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I think back to when I first viewed classics like Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD or Peter Jackson's BAD TASTE. What times they were. Now here I was expecting the same feeling. This film was mentioned in a few rags as being gory and twisted, and since it was Swedish, you knew it could deliver the goods since most foreign fare usually is more extreme than American stuff. But th end result is decent, but almost too stupid for its own good. It centers around a film company whose franchise horror films are called LOOSE LIMBS (a take off on New Line Cinema perhaps?). The head boss, Sam Campbell (a mix of Sam Raimi & Bruce Campbell maybe?) needs a new editor for the movies since his last one ate a grenade (seen in the opening prologue). So he picks quiet, unassuming Ed. Ed doesn't like his job at first since horror movies are too bloody and violent for him. But as time goes on he becomes obsessed with them, to the point where he hallucinates and then commits murder. Before long he looses touch with reality and becomes the killer just like in the films he had watched.

What this movie has is some inventive effects and lots of blood (but nothing like the two films I mentioned in my opening sentence). And of course the horror movie references are plenty, with lines recited from BLUE VELVET in particular ("Don't you fucking look at me!"). But then the stupid parts outweigh the originality the film tries to maintain. A scene of a gremlin in
a refrigerator is just silly as is the out-of-place music is some scenes. Also when people fire guns, their aim is so laughable, you wonder how serious anyone was taking this when they filmed it. I mean the intent is to spoof horror films, but I don't think this was really to be taken as a comedy (black humor maybe). Still any video box with a picture of a guy getting his head split open, revealing his brain can't be all bad. And APIX does a good job on the film itself, presenting it in a mild letterboxed ratio and in
hi-fi stereo. O.K. for a rental and nothing more.

- DAVE KOSANKE