Left for Dead

In the past 5 years the independent cinema here in Argentina and throughout South America has become quite accomplished. This is another example of taking an ordinary story and providing a artistic touch. The images are magnificent! And Victoria Maurette is amazing as Clem. She looks like she stepped into the film from a Sergio Leone movie. Wonderful eyes and face. She has amazing intensity and belief. She is a new star I think. The others were good but some like Marianna Seligman were just okay. At times she seemed embarrassing but Victoria overcomes the others and keeps the film a head above.

This film has been playing around Buenos Ares in a bad copy so I would very much like to watch with a good copy. The crew did a good job as well and the visuals, sound music were all A level. I hope they make a sequel to this as more Maurette is very good!

So, I finally got to see Albert Pyun's most recent effort. A strange western about a foreign woman (along with a bunch of local women) hunting down her ex (who happens to have impregnated the daughter of one of them) into a town haunted by a ghost who's sworn revenge over those women.

I was drawn by this film. Firstly, because it's Albert Pyun, and no matter how bizarre the film is, there's always something I find cool in his film. Secondly, the movie was shot in my country, and now checking with IMDb, it has an almost completely local cast.

Pyun abuses of the slow-motion effect in this movie. That and an excess of cutting during the "action" scenes produces annoyance. Other than that, the story was good, and it could have been improved with a better budget (no, I didn't say director). THere're tons of blood, deaths and gore too, which will please fans of horror/slasher movies.

Victoria Maurette, of whom I've noticed in stupid teen flicks, has left me stunned. I didn't know she could actually act, and matter of fact, I didn't even recognise her (again, thanks IMDb). The rest of the actors are OK too, especially the one playing Moebius Lockwood (who looks terrific), but she delivered quite a good performance. Too good actually.

This film should be held in the same light as Pyun's "Omega Doom". It has its resemblances and differences, some more noticeable than others. But they're both unusual, peculiar movies, which depart from standards.

Overall, it's watchable. Not a film to watch again, though. So much for a film which was supposedly the second part of a trilogy started with "Mean Guns", which is a film that I personally have watched at least 20 times, and I'd watch it 20 times more if I had the opportunity.

Albie, get back to that sort of flicks!

I'm still going over the film in my head and I've watched the DVD twice as well. No spoilers as I just wanted to comment on the cast. I thought it was refreshing to see real women in a desperate situation unlike so many horror films which feature nubile bikini wearing females in desperate situations. The cast felt like women struggling to survive in the Mexico frontier in 1890. Hard, half daft, angry and frighteningly ruthless. They quite embodied what it must have been like and they also looked like the type that could believably survive. No cutesy starlet bimbo types, but tough, rugged women who look they live through much abuse.

The feminine anger of betrayal and being degraded was etched into each character almost painfully.

I thought the odd speech patterns worked as it revealed damaged minds and souls.

The film wasn't perfect. The special effects could've been better and the action slowed a bit too much in the middle. Very sad and filled with a great helping of pain and grief. I found it riveting and much more enjoyable on the second watching.

While searching for a deadly bandit that happens to be her husband, a woman joins an all-female posse hunting him down and eventually tracks him to a remote mining town haunted by a vengeful ghost intent on not letting them leave alive.

While this one wasn't too bad, there's not a lot here to really get much enjoyment out of this one. This is mainly due to the fact that there's just not a whole lot of horror elements to go around, as most of the time it's a Western film, as it's set in the 1880s, for instance, and while that makes a nice impression as to the uniqueness of the setting, it never really does a lot with it's horror elements. The ghost has a few bits of screen-time, which is fine as it's to dish out the kills or chases around the town, but the majority of the time is spent with the group spouting off at each other or an incredibly lame drama about the relationship between them all, and it just makes it hard to stay invested in the middle. Also problematic is the fact that it tends to show-off some pretty nifty camera tricks that are just plain pointless and irritating, from the slow-motion shots to the never-ending series of flash-effects used during the sequences. Add in more gunshots for the cause of death than anything despite some decent deaths when it matters, and it's a disappointing effort overall.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.

Not a bad film, unlike other reviews I have seen for it I believe that this film is a perfect example of a B-Film. The story line isn't too deep and the actors are not unbelievably gripping.

This being said the reasons most don't seem to like it are the exact reason it is an okay film, and an excellent example of a b-movie. Like all b-films it can be a mini-cult classic like almost every Bruce Campbell film and a background noise film, entertaining enough to be on in the background and for you to have focus every now and again.

If you want to watch an okay film I would recommend this for the sheer novelty, if you want to insult a b-film I would recommend another one like, erm, I know how many runs you scored last summer.