America's Deadliest Home Video

Director - Jack Perez (Some Guy Who Kills People)
Starring - Danny Bonaduce (Bigfoot), Michael L. Wynhoff, and Mollena Williams (The Wiz)
Release Date - 1993
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Some things weren't meant to be videotaped"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     I typically don't get along with found footage flicks.  Some have impressed me over the years but I can easily count those films on one hand after saying I've watched several dozen.  Most people like the classics like The Blair Witch Project, August Underground, and The Poughkeepsie Tapes but I find no interest in watching them.  When I was in middle school I watched The Blair Witch Project for the first time and loved it.  I revisited it a few years later and was not a fan.  Most of the other found footage films are boring with some of the worst dialogue and characters ever caught on film.  A few weeks back Camp Motion Pictures released the "lost" 1991 found footage film America's Deadliest Home Video.  This early found footage flick oddly stars child star Danny Bonaduce. Alternative Cinema was kind enough to send a review copy of the film my way.  Thanks guys.

     The film follows Doughie (Bonaduce) who has just bought a new camera to record important moments with.  However, he accidentally catches his wife cheating on him and sets out to secure him a little tail.  When that fails he goes on a little adventure where he finds himself at a stone quarry and he witnesses three individuals pushing their car off a cliff.  They catch him recording them and approaches him.  They introduce themselves as the Clint Dryer gang. They kidnap him to record their carnage and force him to play along.  That is until he falls for Clint's woman resulting in friction between Clint and Dougie.  Dougie and the women split with Clint giving chance resulting in a shootout in front of a police force being recorded for reality television.

     I'm pretty tough on found footage films but I have good reason to be.  These films could be something untouchable in the world of horror but they are approached the wrong way.  Some try to make it feel authentic and home video like and give us some of the most boring dialogue ever spewed on film.  Others try to do away from that and give us a film that is very story rich but under sales the fact that we are watching a  horror film that was recorded as it unfolded.  It's hard to find that happy medium for found footage.  I have only seen a few films be able to actually pull off that found footage look.  Sadly, this horrible found footage film was one of the few to actually make it work but did not deliver what they had set forth to give us.  The acting in this one is pretty choppy.  When I first learned that Danny Bonaduce was in the film I was very intrigued by this.  He is an actor one does not associate with horror and after seeing this film I can see why.  He just did not fit the role and made a lot of the scenes he was physically in miss their mark.  With that being said, Michael Wynhoff and Mollena Williams were brilliant.  I really wanted to like the film because of their performance but when you tape dance on shit you are still standing in shit regardless of great the routine is.  The story for this one is pretty weak.  It could have worked out for a found footage film but it falls apart quickly and comes to a slow crawl at times.  There needed to be more going on here other than robbing places at gun point.  It was boring.  Only Tarantino could turn something so plain into an entire scene.  We needed more to it than that.  The story may have sucked but the film did look and feel like a genuine found footage flick with is rare for the sub-genre.  I will definitely give them credit for that.  Finally, those of you looking for gore will not find any here.  In fact, the only thing you will find are gun shot wounds that take place off camera.  There is some blood but that is as far as it goes.  As for the practical effects, there is none.  We get some blood and fake gun fire but that is the extent of it.  Overall, America's Deadliest Home Video is pretty weak for a film aimed at the horror crowd.  Minimal blood, no gore, and zero story makes for a pretty boring watch.  It does a better job than most at looking like a genuine found footage flick but that is the best I can say about it.  Skip this one unless you have a lady boner for Bonaduce.