It's one thing to be the sort of crappy filmmakers who can't come up with enough story to fill up a feature length project so they just kill time with a bunch of pointless nonsense. It's another thing to be the sort of crappy filmmakers who can't come up with enough story to fill up a feature length project so they just kill time with a bunch of pointless nonsense
and then have the balls to acknowledge to the audience that's exactly what they did. If you admire that sort of proud defiance, maybe you could get into The Violent Kind. I prefer that when filmmakers suck and they know they suck, they should at least have the humility to try and cover it up.
And before I get into the actual movie, let me clear something up. If you take a look at the DVD cover for this thing or the other promotional imagery, you may be fooled into thinking this is some sort of "Sons of Anarchy" knockoff with more graphic violence and actual nudity. Well, there is nudity. The violence, however, is honestly a bit tamer and less well done than you'll see on that FX show about biker Hamlet. Fundamentally, though, The Violent Kind isn't a biker flick at all. It's a low budget, sci-fi, end of the world horror film with just a hint of Lovecraft that uses bikers instead of teenagers as the victims de jour. The advertising for this name drops "Halloween" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", but it bears as much resemblance to those movies as Arnold Schwarzenegger does to Laurence Olivier. Having watched it, I fully understand why they felt it necessary to try and deceive people as to the nature of this motion picture. I would have preferred if they had just taken the footage and chucked it in the trash.
The plot her is kind of insulting, so I'll leave that for last. What's best about The Violent Kind is the greasy nakedness of Tiffany Shepis and that Taylor Cole and Christian Prousalis, while remaining clothed, are both hot as hell and talented actresses. Granted, it's hard to judge given the material they have to work with, but they give the best performances in this thing by far. What's good here is Bret Roberts, who would have been great in an actual biker flick full of boobs, bullets and blood. Stuck in this exercise in genre cross-dressing, he really only highlights how little everything else works. What's okay in this mess is Cory Knauf as the hero and Joe Egender as the main villain. Every so often they give you a hint they might excel at these sort of roles, but Knauf can't rise above the sullen moroseness of his character and Egender is trapped within the forced and phony extremes of his.
As for the bad? The Violent Kind looks cheap. Competent, but cheap. The most elaborate special effect in the whole shebang is a girl clinging to the ceiling, which is something most ambitious high school filmmakers could pull off nowadays. The make up effects barely pass muster and the camera work largely defines "no frills" in both execution and imagination. The dialog starts out banal and never gets any better. And as for the plot oh, mercy me.
Here's what you need to know about the plot. There's a long party scene at the beginning and a long torture scene at the end that are entirely superfluous and in between there's a fistfight that, hand on the Bible, is one of the dumbest scenes I've ever witnessed. Horror movie characters are renowned for doing idiotic stuff, but decapitated turkeys aren't as stupid as the two people here who decide to beat the snot out of each other in the middle of a supernatural crisis. The villains' plan to destroy the world is completely bizarre, but not in a "blow your mind" way. This kind of bizarre is more in the "the people who made this don't know what the hell they're doing" way. And to the extent there's any sort of subplot of personal conflict that plays out against the backdrop of the end of the world, it's manifested solely through the characters spouting expository sentences at each other.
And if you want to know, The Violent Kind is about 3 bikers and 3 girls at a house in the woods who are set upon by aliens that are inhabiting the bodies of people who went missing in the 1950s. Why? Because the aliens have some time to waste before destroying humanity and decided that pretending to be a rockabilly tribute band at the end of a month long meth bender sounded like a great idea.
So, to recap, The Violent Kind is being falsely marketed and it stinks. Even if Taylor Cole and Christina Prousalis had gotten naked, it still wouldn't have been worth watching. If they got naked and made out for 5 minutes? Eh, maybe.
And before I get into the actual movie, let me clear something up. If you take a look at the DVD cover for this thing or the other promotional imagery, you may be fooled into thinking this is some sort of "Sons of Anarchy" knockoff with more graphic violence and actual nudity. Well, there is nudity. The violence, however, is honestly a bit tamer and less well done than you'll see on that FX show about biker Hamlet. Fundamentally, though, The Violent Kind isn't a biker flick at all. It's a low budget, sci-fi, end of the world horror film with just a hint of Lovecraft that uses bikers instead of teenagers as the victims de jour. The advertising for this name drops "Halloween" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", but it bears as much resemblance to those movies as Arnold Schwarzenegger does to Laurence Olivier. Having watched it, I fully understand why they felt it necessary to try and deceive people as to the nature of this motion picture. I would have preferred if they had just taken the footage and chucked it in the trash.
The plot her is kind of insulting, so I'll leave that for last. What's best about The Violent Kind is the greasy nakedness of Tiffany Shepis and that Taylor Cole and Christian Prousalis, while remaining clothed, are both hot as hell and talented actresses. Granted, it's hard to judge given the material they have to work with, but they give the best performances in this thing by far. What's good here is Bret Roberts, who would have been great in an actual biker flick full of boobs, bullets and blood. Stuck in this exercise in genre cross-dressing, he really only highlights how little everything else works. What's okay in this mess is Cory Knauf as the hero and Joe Egender as the main villain. Every so often they give you a hint they might excel at these sort of roles, but Knauf can't rise above the sullen moroseness of his character and Egender is trapped within the forced and phony extremes of his.
As for the bad? The Violent Kind looks cheap. Competent, but cheap. The most elaborate special effect in the whole shebang is a girl clinging to the ceiling, which is something most ambitious high school filmmakers could pull off nowadays. The make up effects barely pass muster and the camera work largely defines "no frills" in both execution and imagination. The dialog starts out banal and never gets any better. And as for the plot oh, mercy me.
Here's what you need to know about the plot. There's a long party scene at the beginning and a long torture scene at the end that are entirely superfluous and in between there's a fistfight that, hand on the Bible, is one of the dumbest scenes I've ever witnessed. Horror movie characters are renowned for doing idiotic stuff, but decapitated turkeys aren't as stupid as the two people here who decide to beat the snot out of each other in the middle of a supernatural crisis. The villains' plan to destroy the world is completely bizarre, but not in a "blow your mind" way. This kind of bizarre is more in the "the people who made this don't know what the hell they're doing" way. And to the extent there's any sort of subplot of personal conflict that plays out against the backdrop of the end of the world, it's manifested solely through the characters spouting expository sentences at each other.
And if you want to know, The Violent Kind is about 3 bikers and 3 girls at a house in the woods who are set upon by aliens that are inhabiting the bodies of people who went missing in the 1950s. Why? Because the aliens have some time to waste before destroying humanity and decided that pretending to be a rockabilly tribute band at the end of a month long meth bender sounded like a great idea.
So, to recap, The Violent Kind is being falsely marketed and it stinks. Even if Taylor Cole and Christina Prousalis had gotten naked, it still wouldn't have been worth watching. If they got naked and made out for 5 minutes? Eh, maybe.