Thursday, June 25, 2015

Homicycle


Director - Brett Kelly (My Fair Zombie, Spyfall)
Starring - Candice Lidstone (Raiders of the Lost Shark), Peter Whittaker (The Last Outlaw), and Ian Quick (Jurassic Shark)
Release Date - 2014
Genre - Horror/Comedy
Tagline - "He's hell on wheels"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):
     I love a good parody.  I honestly do.  Sadly, a good parody is far and few in between.  Sure, we have a few Scary Movies that are worth a damn but the modern parody is shit with only pop culture getting the parody treatment.  This starts to become tiresome as time goes on with everything that horror fan's does not like getting crammed in to big budget horror flick parodies.  This results in a piss poor film that horror fans does not want see.  Lucky for us we have indie director Brett Kelly who is the man responsible for the zombie parody of My Fair Lady.  This time around I was sent the horror flick Homicycle.  The film looked like a bad ass 80s action flick but when I popped it in I realized that it was a parody of sorts in the horror genre.
     The film follows a mysterious man on a motorcycle who never takes his helmet off.  He first kills a man who is beating a whore with a hammer.  The Homicycle has his sights set on the man's boss, a drug kingpin who is known for plunging the city into darkness and killing cops.  He starts killing the kingpin's henchmen and women one by one making his way through the city using anything and everything he can get his hands on.  As he gets closer to the kingpin, the kingpin receives a visitor.  She is the widow of a late police officer who was killed by him for doing his job.  She warns him that he is on his way but the kingpin scoffs at her words but she is right.  Homicycle is the deceased officer and no weapon on Earth can stop him from serving justice.  
     When I first received Homicycle I knew nothing about the film other than it looked fucking bad ass.  When I first tossed it in I discovered that it was a parody of sorts to a classic slasher that does not get the love that it deserves.  The acting in this one is cheesy as hell and I loved it.  It blends the cliched villains of 80s and 90s action flicks with the campy characters you would find in a Troma flick.  I love this kind of acting.  It makes the film fun and creates characters that you can't help but enjoy.  It takes a great deal of talent and a sense of humor to pull this off intentionally and I applaud the cast for doing just that.  The story for this one is an open parody of the 1985 slasher flick Nail Gun Massacre.  The only difference is that this film feels like an 80s vigilante flick that found it's spot among cult status.  With that being said, the story is stretched very thin and would have worked better as a short story instead of a full length feature.  Finally, the film has some on screen kills but they are cheap.  They are kills one would expect to come from Herschell Gordon Lewis flick made in the late 60s but not one filmed just last year.  They use cheap effects that are just as cliched as the film.  This does not add humor to the film like the acting or story does.  Instead, it robs the fan of the gore they want to see.  This was the film's biggest let down.  Overall. Homicycle is a throwback to films from decades ago.  The film fully embraces the cliches of the time and makes fun with it creating a very enjoyable film.  I recommend this one just remember it is far from perfect.





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