Director: Todd Sheets
Year: 1997
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Living in a crime-riddled city, a series of strange incidents and encounters point to a street drug becoming more popular among the population as the result of a demonic plot to overtake the world, forcing a cop and several survivors to band together to stop their plans.
Review:
Overall, this was an intriguing enough shot-on-video epic. One of the better elements present here is the ambitious and rather convoluted storyline that manages to employ a wide variety of factors into a large running time that has a lot going on. The multitude of different storylines present here, from the vagrant members of society falling under the influence of this street drug that results in numerous interactions involving the patrons of the underground strip club, or the deranged preacher trying to use the whole experience to present chaotic performance art pieces under the guise of trying to heal others. This is built up incredibly well showing the various individuals around the city coming together in a vignette-style presentation that allows this one to bring about these different plot-lines all coming together, as well as the seeing the rise of the demonic beings coming to take over the country by working in conjunction with the infected to create a hybrid race of beings that will bring about the end of the world.
This manages to make the highly enjoyable action stand out as the different encounters are brought together with a solid helping of graphic bloodshed and gore. The start of everything coming about due to the wholly enjoyable attack on the strip club patron, which involves him being cut up and carved to pieces in front of a rabid, enthusiastic crowd, gets the point across incredibly well. There's also the series of interactions that show the effects of the drug taking place on the rest of the population, offering up vicious stabbings, corrupted individuals having tentacled beings explode out of their skulls, women shown given birth to deformed, monstrous beings in the middle of a massive orgy, and a stellar sequence where worm-like beings erupt out of a person and slither after a new target that’s later shown to be gorging on his body in an extensive, graphic sequence that give this even more bloodshed to enjoy. Given that this is accomplished with a slew of cheesy, silly-looking monsters and gore effects to help pull off the multitude of demonic creatures and deformities featured here to help sell the low-budget tone quite heavily, there’s a lot to like here.
There are some issues here that hold this back. The main issue with this one is that the ambition in the storyline manages to be quite adept at including too many elements for its own good at times, feeling far too bloated than it should be. The whole storyline setup about Satanic demons offering a drug to this preacher to get his followers drugged up to the point they don’t care about their women being abducted and turned into breeding vessels for hybrid creatures that will overrun the world is a lengthy, complex core idea that requires a lot of moving parts to pull off. The logical sidestory about a race of good figures trying to work together with other humans to start fighting back makes everything tight-knit and coherent, but this also adds in more characters to figure out how to be properly integrated into what’s going on, long before including the random attacks and encounters that go on to showcase how these different sidestories are getting pulled off. It’s to be commended that it tries to accomplish this, especially when it’s constantly offering reminders about the low-budget origins, but it’s enough to hold this one back slightly.
Overview: ****/5
An impressive if somewhat too ambitious shot-on-video effort, this one manages to generate far more to like about it than expected, with the creativity on display overwhelming the few flaws featured. Those with an appreciation for this kind of low-budget genre fare, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like here, while most others should heed caution.
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