CABIN FEVER (2001)

After the mind numbing stupidity that was "Children of the Living Dead" (See last review) I couldn't leave my weekend of horror limited to just that that so I threw on "Cabin Fever" to try and redeem proceedings.

  I don't rate this as Roth's best work as director but I have to say its quite enjoyable, and keeps you interested enough whilst still being simple enough you can watch it while your having a chat with friends or whatever.

The plot revolves around the age old cliché of the group of teenagers going out into the woods to party, they rent a cabin and the usual assortment of teenage hijinx ensures. whilst partying and the usual stuff one of the teens accidently shoots a local who is infected with a strange disease that is rotting his flesh away. The infected local tries to get help from the teenagers but understandably they don't want anything to do with him. Like any good disease it is highly contagious, and the carrier is highly persistent in his endeavors to get back at the teenagers. The teenagers have to stick together and find a way out of the forest without falling prey to the deadly disease which starts to spread. As you can imagine this paves the way for some very decent levels of gore, which I have to say was rather well done, especially considering Mr. Roth shot this film as an independent and it was his first feature length film.

Over all this is a pretty cool film, the acting (from the unkown cast) was as good as it needed to be for this kind of film and the gore effects were meaty and convincing enough to keep most gore hounds happy. and paved the way for Eli Roth to become a household name not only in gore films but mainstream cinema as well after this independently produced film was piced up by NewLine and took in box office takings of around $35 million worldwide (from a $3.5m budget). While this is no classic in my opinion its definitely a pretty solid and enjoyable flick!

For other Eli Roth Films see:

Hostel
Green Inferno
Clown

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HOSTEL (2005)

This is an interesting one, I'd seen this a when it first came out and to be honest I didn't think that much of it, but that was years ago, and I'd already started to get sick of the newer style of horror that was coming out.

After having a few beers at a friends house he chucked the movie back on and I thought "Why not give it another shot?" and I'm glad I did.

Hostel was important for a few reasons, it is credited as starting off the "torture porn" genre of horror films its not to say that its particularly more extreme than many of the other films reviewed here that came before it, but it did drag the more extreme end of horror out into the mainstream where as before (from my memories) this level of gore or violence was more at the underground subculture level of horror. This I guess was due to two things the skill that the then newcomer to the horror genre Eli Roth brought to the table, and the muscle that Quentin Tarantino's production company would be able to throw behind it.

The plot itself is pretty well thought out and well written as well..... revolving around a group of university students that take a back packing holiday in Eastern Block Europe (Amsterdam, Slovakia, Romania etc...) partying, drinking and carrying on like most young backpackers would do. During their travels they meet other like minded young adults and after a night of partying one of them (Oli) goes missing and while the other stick around to see if they can figure out what happened to their friend they too are drugged and abducted into a strange organized crime ring where wealthy business men pay large sums of money to torture and kill people for little more than sport.

What follows is a litany on torture and mutilation the likes of which all but the hardcore horror fans would have yet to have been exposed to. The gore is graphic and sadistic which will keep almost any gore fiend happy, but  more importantly it is a well written and rather watchable film which holds belief for the viewer (unless of course gore upsets you) but I'd recommend it to any seasoned fan of horror or those not easily offended.

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CLOWN (2014)

I hadn't heard anything about this film but bought it on a pure punt. Upon settling in for the night and loading this one up in the DVD player I noticed it was directed by Eli Roth ... from the start you could tell this was going to be a great ride.


The plot centres in on a family who are holding a birthday party for their son (who appears to be about 6-8 years old) and the clown they hired doesn't show up. By some bizzare co-incidence the father, A real estate agent named Kent, finds a clown suit in a house he has up for sale and decides to fill in for the clown. Kent does an awesome job (considering he's never been a clown before) and the party is a hit with the kids......... only problem is he can't get the clown suit off.

Kent can feel himself starting to change and does some research on the suit and tracks down its former owner who informs him it was worn by an old demon the "Cloyne" ... from which the idea of a clown is supposed to have originated. Kent can feel the hunger inside of him growing into bloodlust he cannot control and starts to crave the flesh of children as per the old owner of the suit

That's about as far as I'll go with the plot for fear of ruining it but as with anything Eli Roth is involved in its a gripping and entertaining ride, and the horror is realistically grim. Roth takes what is a supernatural theme and makes it quite believeable for the duration of the film which I think is the hallmark of a master of the genre

I thought it was  a great film and would fully recommend it to anyone ,,, except those who have a fear of clowns, it could traumatise them for life!

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THE GREEN INFERNO (2015)

I didn't know what to make of this at first as I'd heard it was going to be a remake of the legendary "Cannibal Holocaust" from 1980. The film started off with a completely different premise so after the first half an hour I'd written this off to misinformation and had mentally adjusted myself to the fact that it was infact a different movie... besides what would they have to gain by recreating one of the filthiest, goriest, most disturbing movies ever?

The story starts on campus where a bunch of freshman students get railroaded by campus shitbag,  Alejrando into going to South America to save some forests. `After some substantial complications the mission eventually succeeds and the group head out of the forest only to have the plane come crashing down not that far away in cannibal country........

A lucky few of the groups die early in the plane crash leaving the rest of the group to be systematically persued, captured and consumed by the locals

With modern video capture techniques the gore and violence is so confronting I'm actually glad this wasn't a remake of "Cannibal Holocaust" .... definition aside, the violence is not in the same league as "Cannibal Holocaust" but the impact it has puts it right up there. It would still consider this extreme gore but had it descended into the same levels of filth as "Cannibal..." I think I would have lost my lunch... especially as I wasn't feeling the best when I put the movie on

As a standalone movie it holds up very well, plot makes sense and the acting is convincing there's nothing really too wrong with this, infact its pretty good! One thing I liked was the way director Eli Roth made the natives seem rather friendly and down to earth it was really hard to hate them (even as they salted the freshly dismembered corpses of the students) they came across as very human which again like "Cannibal..." raised some interesting moral issues in my head

Definatley worth a viewing!

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