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Drainiac (2000)

DVD Cover (Shock-O-Rama Cinema)
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Overall Rating 47%
Overall Rating
Ranked #10,607
...out of 20,319 movies
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By all appearances, it's just another deserted old house moldering away in the New England countryside - rundown, lonely, forgotten. The rural landscape is littered with hundreds of them. But this house is different, horribly different, because below the crumbling foundation and within rusting pipes dwells some thing that is about to be unleashed. --IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: May 15, 2008
Brett Piper is back with another helping of b-movie monster mayhem, and this time... wait, let's get something out of the way first. When I say that Piper is "back", that's not to say that this is a brand new film as it was actually released about eight years ago in an unfinished form. You see, due to budget concerns, Piper simply couldn't finish everything that he wanted to do in post-production, and the end result was a film that suffered from bad dubbing and horrible special effects. Always eager to make a quick buck, the distributor decided to put it out on store shelves anyway, quality be damned.

Moving ahead to the present day (well, last year or so), Shock-O-Rama has thrown some money to Piper to allow him to finish the film so that it could be presented in the way that it was supposed to be seen. This was not a case of a director going back and rewriting history because he changed his mind about who should shoot first; no, the man simply went back and finished the film, and really, the results couldn't have been much better for fans of old-fashioned monster flicks.

A house with some serious plumbing problems is the setting for tonight's film, and when I say that it has plumbing problems, I'm not talking about a couple minor incidents in which shit bubbles up into the yard - no, these pipes are possessed by demons from the deepest pits of hell. Let that one sink in for a moment.

Our heroes for this outing are Julie (Georgia Hatzis) and her friends Lisa (Alexandra Boylan), Jake (Ethan Krasnoo), and Tanya (Samara Doucette), a collection of lovable scamps who have arrived at this godforsaken dump of a house to clean it up so that Julie's real estate father can put it back on the market. Do I really even need to say any more about the plot and where it goes from here? Let's just say that people start dropping like flies when the beasts in the pipes decide to wrack up a body count (have you ever seen a death by toilet tentacles?), and when an exorcist by the name of - wait for it - Plummer (Philip Barbour) shows up, the demons are cast out of the pipes and into the house. Whoops.

I think that it should go without saying, but much like Brett Piper's other releases, Drainiac is not a film that is supposed to be taken very seriously. If you need a strong script to enjoy a film, or if you're in the mood for a serious, gore-drenched horror flick, you can pretty much skip over anything released by the man who is perhaps best known for directing A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell. However, if you're in the market for a film that is entertaining in a campy sort of way, Piper is your man. The guy doesn't make classics and I doubt that he'll ever have a star over in Hollywood, but he sure as hell makes fun movies. Drainiac is no exception, and while I wouldn't label it as his best release, it certainly didn't disappoint.

As mentioned, the script isn't exactly something that will stick with you for days on end as it's really only there as an excuse to show off the monster effects and to tie everything together. In fact, if the DVD insert is to be believed, Piper came up with the title and a poster for the film and simply wrote the script around those ideas, so a strong storyline is not the selling point of this film. The characters do some incredibly stupid things ("Hey, the ground just opened up and swallowed my car - oh well, let's get back to cleaning") and the entire affair can basically be summed up as "leading lady has some issues, monsters are in the house, leading lady sulks, exorcist shows up, grand finale, credits." I'm not condemning the film for this as I'm fairly familiar with Piper's work by now and knew what I was in for, but I thought that I should point this out for those of you who may not know what you're getting into with this release (and after reading some of the other reviews, I don't think this is unwarranted).

Alright, so I realize that the above paragraph probably didn't sell you on the idea of rushing out to purchase this disc, but really, it is a fun movie regardless of its storytelling flaws. This is the kind of film that we were bombarded with back in the eighties (that's a compliment), as it focuses more on entertaining the audience rather than presenting us with thought-provoking storylines. When you see a would-be rapist get his manly organs ripped off courtesy of tentacles which are racing out of a disgustingly dirty toilet, how can you not get a smile on your face? When you see all sorts of different creatures terrorize our heroes during the exorcism (including some spiders that seemingly came straight from the set of Bite Me!), well... let's just say that Piper is known for his monsters, and Drainiac delivers the goods.

Overall, the film is definitely worth a purchase for fans of campy b-movie schlock. It's not high art and it won't rank on any top ten lists, but when it comes to that ever-so-important entertainment factor, Drainiac will give you your money's worth. 8/10.
grain of sand #1: grain of sand - added May 16, 2008 at 12:45am
I bought this about a year ago at Ameoba for $2 based solely on the cover (one of the alternates) and it's well worth my 8 quarters. I think the quote on that cover, 'echoes of the original evil dead' is a little strong.. But this was a nice little watch.. Over the top asshole dad was hilarious everytime he came on screen and his death was equally as funny.. I just can't rate these type of movies though, sure it entertained me but it was just funny because it was so bad.. That's just me though, my very humble opinion.
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