Father’s Day

Title: Father’s Day
Year: 2011
Directors: Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matt Kennedy, Steven Kostanski & Conor Sweeney
Genre: Horror, Action, Comedy
Stars: Adam Brooks, Matt Kennedy, Steven Kostanski, Conor Sweeney, Amy Groening & Lloyd Kaufman
Rating:
Review by: Allan

“Before Tarantino re-introduced the world to Grindhouse there was Troma, a studio that puts the low into low budget cinema!”

A hideous murderous madman called Chris Fuchman (yes, you read that correctly) is terrorising the people of Tromaville by brutally murdering fathers of the less than fair city. The only hope comes in the unusual form of Twink and Ahab both seeking revenge for the death of their dear dads. Joining them in the battle against evil is Father John Sullivan – a man whose faith is really put to the test. What follows is a gruesome, grizzly, tongue in cheek action movie that quite literally takes our trio of heroes to hell.

There was a time when The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke’em High and Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. were a high point in low brow schlock entertainment. The studio that Toxie built never had delusions of multi-million dollar box office takings and revelled in the cheapness of everything they put on screen. Many, many years have passed and based on Father’s Day things haven’t changed – if anything they’ve gotten worse, in sort of a so bad its good way, kinda…

This film puts Planet Terror and Machete in its place. The violence and depravity contained in those two mainstream movies pales in comparison to the awful offal based visuals contained within this $10,000 sick flick. Playing like a VHS recording of a late night movie on cable TV during the 1980s from the opening nauseating scene it is evident it is not a film for the squeamish.

As the acting, directing, editing, synthesized score and writing are all spoofing the revenge movie genre, by being as dreadful as they are its hard to assess whether they’re actually dreadful or just proof that it takes great skill to make 90 minutes of a worn out videotape so shoddily entertaining. The problem is the comedy is nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is and the one-joke movie runs of steam long before the final hell based act.

By being Troma it practically excuses itself from attack, it is a studio that made Tromeo and Juliet which used the same car stunt from a half dozen of their other movies. They are critically bullet proof and therefore a 2 star rating is as good as they probably want or expect. However the talent on show here may go into bigger and more mainstream things….but don’t count on it.

In conclusion, no amount of gratuitous nudity, extreme bloodletting or hacked off human organs can disguise the fact that this is a terrible film but fans of Troma will be going in with their depraved eyes expecting a real gross out flick which they’ll get and then some.