Bad Meat (2012/MVD DVD)/Earth’s Final Hours (2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/G-String Horror (2012/Apprehensive DVD)/Iron Doors (2012)/Repligator (2012/MVD DVDs)/Tormented 3D (2011/Well Go USA Blu-ray 3D w/Blu-ray 2D)

 

3D Picture: B-     2D Picture: C/B-/C/C/C/C+     Sound: C/B-/C/C/C/B-     Extras: D/D/D/D/C-/C-     Main Programs: D/C-/D/D/D/C-

 

 

Here are more Horror releases that show the low end of the genre…

 

 

Lulu Jarmen’s Bad Meat (2012) combines the usual horror, slasher, torture porn formula with a Hunger Games/Battle Royale

rip-off about disposable youth being sent off to what might seem like a boot camp but leans more towards something akin to an extermination/terror camp.  However, it is so badly done and so sloppy that the title should refer to the condition of the rancid screenplay that is self-amused, deals with things it only thinks and knows it is dealing with and is just a total mess.

 

Mark Pellegrino (the overrated Supernatural), Elisabeth Harnois (CSI) and even a brief Dave Franco (the 21 Jump Street revival) turn up, but this total waste of time is embarrassingly bad and is enough to make big game hunters vegetarians.  A trailer is the only extras and it is lame too.

 

 

W. D. Hogan’s Earth’s Final Hours (2011) would seem a step up, being a TV Movie about natural catastrophe, but not by much as the coming “radiation storm” starts to have a mind of its own, people start getting zapped to death (beams through their bodies) and some much worse is on the way… like this telefilm.  We get another Supernatural alumni in Julie Maxwell, but the one name star here is Bruce Davidson (Willard, et al) and even he cannot make this silly mess more interesting.

 

Sadly, this had some potential, but it is slap happy with its lame digital visual effects and even with some money to play with, is empty of new ideas resulting in this one going nowhere.  Be awake and not operating heavy equipment when viewing.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

Charles Webb’s G-String Horror (2012) is a long 72 minutes and is part of another lame, sad, pathetic trend in the Horror genre: add sex, nudity and XXX porn explicitly when you have no ideas and when you are trying to be funny and/or “realistic” making this an amazing mess that one never believes as a Horror film is being shot in a century-old San Francisco movie house built by Sid Grauman of Grauman’s Chinese Theater fame, but this one is haunted and so, everyone might just die making their film.  Could it be that the script is so bad, the building was never haunted and suddenly it is?

 

Another sloppy mess, only the makers have any idea what they think they are showing, because this is just laughably bad, with any laughs being incidental as this is never truly funny or anything else worth your time.  Four weak, sloppy featurettes are the only extras.

 

 

Stephen Mandel’s Iron Doors (2012) is the latest stuck-in-a story, this one with a guy who needs to open a bank vault to escape, but to where?  How did he get there?  Should we care?  It gets dumber when he turns out to be inexplicably not alone and the overacting of the “pain” of being trapped has been done better before and oh, the character is a banker.  There is no social statement here either, especially with the goofy ending.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

Bret McCormick’s Repligator (2012) is a silly creature feature too silly for its own good, co-starring Gunnar Hansen and wants to combine bad 1980s science fiction comedies with nudity and nonsense.  Some might find the retro aspect of this amusing for a second, but it is an all-over-the-place mess and all are just too self-amused throughout.  This also looks cheaper than its cheap intents should allow it too.

 

We actual get an on-camera director interview with some intelligence and Making Of featurette, but they are very weak.

 

 

Finally we have Takashi Shimizu’s Tormented 3D (2011), a poor spin-off sequel of sorts to the overrated Shock Labyrinth 3D feature we reviewed on Blu-ray 3D at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11599/Shock+Labyrinth+3D+(2009/Well+Go

 

Shimizu had directed the original Grudge and that included a really overrated cycle of Japanese horror that included the U.S. remake, The Ring and The Eye, most of which you’ll find reviewed elsewhere on this site.  At this point, all is so repetitious, barely suspenseful and not chilling that it plays like an installment of Scary Movie, even having one expecting any member of the Wayans Family to join the unknown Japanese cast.

 

The antagonists go to a 3D movie and get dragged into its world, so that gives the makers an opportunity to do something with that idea and they do not.  Guess they never saw Sherlock, Jr. or anything else inspirational.  So if nothing else, the 3D should be the highlight of this dud and it plays a little better than the 2D version.  However, both have flaws, limits and are sloppy, with some of the 3D unaligned and the 2D looking degraded too often in its own way.

 

Seeing Shock Labyrinth 3D might help some viewers enjoy/understand all this, but for me, it was a blur of stuffed rabbits, people in giant rabbit outfits and actors who looked beyond clueless.  I guess we could say for fans only, but that would be really stretching it.  A trailer is the only extra.

 

 

The 2.35 X 1, 1080p full HD MVC-encoded 3-D – Full Resolution digital High Definition image on Tormented and 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Final are the best performers on the list by default, but they have their share of flaws and certainly no demo moments.  The 2D AVC HD image on Tormented is even worse with more flaws and save some color, might as well have been a DVD.  The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the DVDs are very badly shot, have video noise, are weak digital shoots and are not lensed by professional who know what they are doing.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Tormented is towards the front speakers and has an awkward, limited soundfield throughout as if they mixers were trying for something fancy and supernatural and landed up with everything lopsided, possibly trying to match the problematic 3D.  The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 on Final is just as bad, but its issues are a combination of lack of soundfield and problematic dialogue mixing into the soundfield throughout and it might not be because of the was recorded, but we’ll never know.  The lossy Dolby Digital mixes on the DVDs are simple stereo at best, badly recorded and mixed, plus some audio is so bad (especially location audio badly miked) that it is practically monophonic.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo