Hack Job (2011)

Beautiful, moving film.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

James Basalmo has created a very funny and ridiculous horror spoof anthology. Hack Job is filled with absurd over the top acting from such legends as Loyd Kaufman and Dave Brockie. It seems to defficate on as many genres as it can get its hands on. Managing to make fun of classics ranging from the Mummy to Invansion Of The Body Snatchers. The final segment is a cheesy mixture of possession tale mixed eighties style vendetta genre. The fight scenes are so hilariously absurd that they would make Michael Dudikoff break out in laughter. Hack Job even manages to get its hands on Toxie and Seargeant kabukiman. Having them team up as buddy cops. James Basalmo takes the terms tasteless and bad to a new level and I love him for it. I hope to be watching his films for many years to come.

Making an intentionally bad film is a delicate procedure and an art form, and is successfully executed only with the understanding of what makes a film good or bad. It's a tongue-in-cheek process in which the filmmaker needs to be a little more intuitive than the target audience. The filmmakers behind Hack Job are blissfully unaware of this, resulting in a bad movie that isn't fun and watchable, but rather boring and painful. The film is incoherent in absolutely every way, with ineptitude and naïvety woven throughout it. It isn't scary, and it barely cracks 3 decent jokes throughout. And don't think stars or topless women can save this...neither are depicted flatteringly. So there goes the schlock-film pull. Without these things, the film offers nothing, and to fail so miserably with the bar set so low to begin with is just unfortunate. Coming from someone who loves to sit down and watch a fun, bad movie, my advice is not to waste your time or money on this one.This isn't filmmaking. This is your buddy's 9th grade video project.

Cheerfully eschewing standard conventions of restraint, good taste, and social propriety, writer/director James Balsamo goes for broke by delivering oodles of tasty gratuitous nudity and deliciously cheesy over-the-top excessive gore with a rip-roaring joy and verve that's an absolute wacky riot to behold. The flimsy plot centers on hardcore horror movie geeks James (Balsamo, having a ball in six parts) and Mike (the gloriously manic Michael Shershenovich) getting a script from the devil so they can make their own trashy fright flick consisting of three separate stories (the first centers on Nazis who run afoul of lethal shambling mummies, the second's about an alien who attacks and eats folks at a battle of the bands contest, and the last vignette relates the wild tale of a possessed man who attempts to kill a televangelist). Balsamo certainly covers all the essential entertaining micro-budget sleaze cinema bases: Besides the ample amount of boobs and blood, we've also got a right-on roaring rock soundtrack, a hilariously rude'n'crude sense of jolly lowbrow humor, endearingly primitive (far from) special effects (you can clearly see the wires manipulating the hokey puppet alien in the second segment!), ineptly staged fight scenes, one scene acted out by sock puppets (!), and a happily anarchic anything-goes spirit that recalls vintage Troma fare (not surprisingly, Troma head honcho Lloyd Kaufman appears as himself). Popping up in nifty bits are Dave Brockie, Lynn Lowry (hamming it up as a condescending agent), Debbie Rochon, Oderus Urungus of GWAR (he takes on the alien with an over-sized sword!), and the immortal Keith Crocker of "The Bloody Ape" and "Blitzkreig: Escape from Stalag 69" infamy as his own fine self. The rough cinematography, slapdash editing, ramshackle narrative, and decidedly variable acting all further enhance this honey's considerable grimy charm. Good schlocky fun.