100 BLOODY ACRES (review)

Review by Tony Pacitti

When three attractive twentysomethings breakdown in the country during the opening act of a movie one can assume things aren’t going to go well for them.

While it’s hardly the Australian Chainsaw Massacre, horror-comedy 100 Bloody Acres is certainly a would-be death trap for these three hapless victims.

For audiences it’s a mildly amusing 80 minutes of gory slapstick that could have benefited from more blood and guts.

The Morgan brothers, Reg and Lindsay, are small businessmen behind a wonderful new fertilizer that has local farmers buzzing.

The key ingredients are blood and bone, not from road kill like they say, but from the six missing victims of a car crash that has left the community stumped.

Six bodies will only last so long, and with demand on the rise, sadsack Reg takes it upon himself to bring home a fresh crash victim and three unlucky hitchhikers.

There there’s no Jason or Leatherface here to contend with. Lindsay comes close as he’s kind of a big dude and doesn’t seem to have any morals to speak of, but real both he and Reg are a couple of dopes who unlike their masked peers have more human weaknesses for victims to try to exploit. This might be the most clever thing the movie does; it twists the tired idea of homicidal, back country yokels by trying to make the Morgans actual characters as opposed to the typically depraved, knife wielding hick-mutants these kinds of pictures like to throw at us.

They’re just as concerned about their radio ad not getting any air time or with making a big delivery as they are with what to do about the three people they have gagged in their barn.
  
It’s those people gagged in the barn, however, that tend to pull the brakes on the fun. A love triangle between an asshole, a dude who spends most of the movie with duct tape over his mouth, and his cheating girlfriend leaves a lot to be desired in terms of compelling drama. This could be easily remedied by the fact that they could all be murdered for our sick enjoyment at any moment but they never are. While their survival results in a couple of good gross out gags and a fun acid trip at an abandoned theme park, their time arguing over relationship woes could have been better spent making some of that special fertilizer.

This is a comedy after all, where unlike a straight horror flick, the gore is here for our amusement and not to churn our stomachs.

100 Bloody Acres sets the tone for it’s tongue-in-cheek murderfest well enough, and ends with a strong third act when Linsday becomes completely unhinged and Reg starts to come into his own, but along the way it loses steam when it focuses too much on its less than interesting victims.

Shaun of the Dead worked because the horror and the human elements are both so well executed.

Death Proof works because it executed it’s annoying first batch psycho-fodder.

In doing neither, 100 Bloody Acres lacks the punch it needs to make it stand out.