Ruptured Review: Dead & Rotting

Country of origin- U.S.A
Year of release- 2002
Director- David P. Barton
Stars- Stephen O'Mahoney, Tom Hoover, Debbie Rochon
   

It’s not often that my shitty film spidey senses begin to tingle after just four seconds, but this was one of those rare occasions. Because as the first production credits began roll I noticed the dreaded ‘Full Moon Productions’ logo and began to break into a cold sweat. As I’m sure most of you know Full Moon is very hit and miss to say the least, although they have created some great films such as the classic Puppet Master, they have also been responsible for making such garbage as Killjoy and Evil Bong 2. If you couple this with the fact this film was made in what I refer to as the ‘Dark Age’ of horror (1995 – 2004) a period of time that most horror fans would like to forget, you have the potential for this film to be a heap of stinking shit.  

The films plot revolves around three beer swilling morons who cause the death of an elderly witch’s cat, who also just happens to be her son. The witch swears revenge on the three men and creates a potion that makes her appear young and beautiful in order to seduce them. After sleeping with all three of the men in what is a rather ugly scene, she gives birth (almost immediately) to some sludge. The witch then places this sludge and the skeleton of a baby in a pumpkin and plants it in the woods outside her home. Soon after this three hideous mutated ghouls rise from the ground to act as body guards for the witch. She then goes about kidnapping the men one-by-one and talking them to her basement to exact her revenge on them in a rather slow and gruesome way.

The one good thing this film has to offer is the bizarre levels of complexity that the witches plan for revenge requires. Throughout the film the witch repeatedly shows that her powers could easily be used to capture the men with almost no problems, but instead of taking the easy solution she just pisses about for 40 minuets by raising rubbery monsters. This leads me on to the numerous problems with this film. First of all I would just like to give my congratulations to the team who was in charge of lighting and cinematography on this film. They managed to lower the bar to such an extent the only way we will ever see it again is by mining. There were whole scenes of this film that I couldn’t make out what the hell was going on because of the lack of lighting and amateurish cinematography. At times I didn’t know if they were in a house or a mineshaft. If you combine this with the poor acting, stupid dialogue, annoying characters and complete lack of either gore or atmosphere you get one of the most contrived and irritating films I have seen in a while. If you ever feel compelled to watch this one, don’t, this one gets 3/10 from me.