Splatter: Architects of Fear (1986)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The pseudo documentary purports to be about the making of a low-budget post-nuke sci-fi/action opus with a tribe of fierce Amazon women battling rot-faced mutants, but it's actually nothing more than a shameless excuse to showcase several elaborate gore set pieces, with a generous sprinkling of tasty gratuitous female nudity tossed in for trashy good measure. Said gore includes a machete in the head, an icepick piercing an eye, a juicy throat slicing, a gruesome dismemberment, and, best of all, an exploding head that's caused by strenuous sex (don't ask). Director Peter Rowe maintains a zippy pace and a lighthearted tone throughout. The staging and shooting of all the gore gags are depicted in fascinatingly meticulous detail. Alas, Paul James Sanders as bumbling comic relief dimwit Fang proves to be more annoying than amusing, but fortunately he ultimately receives a suitably nasty comeuppance at the end. Allan Kane's spirited and syncopated synthesizer score keeps things bouncing along. Chris Britton's plummy narration rattles off a lot of pretentious film school level howlers. A real goofy hoot.

Here is a film that claims to have "...the best horror effects in a decade." When in fact, the effects are horrendous. Right off the bat, they introduce the fakumentary with an eyeball being stabbed. Its just ridiculously dumb. Not only is it obviously fake, but just dumb. Of course all effects are fake, but try at the very least to make them look realistic and not high school level. One effect is of a zombie, but the funny part of the whole effect, is that there is no zombie makeup, just a rubber mask like ones sold at Halloween. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, "are they serious, or is this a joke?" This is something very cheesy to watch, but is watchable for a laugh. Video renters were gullible back in the eighties.

Fool am I for giving in to heedless grab-and-go impulses at the video rental shop...I should have known what was in store for me when the checkout girl at the counter held up the video box and yelled "Hey Jim!", at which point her co-worker spun around. They both let out a knowing little snicker, and today I can join them in that snicker because I fully understand the joke, except that it's not *really* a joke, because jokes are funny. SPLATTER, on the other hand, *IS* very much a joke, though there's nothing at all funny about it. This is a docu-styled look at a bunch of hopeful twenty-nothings at work in the special effects tier of a low-budget barbarian apocalypse film. There's gratuitous nudity and really naff gore to keep things barely watchable, but I still couldn't guiltlessly recommend this garbage to Hitler himself. It's boring and very dated, and infinitely less interesting than most of the "extras" you can see currently in most DVD releases. 3.5/10

Claims to be a documentary of the filming of a sci-fi / horror movie. Doubt the movie was actually made. Only good part worth seeing is the fine looking future babe who pins an alien against a wall, strips, and proceeds to "f*[ < his brains out" until his head literally explodes!! Nice between the legs shot as well.Otherwise the effects are lame. No Savini work here.