THE LEGEND OF HALLOWEEN JACK (2018) - MICRO BUDGET KILLER SCARECROW NONSENSE

I know Halloween has been and gone for another year but I watched this the other night and it's so ridiculously bad that I couldn't resist reviewing it. Here goes...

DIRECTED & WRITTEN by Andrew Jones.

STARRING  - Colin Holt as Frank Hollister,  Sarah John as Jennifer Hollister, Jamie Knox as Brodie Sangster,  Jason Gregg as "Grizzly" Joe Johnston,  William Wolfe Hogan as Jack Cain,  Lee Bane as Halloween Jack,  Doug Cooper as Milton Boggs,  Aaron Jeffcoate as Johnny Tramer,  Jo Hart as Edie Tramer,  Harriet Rees as Ellie Tanner,  Ed Zephyr as Anton Crowley.

PLOT - In the small town of Dunwich, Jack Cain - a suspected serial killer - is released from prison after his trial is thrown out of court due to lack of evidence.

A vigilante mob led by police chief Frank Hollister track down Cain and shoot him to death. They bury his body in the woods...

One year later - at Halloween - Jack is revived from the dead by a suicide who bleeds onto his shallow grave. Jack resurrects as a malevolent killer scarecrow and very soon he's going on a rampage of revenge, systematically killing those who where responsible for his death and anybody else unlucky enough to get in his way. The sleepy town of Dunwich is about to learn the true meaning of Halloween...

TAGLINE - "Trick or treat...you're DEAD !!!"

PERFORMANCES  -  There are many things that are unintentionally funny about this movie. The acting is one of them.

With one exception, all the actors appear to be amateurs or at the very best highly inexperienced.

For starters theres Colin Holt playing cop Frank Hollister. The character is written as being tough, cynical, jaded and remorseful (he messed up when arresting Cain, so its his fault the killer went free). That's the character on paper in any case. As played by Holt the character comes across more like a primary school teacher that's having a mildly stressful day. Holt seems to have only one facial expression in the entire film - he just seems to purse his lips and boggle his eyes slightly. I think this is supposed to make him look like he's being grim and determined but it just looks like he's suffering from trapped wind.

Then you get Sarah John giving a spectacularly lifeless performance as Frank's daughter Jennifer and her boyfriend Brodie Sangster played by Jamie Knox who for some reason has a fake American accent.

That's another thing about this film, its not actually made clear what country its even set in. The town of Dunwich appears in many of H.P. Lovecraft's stories which places it in America. This seems to be confirmed when we see local news reports in the movie - all the reporters have fake American accents like Brodie. Sacramento is mentioned as being not far away and the neighbouring town is Haddonfield (wait - thats where Michael Myers lives !!!). However bar Brodie and the TV news people all the other characters are speaking with Estuary English accents. Is Dunwich some kind of hybrid ex-pat British colony somewhere in the U.S ? To make matters even more confusing the movie was actually filmed in Wales. Oh, and theres also a real life town called Dunwich thats located in Suffolk, England. Confused yet? Good grief...

Some of the casting choices are just plain odd. For example we get Aaron Jeffcoate and Jo Hart playing roles as a son and mother. Here's what the two actors look like in case you haven't heard of them (which you won't have)...

Can anyone see what's wrong here ? That's right - this is supposed to be a mother and son and yet THEY BOTH LOOK THE SAME AGE !!!!! If anything she MIGHT, at a very big push be maybe 5 years older than him, but playing his MUM ??????

The only non amateur performance is given by Doug Cooper playing Dunwich's corrupt mayor Milton Boggs. I've seen Cooper crop up in a few things, he's by no means a well known actor but he's got one of those faces that you'll recognise even though you can't place what it actually is you've seen him in. He camps up his role whilst playing it with a completely straight face which is probably the way to go if you're an actor finding yourself slumming it in a movie like this.

SFX - This film is as low rent in the effects department as it gets. Halloween Jack is a bloke in a fancy dress scarecrow outfit that they've rigged a pair of glowing eyes onto...

He doesn't look too bad considering.

Particularly hilarious are the guns that everyone carries. They're just children's cap guns. Whenever theres some shooting (and there's quite a lot of shooting in this movie) instead of a satisfying gunshot sound we just get a little pop and a crack. Couldn't they have at least added in a stock gunshot sound effect to draw the audience's attention away from the fact that they're all firing toy guns ? To make matters even more laughable, whenever anyone is shot theres no actual fake blood used. We just get this spray of CGI blood which is on screen for precisely one second before it just kind of evaporates into a red mist and completely disappears. Leaving behind absolutely no bullet wounds or bloodstains WHATSOEVER !!!!

SEX & VIOLENCE  - I couldn't find any photos of any of the kills online so I'm just going to have to describe them.

There's an opening shot of two corpses in a car, presumably they're supposed to be Cain's victims.

Then we get the scene of Cain being killed by the lynch mob. He's tied to a scarecrow's wooden stand and shot repeatedly. This results in lots of magical disapearing CG blood and Jack Cain slumping forward like he's having an afternoon nap.

Then we get Jack's ressurection a year later when a man commits suicide at Jack's grave. He shoots himself in the head - cue more disapearing blood and and a notable lack of an exit wound of any kind.

Jack then kills a mechanic by slitting his throat off camera and kills "Grizzly" Joe by impaling him with a pitchfork.

Milton Boggs stabs 25 year old middle aged mum Edie with a knife and then strangles her to death only to later be killed by Jack himself. Jack slashes Milton's throat whilst he's watching White Zombie on TV (we get LOTS of clips of public domain horror movies in this film to pad out the running time). Jack then murders Milton's wife by smashing her over the head with a rolling pin. She helpfully bleeds all over the cupcakes she's just made.

Frank shoots bored looking satanist Anton Crowley in the chest.

Jack stalks and kills a young woman (Ellie) at the town hall's Halloween party, he slashes her with his trusty scythe...

Then we get murder on the dance floor in the film's best scene. Jack goes on the rampage at the most poorly attended Halloween bash in the history of cinema (there's only about 8 people there and a band that plays the same bloody song over and over and over and over again - this is supposed to be Dunwich's big social event of the year ????). I'm guessing Jack must be extra pissed off at this point because he REALLY goes for it here. For starters he grabs one party goer by the head and gouges his eyes out with his thumbs. Jack then impales another poor victim on an upturned chair's leg. He punches another guy in the stomach and pulls out a handful of intestines (this effect being achieved by someone putting thier hand into a T-shirt with a hole cut in the stomach and pulling out a string of sausages - theres not even any blood). For his final kill - Jack kills a party goer by apparently breaking his leg (????).

In the film's climax (which blatantly rips off the ending of the original Halloween 2), Frank blows himself and Jack to pieces by releasing some gas into a room and lighting a cigarette - resulting in a firey inferno and lots of stock footage of firemen trying to put out a blazing building.

RATING - The Legend of Halloween Jack is hilariously bad. Everything about it - the acting, the monster, the effects are all bottom of the barrel stuff. 

Even the location work is terrible. In one scene Frank goes to buy some guns from the local dodgy arms dealer. I think the scene is supposed to be taking place in some seedy nightclub (you can hear loud rave music and various sounds of people partying in the background) but it looks like it's been shot in a picturesque country village hall, its all oak panels and wooden beams. The mind boggles, it really does.

Call me a masochist though but despite its many, many, MANY obvious flaws...I really enjoyed this film. It's absolutely hilarious in its sheer shitness. One of the most enjoyable "so bad its good" films I've seen in a long time. It's just a helluva lot of fun.

I'm giving it 3 and a half Halloween massacres out of 5. Best enjoyed with low expectations and a six pack of beer.

ALTERNATE DVD COVER ART -

A year later in 2019, the lunatics who made this film released a sequal  - The Curse Of Halloween Jack. That's DEFINITELY going on my "to watch" list.