Truly Dreadful Film

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The music was done with a jackhammer and a chainsaw. I think the chorus was on strike so they used leaf blowers. Turn the sound way down and muddle through. If you miss any dialog you will not be missing anything. Terrible background music.The movie has a decent plot. The actors are attractive and they are able to act well enough. The direction and editing are poopy. There are too many shots that try to be artsy like the hilltop sunset scene from Gone With The Wind. There are a few good scenes from time to time.There are some good plot turns. Not many. You can count them on the fingers that get chewed off along the way. this is not a good Western and not a good Zombie Movie. It also fails as a Musical, big time.This one does not have a "Kill da wabbitt" moment. It bounces here and there in a way that suggests the script blew away in the wind and someone forgot to number the pages so they picked up each page and filmed it and stuck it together.It is not horrible. It is watchable. The actors are good and should have been given a better film to work with. This could have been a grade A film in the right hands with a different director and editor and some OK mood music here and there.

I'm reminded while watching Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill on the sci-fi channel something George A. Romero said recently about certain new horror directors: "They shot Faith Hill's last music video, and they think they're hot s***. Do they know how to handle it? No, they don't. Put 'em at an editing table, and they're clueless." Although Byrum Werner (maybe the coolest name for an exploitation director, I'll admit) probably hasn't done a Faith Hill video, the comparison can still apply. Werner shouldn't be directing anything remotely related to celluloid, from seeing the catastrophe that is 'Bloody Bill', as he tries to compensate for a rote and crappy script with much worse 'style'. Maybe it's a personal thing, but it's a pet peeve for me when a director uses a specific tint for a purpose that is completely ancillary, where it's more about calling attention to itself than serving any meaningful stylistic choice (Spielberg may be the only one who can get away with it). In this case, Werner uses it to the point of total madness, and not good madness: the tint is actually a lot of the time just on the *top part of the frame*, making it a foolish distraction. This goes without saying that the whole color scheme in general, whether applied by Werner himself as DP or in post, is annoying because it makes it obvious that he doesn't trust anything regarding the actual space being used, or maybe using some natural light or shadows to make atmosphere, instead of splashing on this crude red- often in a blurred vision (FOCUS! I screamed more than once). Don't even get me started on the editing in many instances, where random montage and action is cut as if by an epileptic puppy.The story itself is rote anyway: a bunch of teens riding out in the desert get car-jacked (!?) by a black guy who leads them to the ghost town of Sunset Valley, overrun by (usually) running zombies led by Bloody Bill, who has a vendetta against someone done wrong by someone and blah blah blah. Point is, a lot of this, however just totally ludicrous it all sounds (Bloody Bill's a confederate- no Yankees or blacks after all), could just be moot if it was at least a halfway decently acted or technically executed effort. It's not, at all.Watching Death Valley is like getting a checklist for things that could possibly go wrong for a movie and do, over and over again. The music is fourth-rate metal garbage on loan from the boys who've been practicing in the garage next-door; the "performances" are from nobodys (Gregory Bastian goes to lengths to be a bad-ass mutha, but is one of the most ineffectual I've seen in recent memory), this including Bloody Bill's 'actor' who is barely on screen at all; the gore and violence is directed amateurishly, with tomato-sauce blood and eye-liner used for added "effect" during the transformation from living to dead; even the production design, with the sign changing from time to time from 99 to 107 from start to finish is cheesy in an unforgivable way.It works only up to a completely ironic point; make sure you've got the right friends and good booze lying around and it should make for a chummy Saturday night movie. But good lord, don't go into it expecting any semblance of an entertaining B-horror movie. It's drek of the shlockiest order, and I'd have to be paid more than the actors themselves were (if they were that is) to sit through it again.

Basically this whole movie can be summarized in ONE sentence: "Okay, better get going now...why aren't you leaving???????" I see others had the same "WTF's" has I had, so I don't feel so bad about this review: 1.) The whole beginning sequence was laughable, it reminded me of that Simpson's commercial "Canyonero" for their SUV.2.)I just laughed when they had the music playing over the cop's radio talking.3.) What is this supposed to be a very sad commentary on our State Troopers? That first of all, she wouldn't get him to get OUT of his car before showing her badge? And that one on one with absolutely nothing else around you could STILL lose your suspect.4.) They just got Civil War re-enactors to be the extras, right? 5.) Its 28 Days Later in the Old West.6.) The credits went for around an hour, I think. House of 1000 corpses fan much? 7.) If this IS an attempt to comment about slavery and race relations, why did they make the one "carjacker" in the entire desert a coked-up black guy with a gun? 8.) His gun changed a few times, semi, handgun, revolver...9.) Some of the slow motion action scenes were tailor made for Conan's Walker Lever.10.) The people turning into zombies was very reminiscent of the Return of the Living Dead movies, but without the campiness or originality.11.) Ah yes, our new sort of hero: Coked Up Guy!!! 12.) I agree- I think Bloody Bill DOEs look like Mad Dog Tannen (Back to the Future 3), the McDonald's moon-man and William Sadler as the Grim Reaper (Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey).13.) When "Eric" set off the grenade, why did smoke come out of only the top floor window, when it was blown off ground level? 14.) Bloody Bill apparently didn't have to do that much. He spent 95% of his time simply standing there.15.) Gwen sensed something was wrong with the "Eric" in cowboy attire coming towards them, yet she continued to simply stand there, why? 16.) Bloody Bill can tele-transport from place to place- so why didn't he locate himself into the little tiny room they were hold up in? 17.) The end was a total ripoff of the Friday the 13th's, when someone pretended to be Mrs. Voorhees at the end to track the bad guy.Basically I found myself asking everybody Didn't JUST LEAVE!!!

So add badly done zombies, a villain taken from the old "House" movies, and cookie-cutter characters. What do you get??? A flick that makes "House of the Dead" look like an art-house film.... First off, there is very little connection between the opening scene. The acting was, of course, horrible. There was the science chick who kept looking for a logical explanation to why her friends were being eaten. There was the redneck. The pretty girl who lives just long enough (but no nudity to make it worthwhile). It looks like the budget was so low, they filmed it during one afternoon. Finally, there is a hybrid scene that combines elements from Scarface and Silence of the Lambs. Unfortunately it was sewn together with a safety pin. A high school film club would be ashamed of this dog.