Director:
Alex Pucci
Studio/Production Company:
ScreamKings
Genre:
Horror
Length:
Feature
Awards Won:
2009 Seattle True Independent Film Festival - Highest Body Count
Website:
http://frathousemassacre.com
Score:
2/5
I genuinely had high hopes for “Frat House Massacre” for one reason: the film is set in 1979 which, for some reason, is one of my favorite years, perhaps because, in my eyes, for my generation, it was a pinnacle of bad taste, low culture, a hodgepodge of the running-on-fumes dregs of the hippie era being bulldozed by the twin titans, the yin and yang dynamic of punk rock and disco. From a production point of view, Alex Pucci’s film does not disappoint; there is period detail to spare and, impressively, quite a fine selection of pop music from the era.
1979 was a year after John Carpenter’s high-end grindhouse film “Halloween” ushered in a seemingly endless stream of copycat slasher films about young people paying the price for being young, hedonistic and/or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was also just a few years after John Badham’s critique of the disco culture, “Saturday Night Fever”, was largely misinterpreted as a celebration of it and disco fever took off, affecting almost every element of pop culture. Is it any wonder that one of my all time favorite slasher films is 1980’s “Prom Night” which married both cultural forces, disco and slasher films, into a gem of a B-movie?
So why didn’t I love “Frat House Massacre”? As is so often the case in the films I watch, comes down to the story, which, to be completely honest, in this case, I could barely follow, suspend disbelief, get involved in or care much about. Yes, I picked up that there are teenage twin brothers who are separated by a tragedy and one of them is eventually, possibly supernaturally motivated by revenge. Yes, I get that there is a frat house ruled by a crazed brother Mark, who, for some reason that is not entirely clear, who seems to enjoys little more than creatively hazing and killing pledges who he disapproves of. Naturally the murderous frat boy plot and the revenge plot intersect and there is, that’s right, a frat house massacre, conveniently on the night of their big disco party.
Let’s just call a spade a spade here because the great failure of “Frat House Massacre” is that, with it’s fine Super 16mm cinematography, attractive cast, ridiculously handsome production design and, of course, great music, the film is little more than excuse to roll out misanthropic, misogynistic, homoerotic, sadistic scene after scene of gore, sex and sneering attitude and it could have, should have been a much better film.
Now, the complete truth is, in a movie, I have no problem with misanthropy, misogyny, homoeroticism, sadism, gore, sex and sneering attitude but without a half decent, reasonably structured narrative to hold it all together it feels pointless, meaningless and, in the case of “Frat House Massacre”, ultimately the worst criticism that I have of it is that is was simply boring.
Alex Pucci
Studio/Production Company:
ScreamKings
Genre:
Horror
Length:
Feature
Awards Won:
2009 Seattle True Independent Film Festival - Highest Body Count
Website:
http://frathousemassacre.com
Score:
2/5
I genuinely had high hopes for “Frat House Massacre” for one reason: the film is set in 1979 which, for some reason, is one of my favorite years, perhaps because, in my eyes, for my generation, it was a pinnacle of bad taste, low culture, a hodgepodge of the running-on-fumes dregs of the hippie era being bulldozed by the twin titans, the yin and yang dynamic of punk rock and disco. From a production point of view, Alex Pucci’s film does not disappoint; there is period detail to spare and, impressively, quite a fine selection of pop music from the era.
1979 was a year after John Carpenter’s high-end grindhouse film “Halloween” ushered in a seemingly endless stream of copycat slasher films about young people paying the price for being young, hedonistic and/or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was also just a few years after John Badham’s critique of the disco culture, “Saturday Night Fever”, was largely misinterpreted as a celebration of it and disco fever took off, affecting almost every element of pop culture. Is it any wonder that one of my all time favorite slasher films is 1980’s “Prom Night” which married both cultural forces, disco and slasher films, into a gem of a B-movie?
So why didn’t I love “Frat House Massacre”? As is so often the case in the films I watch, comes down to the story, which, to be completely honest, in this case, I could barely follow, suspend disbelief, get involved in or care much about. Yes, I picked up that there are teenage twin brothers who are separated by a tragedy and one of them is eventually, possibly supernaturally motivated by revenge. Yes, I get that there is a frat house ruled by a crazed brother Mark, who, for some reason that is not entirely clear, who seems to enjoys little more than creatively hazing and killing pledges who he disapproves of. Naturally the murderous frat boy plot and the revenge plot intersect and there is, that’s right, a frat house massacre, conveniently on the night of their big disco party.
Let’s just call a spade a spade here because the great failure of “Frat House Massacre” is that, with it’s fine Super 16mm cinematography, attractive cast, ridiculously handsome production design and, of course, great music, the film is little more than excuse to roll out misanthropic, misogynistic, homoerotic, sadistic scene after scene of gore, sex and sneering attitude and it could have, should have been a much better film.
Now, the complete truth is, in a movie, I have no problem with misanthropy, misogyny, homoeroticism, sadism, gore, sex and sneering attitude but without a half decent, reasonably structured narrative to hold it all together it feels pointless, meaningless and, in the case of “Frat House Massacre”, ultimately the worst criticism that I have of it is that is was simply boring.
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