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51%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #12,813
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On a scorching summer day, six friends venture into the mountains for one more vacation before their lives change forever. Unbeknownst to them, their lives would forever be changed anyway. In the shadows awaits a pack of the most evil, the most vile, rejects of humanity that's addicted to violence and thirsty for blood! This is Psycho Holocaust...
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: May 8, 2011
Sometimes, I just get a hunch about certain films and run with it. My hunches are correct a fair percentage of the time, but every now and then, a movie comes along that proves me wrong. Psycho Holocaust is one of those movies. I received it in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and when I skimmed the DVD case, I figured that it was going to be yet another "slasher in the woods" flick. Maybe it'd have some neat kills, maybe it'd have some memorable lines courtesy of the few "name" actors from the indie horror world, and maybe it would even have a unique twist to cap it off, but at the end of the day, it'd be just another slasher flick: nothing radically different from the millions of other slashers that I have seen. So, the DVD sat on my shelf for a couple of weeks, and today, I finally decided to pop it in. Holy shit, I am sorry I waited.
The story focuses on six friends - the pregnant Talina (Raine Brown), her husband Mark (Billy Garberina), Talina's best friend Laura (Vanelle), and fellow friends Sara (Nicole Blessing), Jeff (Jarrod Crooks), and Scotty (Steve Golla) - who decide to get away from it all for a weekend before Talina pops out a child and cuts down on their ability to hang out. Their destination? An old cabin in a remote section of the woods in a small country town where multiple murders have been reported. What could possibly go wrong?
They eventually meet the killers, a trio of sadistic thugs consisting of leader Buddy (Trent Haaga), the deformed Pillowface (Ash Bowen), and the dimwitted but very evil Carp (Don Prentiss), and it doesn't take long before the bodies begin to pile up. When it gets down to just a handful of survivors, the killers decide to take their time with their victims and make their deaths slow... very slow, and very painful. Will these innocent victims survive the night, or will they break and finally give in to the pain?
Psycho Holocaust is not a movie to pick up if you want an original plot. Sure, the thing that motivates the killers hasn't been done too many times before (though it's still not unique), but let's be clear: the basic storyline has been done a thousand times over. However, that is not the selling point of the movie. The film is made for gorehounds and fans of violent kills while the story is simply there to get us from one graphic scene to the next, so if you count yourself as one of those fans, you will absolutely love the film regardless of the plot.
So, about the gore. Yes, it is vile and nasty, and there is at least one kill method that I have never seen anywhere else (I won't spoil it, but let's just say that it involves a hacksaw and a bodily orifice). The other kills may have been done elsewhere over the years, but you can't help but love seeing them again when they are so graphic and the effects are so well done. There is a guy being strangled with barbed wire, another guy who loses a leg to a chainsaw, and yes, there are guts to be spilled and rubbed all over a survivor. These people go through hell almost from the time they arrive until the credits roll, and again, gorehounds are in for a treat.
I usually don't mention musical scores in my reviews, but this film will be the exception. The score is handled by The Giallos Flame, and they did a fantastic job of creating a score that resembles something you'd find in an eighties Italian flick. It fits the film perfectly, especially when you consider that the film seemed to be going for an eighties feel in every other way; in fact, this is a timeless kind of film that could very easily have been made in the early eighties. Aside from the IMDb page and the copyright in the credits, there is nothing in the film itself that gives it away.
Psycho Holocaust isn't high art, but I enjoyed the hell out of it anyway. It's bloody as all hell, the kills are highly memorable, the villains are appropriately dastardly, and the torture that the survivors go through is almost hard to sit through at times. The film isn't for everybody, but fans of slasher trash that pushes the limits will find a lot to love here. 9/10.
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