are twenty years gone. Some of the newcomers are attractive but they won't want to include this on their future resumes.

And I've learned from experience with this film company, get ready for the family and friends of the cast and crew and director to start piling on with fake reviews to pump up the films rating. Look especially at all the reviews from "reviewers" who are only reviewing this one film (before its release date!) or just reviewing this film and "Bomb The System" or one other film...quite a coincidence, is it not? It's a sorry state, really. But wait, once they read this expose they will try to get it removed and start adding to their fake review catalog.

The story is really about some psycho who goes around skewering the usual set of cardboard characters in a small town that might have some secrets in its history. When the town's only hope rests on the narrow shoulders of a deputy who looks like he was cast as Barney Fife's twin, and whose played by some guy named, I swear, Circus, I knew there was no hope for either the town or for me. You have a whole cast full of nobodies and suddenly b-movie stock actors Robert Z'Dar and Linnea Quigley show up (and show their age) and you immediately know they have to be the bad guys. They get theirs in a simpleton shootout ending and then Barney Fife drives away and leaves town. One of the Fed cops, Nicky Buehrer, is good looking but she needs a few more acting lessons.

When buying this DVD, I thought it would be good movie to watch even if it wasn't one of the well known horror movies. Although it was good than most movies of that are out there of this caliber, but my biggest complaint was the sound quality of the movie. I like to be able to watch a movie without having to put on Closed Caption to know what's being said at points throughout the movie cause of the low volume. Other than that it was at least a 2.5 out of 5 for me, though it could've been better executed.

The Rockville Slayer (Marc Selz, 2004)

The reason I'm not sure if Spiker was the worst movie I saw this week is entirely down to The Rockville Slayer. It might have been slightly, and I do mean slightly, better, but every time I thought there was some minor hope that this movie was going to get (relatively) better, the horrendous acting and terrible special effects, as well as the rootlessness of the final thirty minutes of the movie, pulled it right back down into the muck.

The movie opens with the deaths of three high school students and the mutilation of a fourth. Suspicion for the murders falls on a recently escaped mental patient (Amy Brown, from the wonderfully-named Pot Zombies), but the local sheriff's deputy (Circus-Szalewski--yes, that's his name) and an FBI detective (Nicole Buehrer of the upcoming Trippin') aren't buying into the conventional wisdom.

There's a reason very few people in this movie have extensive acting credits (and those who do are known for acting in terrible movies--Joe Estevez, Robert Z'Dar, Linnea Quigley, and in his first film, Richard Strobel all make appearances here); the acting here is uniformly awful. And for "awful", read "it's the worst acting you've seen in any movie with a budget of more than ten thousand dollars." Even worse is the script, which allows the bad actors to deliver hackneyed lines. Not only that, but the movie feels like it should have actually been about an hour long; the rest of it seems as if it were tacked on when they realized the movie wasn't quite feature-length. It gets dumb (well, dumber) at that point, and never recovers. It's watchable, in a train-wreck sort of way, but you'll hate yourself in the morning. (half)

Could have been a cool "B" slasher film but the story and continunity is all over the place.

I watched this and felt ripped off. The audio was terrible. The direction incoherent. The writing... would have been better if someone swallowed a piece of paper and pooped out a script. This is an awful, amateur movie. Just because there is no budget DOES NOT give it the excuse to suck this badly.

My rating for The Rockville Slayer would have been a 2.5 stars or around there. I'm farily new to Amazon reviews but even I could tell that most (or all) of the 5 star reviews here are fakes. There's so much refrence to how great the director or the script is and how great the film is that it's all just got to be done by friends or family or even the director himself. How dumb does he think we all are? But anyway, the movie isn't that bad. It has some good parts and there's even a modicum of suspense here and there. But beware: the movie breaks down, literally, about 3/4 way into it, the sound goes off and you watch the last part of the movie like a bad Japanese children's monster film with the voices, sounds and lip movements all way off. Anyone who gave this 5 stars and didn't mention this is a big phoney. I like Linnea Quigley and Robert Zdar is always creepy. They aren't great in this avg. film but they always lend a good b movie air to things.

Quite possibly some of the worst acting and writing I have witnessed. The sad thing is that it seemed as if the actors really thought they were being convincing and true to their craft. I haven't seen so many fake cries or unnatural deliveries of lines in my life. Believe me when I tell you that my friends and I made better movies with more believable characters at the age of 14. Also to note I thought it was just my TV but as other reviews noted the sound quality is horrible as the lines came out like whispers through most of the film. I beg you do not buy this movie. Walk away. It's not even in a category of good bad films where you want to see it just so you can comment on the absurdity of it with others. The only plus for me was that I saw a movie with Joe Estevez in it which can not be said by many others. In all fairness he was probably the most believable in his acting minus his death scene.

I would give this movie a 0 if it were my choice.A big fat 0. The reviews before me must be family or have some kind of connection! Bad bad bad the words would come out and you would see their mouths move latter.It was so stupid that I can't believe I got suckered again. Don't waste the time and don't get ripped off like I did...

Let me see.... Bad Script, Bad acting, bad directing, poor editing, Soundtrack like a bad Japanese Western. So what's to like?? This DVD was an effort to recoup a bad investment..... save your $20 for a REAL Charity !!!

I thought this movie was alright. I felt that the story moved along well and I thought the ending tied in well together...I actually rented this from Blockbuster so I didn't notice the audio problems that some have mentioned. I felt that it was a pretty good flick. Some acting was a little amature, but it all moved well. Not bad for an indie movie.