"Grotesque" is a grossly under-performing creature feature.
**SPOILERS**
Taking a road trip together, sisters Lisa, (Linda Blair) and Kathy, (Donna Wilkes) go up to a mountain retreat to get away for a short vacation. When they meet up with special effects master Orville Kruger, (Guy Stockwell) who has done a lot of special effects work, and they reminisce about the past. When local gang-members Scratch, (Brad Wilson) Shelly, (Michelle Bensoussan) Donna, (Sharon Hughes) Gibbs, (Nels Van Patten) and Ear Box, (Billy Frank) show up at the house looking for money, they fight back only to be quickly shot down and put in their place. When they suddenly realize that a vicious monster is amongst them and killing them off one-by-one, forcing them to fend the deadly creature off. Realizing that something is amiss about it, they realize that there's a connection between it and the company they went after, making it harder to stop the rampage.
The Good News: There wasn't a whole lot to this. One of the better parts is that, once the deformed guy breaks out he starts offing them pretty quickly. This is what leads to the best part of the film, the slaughter of the gang-members in a relatively quick period of time, happening quite quickly and really done in a great, brutal style. What's also great about the creature was the fact that it was so freakishly strong that it didn't even bother with weapons at all. A snap of a neck or bear hug was all that was needed to make short work of the victims, which makes for some great times during the rampage. In addition to these, we also get a really impressive facial crushing with the bare hands, a couple strangling and a really nice face blown apart by a shotgun blast, among other kills in here so this does get somewhat messy when it wants to be. The other good part is the fact that we're given more than one enemy, which also goes ahead to show a police-procedural side of the situation that's not normally presented. Once all the mayhem is over, a search party is sent out, complete with posse members and dogs, and after the survivors are found, they're questioned in a long, intense sequence which even plays off the good-cop bad-cop routine with them, which here is nicely handled is a different side that it usually given in these films. The last good part here is the really unique and clever plot, and even though it's basic premise is done to death, the play-out and execution of the tweaks done to it are fairly creative and make for some interesting scenes. These here are all that work for the film.
The Bad News: This here was a pretty underwhelming film with a couple flaws to it. One of them is that the look of the creature wasn't as grotesque as might have been lead to believe. It basically looked like a human that had their face partially melted off, with the jagged edges, jagged ridges and obvious prosthetics sticking out over the eyes, cheeks and around the mouth, which doesn't really do much for me. There's a whole lot more grotesque beings in horror flicks, and in the end it just comes off as incredibly lame and cheesy. The big flaw, though, is that the movie should have just ended at the hour mark, because everything after that point just seems like a waste of time. For instance we have one sequence involving a man walking to the cabin, and we're continuously cut from him to the dead bodies inside piled inside. This is repeated until the man finally reaches the cabin, which takes entirely too long. It's pretty clear scenes like that are only there to fill up the running time, because there's honestly not much more story to tell at that point and the editing of it plays that they're discovering the bodies out of accident but taking an entirely too long to do something that simple. Then when you think the film is finally over, we're thrown an even more ridiculous, unexpected ending, but not in a positive way. There's almost nothing that can be said to put this into a positive spin, but this anti-climax has to be one of the worst endings ever seen in any kind of movie. There's very little left to say how stupid, ridiculous and annoying this ending is, which really just makes it hard to understand where it was going to going before this came in, but this ending totally obliterates whatever good it had and just really leaves the viewer stunned. It's just an all-around mess, and really obliterates what good had come before it. These here are the film's flaws.
The Final Verdict: Bungled by the script woes despite having some really decent things, this one here is a really underwhelming creature feature. Really only see this one for the cheese value, have to see every single film from the creative cast or a fan of creature features, otherwise ignore this one completely for more redeeming fare.
Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence
**SPOILERS**
Taking a road trip together, sisters Lisa, (Linda Blair) and Kathy, (Donna Wilkes) go up to a mountain retreat to get away for a short vacation. When they meet up with special effects master Orville Kruger, (Guy Stockwell) who has done a lot of special effects work, and they reminisce about the past. When local gang-members Scratch, (Brad Wilson) Shelly, (Michelle Bensoussan) Donna, (Sharon Hughes) Gibbs, (Nels Van Patten) and Ear Box, (Billy Frank) show up at the house looking for money, they fight back only to be quickly shot down and put in their place. When they suddenly realize that a vicious monster is amongst them and killing them off one-by-one, forcing them to fend the deadly creature off. Realizing that something is amiss about it, they realize that there's a connection between it and the company they went after, making it harder to stop the rampage.
The Good News: There wasn't a whole lot to this. One of the better parts is that, once the deformed guy breaks out he starts offing them pretty quickly. This is what leads to the best part of the film, the slaughter of the gang-members in a relatively quick period of time, happening quite quickly and really done in a great, brutal style. What's also great about the creature was the fact that it was so freakishly strong that it didn't even bother with weapons at all. A snap of a neck or bear hug was all that was needed to make short work of the victims, which makes for some great times during the rampage. In addition to these, we also get a really impressive facial crushing with the bare hands, a couple strangling and a really nice face blown apart by a shotgun blast, among other kills in here so this does get somewhat messy when it wants to be. The other good part is the fact that we're given more than one enemy, which also goes ahead to show a police-procedural side of the situation that's not normally presented. Once all the mayhem is over, a search party is sent out, complete with posse members and dogs, and after the survivors are found, they're questioned in a long, intense sequence which even plays off the good-cop bad-cop routine with them, which here is nicely handled is a different side that it usually given in these films. The last good part here is the really unique and clever plot, and even though it's basic premise is done to death, the play-out and execution of the tweaks done to it are fairly creative and make for some interesting scenes. These here are all that work for the film.
The Bad News: This here was a pretty underwhelming film with a couple flaws to it. One of them is that the look of the creature wasn't as grotesque as might have been lead to believe. It basically looked like a human that had their face partially melted off, with the jagged edges, jagged ridges and obvious prosthetics sticking out over the eyes, cheeks and around the mouth, which doesn't really do much for me. There's a whole lot more grotesque beings in horror flicks, and in the end it just comes off as incredibly lame and cheesy. The big flaw, though, is that the movie should have just ended at the hour mark, because everything after that point just seems like a waste of time. For instance we have one sequence involving a man walking to the cabin, and we're continuously cut from him to the dead bodies inside piled inside. This is repeated until the man finally reaches the cabin, which takes entirely too long. It's pretty clear scenes like that are only there to fill up the running time, because there's honestly not much more story to tell at that point and the editing of it plays that they're discovering the bodies out of accident but taking an entirely too long to do something that simple. Then when you think the film is finally over, we're thrown an even more ridiculous, unexpected ending, but not in a positive way. There's almost nothing that can be said to put this into a positive spin, but this anti-climax has to be one of the worst endings ever seen in any kind of movie. There's very little left to say how stupid, ridiculous and annoying this ending is, which really just makes it hard to understand where it was going to going before this came in, but this ending totally obliterates whatever good it had and just really leaves the viewer stunned. It's just an all-around mess, and really obliterates what good had come before it. These here are the film's flaws.
The Final Verdict: Bungled by the script woes despite having some really decent things, this one here is a really underwhelming creature feature. Really only see this one for the cheese value, have to see every single film from the creative cast or a fan of creature features, otherwise ignore this one completely for more redeeming fare.
Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence