(2002)
Dir - David Jacobson
Overall: GOOD
Though it fails to provide any proper insight into its famously deranged subject matter, David Jacobson's take on the story of Jeffrey Dahmer casts a coldly restrained and detached spell that works within its own confines. Promoted as Dahmer: The Mind is a Place of its Own, (wisely shortened to just Dahmer), Jacobson struggled to garnish much producer interest in the project which was primarily inspired by Court TV's coverage of the serial killer's trial and his father Lionel's book A Father's Story. Shot on the cheap in merely eighteen days, the director takes a very eerie approach by ignoring proper chronology and keeping Dahmer's most gruesome acts off-screen, (including all references to his cannibalism), yet focusing on an ambiguous aloofness to the murderer that is perfectly encapsulated by Jeremy Renner's performance. Supporting roles by Bruce Davidson as his dad and Artel Great as a fictionalized version of perhaps his final, survived victim Tracy Edwards are also quite strong. The film may not satisfy true crime buffs who are exclusively interested in historical accuracy or the extreme nature of Dahmer's abominations, but for those curious to live in an impenetrable void of one of modern history's worst human beings for ninety-minutes, this delivers such a chilling experience.
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(2006)
Dir - Lloyd Kaufman/Gabriel Friedman
Overall: MEH
For the dumbest Night of the Living Dead parody of all time Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, Lloyd Kaufman and company go really hard in the gross-out department, detrimentally so. It took about six years to be completed with various production problems on set and a crew made up almost entirely of unpaid volunteers. This includes the film's composer Duggie Banas who liters the first act with way too many goddamn musical numbers that are oddly, (and mercifully), abandoned throughout the entire middle of the proceedings. Amongst all other forms of rotten taste, Troma movies are inherently disgusting and this one has more close-ups of diarrhea, projectile vomiting, body parts/appendages getting ripped off, and fake-blood splatter than possibly every other piece of garbage that the production company ever produced. Also, mutant chickens getting hatched out of people's assholes, crotches, stomachs, and tits which is just lovely. It is an outrageous, knowingly offensive, juvenile mayhem-fest from front to back, but there are a couple of funny gags for those that can stomach all of the vile, greasy, nausea-inducing sound effects and visual foulness.
(2008)
Dir - Eric Red
Overall: MEH
Boasting a clever premise and a likeable, intense performance from Famke Janssen, writer/director Eric Red's 100 Feet is otherwise unremarkable at best and embarrassingly dumb at worst. Setting things up with a woman under house arrest at the very abode where she murdered her physically abusive husband, (who has of course stuck around in spectral form), the spooky, dramatic stakes are immediately established. After that though, Red adapts a curious tone that occasionally seems to be taking its subject matter seriously while either laughing at it or daring the audience to laugh at it just as frequently. This could possibly be due to some deleted footage or something since Janssen's protagonist appears terrified and borderline suicidal at her predicament one minute, only to be playful during the next as she tries to rid her home of her deceased ex with pretty hackneyed tactics like throwing his clothes away and rubbing sage around everywhere. The digital effects are so bad that they are legitimately hilarious and
whatever universe this story exists in may have the flimsiest, most
random supernatural logic of all time. There are enough significant plot holes to suggest that this is Red's attempt at something comical, but with its dour undercurrent of spousal abuse and Janssen's character being ostracized by her community, it hardly works consistently as a piece of schlock or anything else for that matter.
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