Customer Reviews

Trailer Park of Terror

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

When country performer Trace Adkins shows up in "TRAILER PARK OF TERROR" looking like a 'Thunderkiss '65'-era Rob Zombie, it's tempting to write this flick off as a 'Texas Chainsaw Wannabe', or maybe a 'House Of 1000 Ideas That Have Been Done A Million Times Before'. But Adkins gets credit from me, because for the brief time he's on-camera, he does manage a pretty impressive screen presence.

The same goes, shockingly enough, for the rest of "TRAILER PARK..." as well. Having sat through countless horror duds that purported to be more 'gruesome' or 'over-the-top' than anything seen before, I can't say that "TRAILER PARK..." is any more extreme than any of its gore-soaked precursors. And it's amusing & worth some chuckles, but high art this AIN'T. Yet, at the same time, "TRAILER PARK..." defies the odds, and avoids being just a forgettable, one-trick, cheapie horror gimmick. Sure, the whole redneck vibe is in full swing, with your standard. broadly-generalized mobile-home caricatures (bigoted, overweight, slovenly, undereducated malcontents and floozies) romping around and saying "y'all" a lot. And the deep-fried rockabilly soundtrack, though groovy and energetic, is one hell of a cliche. But... the nice thing about "TRAILER PARK..." is that despite its limited trappings and Z-grade pedigree, it's still much better written, acted, and overall produced than it probably deserved to be.

Regardless of the nod & wink (or is it a "shout-out"?) early on in the film to gore-meister/hack director Herschell Gordon Lewis, this film aspires to be a least a teensy bit better than just a brainless splatter-show. The gore FX on display here ARE copious and well-crafted, with great demon/zombie makeups, amputations, disembowelments, and a particularly painful set-piece involving homemade 'beef jerky'. But "TRAILER PARK..." is also decent during the parts in between, the lines are delivered snappily, and the back-stories of the various seedy residents of the park are actually sort-of interesting, unlike so many other flashback sequences in lesser films. What stands out about "TRAILER PARK...", and what left me with an overall feeling of goodwill towards this picture, is that the filmmakers clearly opted NOT to just rush through everything else and throw a quick, bloody gag-reel together and call it done. It actually works because it feels like at least a little thought was actually put into making it a slick, rockin', free-wheeling trip through Hayseed Hell. In short, it's much, MUCH more skillfully produced than most of the other straight-to-dvd crap out there today.

It ends up feeling like it belongs next to some of the better 80's genre flicks many of us remember fondly, such as "RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD" or "RE-ANIMATOR", while featuring the stylistic flourishes of more contemporary entries like "FROM DUSK 'TIL DAWN", "DEAD & BREAKFAST", or "2001 MANIACS" (which is, itself, a remake of a Lewis gore film, and would go GREAT on a double-bill with "TRAILER PARK..."). But these comparisons, depending on your cinematic tastes and experience, may be meaningless... so let's just say that "TRAILER PARK OF TERROR" is highly recommended for late-nite viewing, especially if you're in the mood to kick back and get in touch with your "violent, cackling, undead-inner-hillbilly" side.

When a bus carrying a group of troubled high school teens and their chaperons crashes near a trailer park, they're forced to fight for their lives against the reanimated `victims' of a brutal, vengeful massacre nearly thirty years prior.

Review: With a name like Trailer Park of Terror and an MPAA rating including "sadistic horror violence and torture, sexual content, pervasive language and drug use," it didn't take much suggestion to make me check out this little flick. . . then I found out my DVD had the unrated cut and I couldn't hold back any longer. And, boy, am I glad that I didn't wait. When I first heard of the film and read the synopsis, I was expecting a 2001 Maniacs-style shlock comedy-horror. To my pleasant surprise, the film actually took a much more horror-focused approach, leaving the comedy to be a simple mood-lightener at times and not a major part of the tone. Visually, the film is great. It, thankfully, does not have the cheap `shot-on-video' look that so many low-budget films have these days. Also, the gore is very good and goes above what I would have expected for a film like this (including one particular scene that almost forced me to turn away in disgust). The script is a terrific blend of horror & humour and goes beyond the typical low-budget zombie flicks we've been seeing for so long. It's more than just "rise from the dead and eat the living" here: The zombies are more intelligent and much, MUCH more violent (imagine House of 1000 Corpses with zombies. . . other than Rob & Sheri). While, sometimes, `smart' (or as smart as undead trailer-park residents can be) zombies can be a bit of a turn off for zombie fans, it definitely works well here and should not be overlooked for that reason. Acting can often be a big deal-breaker for low-budget affairs, but the cast here should be, mostly, commended for the efforts. They inhabit their individual characters well and deliver strong performances for the most part. On a deeper level, the atmosphere the filmmakers managed to create is extremely effective. The 'stormy night in the middle of nowhere'-style may be overused, but some films are able to utilize it much better than others. This film belongs in the 'better' category. Put all together, Trailer Park of Terror comes out as one of the best zombie films of the new millennium.

Final verdict: 8/10. A half-point was taken off just for the disappointing ending.

-AP3-

This movie starts off like most of the direct to DVD horror films that I've watched over the years. The introduction of Norma and the trailer park is kind of fun and their deaths are amusing. But I wasn't really interested in the stereotypical characters that populate the bus of delinquents and found their characters all too predictable. But when they get stranded and the killings start the movie starts to get really good. I love the zombie versions of he characters that have some great lines and the cinematography was fantastic, you won't even notice that it was a low budget gore flick. Sure we have all seen the hillbilly as killers thing done to death (H.G. Lewis, Tobe Hooper and Rob Zombie come to mind) but that doesn't mean it still can't be fun. My favorite character was Roach, the pot growing country music star wanna-be who belts out tunes from the roof of his trailer. So while the victims aren't that interesting the killers are and that makes the movie a real blast, plus how often do you see the undead having a demolition derby? that scene was actually hilarious. This film however was a trashy horror flick that's not meant to be taken seriously and as entertaining as it is, it still wasn't that great. There was very little substance and some scenes did drag for awhile especially those flashback sequences and the music wasn't particularly that good in fact some of it was embarrassing. Even though the film had lots of gore it really does lack some tension. What was really great about this horror flick though was the gore, We get impalements, heads getting ripped off, an arm sawed off, a guy gets skinned alive and some guts, blood and a lot more, so it was very gory. Now I'm a huge horror fan but occasionally I have come across some really awful stuff before, this straight to DVD horror flick was decent but it was clearly aimed at fan boys. it does succeed in being entertaining but it lacks substance and the storyline quickly becomes exaggerated and goes all over the place.

Trailer Park of Terror is a great film. The character makeup was awesome, and the storyline was very believable. It helps to be familiar with the comic book series though, as the movie is based on the series. I enjoyed the movie, and recommend it as a good movie to watch, especially around Halloween.

Definitely watch the mini movie at the end. It's hillarious!

Trailer Park of Terror (Steven Goldmann, 2008)

By far the most pleasant surprise of the week's movie watching, Trailer Park of Terror is another comic book adaptation that managed to get no distribution in an age where the comic book adaptation is king (cf. My review of The Dead One a few months ago). Goldmann's last feature effort was the awful Toby Keith vehicle Broken Bridges, and to be honest, I wasn't expecting a great deal. Goldmann's continuing fascination with bad country music continues here (there's a Trace Adkins cameo), but other than that, this was a very fun ride.

High-school beauty queen Norma (Nichole Hiltz, recently of the TV series In Plain Sight) is stuck in the trailer park, but she sees the possibility of an escape: she's found herself a boyfriend from outside, and hopes she can use him as her ticket out. Until, that is, some of the less savory inhabitants of the place decide he's not good enough for their little Norma and show him the door. Permanently. Enraged, Norma makes a deal with the devil (Adkins), who gives her a sawed-off shotgun. Oh, yeah. Fast-forward a few years, to an idealistic youth pastor (Matthew del Negro, probably best-known at this point for a minor role on The Sopranos) and the six charges with whom he's spent the last week in a woodland retreat. After an accident during a rainstorm, they find themselves at the same trailer park, now deserted except for Norma, who invites them in for coffee and scary stories, and insists they spend the night...

There seem to be two types of people who watch this movie. There are those who find the first half-hour, the story of Norma and her deal with the devil, to have been full of promise, and the rest of the movie bad, and those who thought the first half-hour was dull as dishwater and the rest of it was fun. I liked both parts for different reasons. The first half-hour does, in fact, feel like an entirely different movie. There's an element of absurdity to it, because Goldmann takes all the stereotypes and amps them up to the nth degree, but Norma's pathos is entirely believable despite the ludicrousness of the situation itself. Then we get to the pastor and the kids, and while the plot here changes gears entirely, I thought the quality of the acting stayed level. What does change is that the absurdity sticks out like a sore thumb, rather than achieving the same delicate balance it did in the first part. Thus, while the entire movie is a comedy-horror hybrid, the comedy part feels a lot more natural in the first bit, and like it's trying way too hard in the last. I was more than willing to forgive it, because there's a lot of darned good acting in this flick, given the budget they must have had; in the world of modern no-budget horror, a lot of aspects of this film put it right up there with Deadbirds and Shallow Ground, two of my favorites of recent years. No, it's not without its pitfalls, but so much about this movie speaks of a guy who really gets both comic-book adaptations and horror films that I found it absolutely impossible not to like, bad country music and all. See this one. *** ½

"Trailer Park etc.." is a not bad time-waster but the central idea for the movie is a variation of "2000 Maniacs" Only this time instead of a small Southern town massacred by the Yankees during the Civil War that reappears every hundred years to take revenge and eat some Yankees, this time it's a Trailer Park where a massacre happened in 1981 that reappears and the inhabitants eat anyone they can sink their teeth into.

This time the unlucky victims are a van load of foul-talking teens and a counselor heading for Jesus Camp-too bad they never made it because if anyone needed Jesus Camp....Hmmmm..let's see... they all use the f-bomb, one girl is a goth, one kid likes looking at nudie pictures and there's a couple who have sex at the drop of a condom. Even the counselor has problems and he is always making the sign of the cross when he has a wicked thought-needless to say he makes the sign of the cross a lot.

The movie is gruesome and gory-one poor guy has his chest skinned to make jerky-then he is lowered into a giant fry-o-later alive and becomes barbeque. One of the killings was new for me-a girl rips open a guys back with her feet.

So, if you like movies with floozies, rednecks, cannibals and ghosts and lots of blood and gore then make a visit to this trailer park.

Film starts off with two rednecks reviewing HG Lewis Two Thousand Maniacs, which this movie is basically based off of. We never see these guys again for that matter. Naomi is a beautiful woman living in a trailer park full off ugly, sterotypical trailer park trash. She is meeting a boy for a dance but three men show up and harrass her and kill her boyfriend by accident. She then makes an epic speech, runs off, and runs into Trace Adkins. He's either the devil or god, who knows. He gives her a gun and she goes up to the trailer park and kills everyone and then blows up the park. The credits roll with a bunch of newspaper articles of missing people, ala 2001 Maniacs (the remake to the original). We meet a group of troubled teens and then they got trapped in a rain storm! They hit a truck in the middle of the road and end up in the trailer park that Naomi lives in. The movie is slow paced but soon begins to pick up. The monsters looked good, the gore was good, and the music was also pretty damn good. The ending was weak as the goth girl makes the same speech Naomi did after he boyfriend was killed and they just walk off. A driver picks her up and takes her to a truck stop. Why not a hospital, I do not know. They pan on a shot of Trace Adkins smiling as they drive off and the burned down trailer park.

Overall, this is a great film thanks to the good looking monsters and gore. The first half is not bad but nothing happens.

another zombie movie, how shocking. Well i did enjoy it. it's like ghost zombies. they come out when you go to the park and then vanish at dawn. It's worth seeing if you like zombie movies.

Good price for this slasher type movie, i really liked this movie it was a good old scary movie 5+++++

This is probably the best 'B' horror move in years, at least since Army of Darkness. It has great, memorable characters, great special effects, some very funny moments, and some good scares. I can't recall any movie that blended horror and comedy so well. If you love funny and you love scary, this is a movie that belongs in your collection.