***SPOILERS***
Death Trap is a film horror film with a difference. It is possessed of a special evil power most films don't have - an evil power to ruin a perfectly good day, suck all the joy out of your heart and make you forget you'd actually been enjoying yourself, or maybe even forget the whole IDEA of joy.
I'd been having a good day when myself and a couple of friends sat down to watch one of the 2 shiny new movies I'd bought. The choice was Lucio Fulci's surreal zombie meltdown "the Beyond" or "Death Trap", Tobe Hoopers follow up to Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Being huge TCM fans we went for Death Trap, after all, Tobe Hoopers second film has to be worth watching right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!
So very very wrong.
Death Trap is basically a cut price, hillbilly, Psycho rip off. At the start we meet a female character, who fleeing from trouble stays at a grotty hotel where the nutcase owner "shockingly" kills her. Except where Norman Bates was fixated on his mother, Judd has a pet crocodile. (and you'll never see the end coming, not in a MILLION YEARS!!!!....oh OK, the croc eats Judd)
Then some more people show up, including the worlds most annoying family, and a mildly amusing Robert Englund as a horny redneck. Most of them die, but not in any remotely interesting ways. Oh, and a pet dog gets eaten by the crocodile, possibly the highpoint of the film (unless you really want to watch the future Freddy doing "the nasty", in which case my advice is - seek professional help!)
The main problem here is the pacing (and the script, and a lot of the acting, and the unoriginality, but hey lets stick to the pacing). The film is desperately slow, and I can't believe it only runs the 87 minutes listed on the box. If so Death Trap must be possessed of another evil power - that same power doctors waiting rooms and tube station platforms have to make minutes seem like hours.
Pretty much everything Hooper did right with TCM, he messes up here. The film is ugly, lacking in real atmosphere, and just so damned slow! The fact that it's mostly filmed on one set, and in overlong takes often makes it feel more like a film of a really bad play than an actual movie, complete with horribly overwrought acting like the cast are playing to the folks at the back of the stalls.
Worse, there's no real tension - the only scene with any suspense has a child crawling under the hotel to escape the crocodile, and using a child in jeopardy to provoke a response from the audience is a pretty cheap shot.
Death Trap suffers the same problems as the 2004 Dawn of the Dead - it's not scary, or really horrible, or funny. It's just painfully boring, it killed the vibe of a perfectly good day, and made at least one of my friends fall asleep.
There are all sorts of conspiracy's to try and explain exactly how come this film is so bad (haven't these people seen Lifeforce???), like Hooper walked off/was sacked/the film was re-edited by the producer/the distributor/bigfoot/George W. but the plain truth is that this is an ill-conceived, poorly executed failure. You can see how Hooper was aiming for a similar effect to TCM (the psycho killer in the clammy southern setting, the sudden deaths and OTT performances), but this time it just doesn't work. Perhaps it's the stagebound production, but then perhaps it's just the crummy screenplay...
Afterwards, the only way to try to make the wasted 87 minutes seem worthwhile was to then lend the film to some TCM loving friends and inflict it on them too. They didn't rush to thank me.
Death Trap is a film horror film with a difference. It is possessed of a special evil power most films don't have - an evil power to ruin a perfectly good day, suck all the joy out of your heart and make you forget you'd actually been enjoying yourself, or maybe even forget the whole IDEA of joy.
I'd been having a good day when myself and a couple of friends sat down to watch one of the 2 shiny new movies I'd bought. The choice was Lucio Fulci's surreal zombie meltdown "the Beyond" or "Death Trap", Tobe Hoopers follow up to Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Being huge TCM fans we went for Death Trap, after all, Tobe Hoopers second film has to be worth watching right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!
So very very wrong.
Death Trap is basically a cut price, hillbilly, Psycho rip off. At the start we meet a female character, who fleeing from trouble stays at a grotty hotel where the nutcase owner "shockingly" kills her. Except where Norman Bates was fixated on his mother, Judd has a pet crocodile. (and you'll never see the end coming, not in a MILLION YEARS!!!!....oh OK, the croc eats Judd)
Then some more people show up, including the worlds most annoying family, and a mildly amusing Robert Englund as a horny redneck. Most of them die, but not in any remotely interesting ways. Oh, and a pet dog gets eaten by the crocodile, possibly the highpoint of the film (unless you really want to watch the future Freddy doing "the nasty", in which case my advice is - seek professional help!)
The main problem here is the pacing (and the script, and a lot of the acting, and the unoriginality, but hey lets stick to the pacing). The film is desperately slow, and I can't believe it only runs the 87 minutes listed on the box. If so Death Trap must be possessed of another evil power - that same power doctors waiting rooms and tube station platforms have to make minutes seem like hours.
Pretty much everything Hooper did right with TCM, he messes up here. The film is ugly, lacking in real atmosphere, and just so damned slow! The fact that it's mostly filmed on one set, and in overlong takes often makes it feel more like a film of a really bad play than an actual movie, complete with horribly overwrought acting like the cast are playing to the folks at the back of the stalls.
Worse, there's no real tension - the only scene with any suspense has a child crawling under the hotel to escape the crocodile, and using a child in jeopardy to provoke a response from the audience is a pretty cheap shot.
Death Trap suffers the same problems as the 2004 Dawn of the Dead - it's not scary, or really horrible, or funny. It's just painfully boring, it killed the vibe of a perfectly good day, and made at least one of my friends fall asleep.
There are all sorts of conspiracy's to try and explain exactly how come this film is so bad (haven't these people seen Lifeforce???), like Hooper walked off/was sacked/the film was re-edited by the producer/the distributor/bigfoot/George W. but the plain truth is that this is an ill-conceived, poorly executed failure. You can see how Hooper was aiming for a similar effect to TCM (the psycho killer in the clammy southern setting, the sudden deaths and OTT performances), but this time it just doesn't work. Perhaps it's the stagebound production, but then perhaps it's just the crummy screenplay...
Afterwards, the only way to try to make the wasted 87 minutes seem worthwhile was to then lend the film to some TCM loving friends and inflict it on them too. They didn't rush to thank me.