As the theatrical market for high-impact horror
has dried up—supplanted by bloodless, generic PG-13 offerings like Prom
Night—the
Weinstein Company's Dimension Extreme label has become an efficient pipeline
for titles ranging from barely released art horror like Teeth and Diary Of The Dead to straight-to-DVD trash
and treasures, including the queasily effective French thriller Inside. The latest batch of
Dimension releases feature some conspicuously big names behind them, which raises
the question of why they bypassed theaters in the first place.
Maybe the capable Jaws knock-off Rogue never made it to American
screens because of Primeval, a dismal, not-screened-for-critics flop that
probably put the kibosh on 25-foot-killer-crocodile movies. Greg Mclean's
follow-up to the unvarnished, viscerally effective torture-porn entry Wolf
Creek
stays in the Australian outback, but emphasizes beauty over backwater grime. In
fact, Rogue
would make the tourist board happy, were it not for the tourist-chomping croc
that terrorizes a grounded riverboat. Radha Mitchell acquits herself nicely as
the tour-boat driver who tries to lead her passengers to safety, but the film
could use some of Wolf Creek's raw terror. Mclean's predictable series of chompings
and near-chompings aspire to little more than outclassing the likes of Anaconda.
A remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1970 splatter-fest The Wizard Of Gore
doesn't sound promising, but if it had to happen, casting serial weirdoes like
Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif, and Jeffrey Combs seems like a step in the right
direction. Playing "Montag The Magnificent," an underground magician who
brutally eviscerates strippers (all played by Suicide Girls models) onstage,
Glover makes a five-course meal out of every ornate monologue, but the fun
stops there. Much of the film is given over to Kip Pardue's embarrassing turn
as an underground journalist who investigates Glover's murderous exploits, all
while affecting a junior-league '50s gumshoe persona. Director Jeremy Kasten
and writer Zach Chassler needlessly complicate the story by suggesting it might
be a figment of Pardue's twisted imagination, but even when they stick to the
boobs and blood, the disembowelments grow drearily repetitive. DVD is the
perfect place for it: Pull a few scenes for the Glover clip reel, discard the
rest.
Key features: Generous bonus features on both discs,
including filmmaker commentaries, behind-the-scenes mini-docs, and for the
masochistic, outtakes and deleted scenes on Gore.