(1996 / USA)
Reviewed By: Fred Anderson
Director: Joseph F. Parda
Cast: Liz Haverty, Joseph Zaso, Xavier Domingo and Mony Damevsky
Source: Cinema Image Productions DVD (NTSC REGION 1 / 2004 / ?? min)
It's hard for one indie-filmmaker to review another indie-filmmakers movies. Very hard. Probably harder than you guys and girls can believe. It's easier when it's a known (or unknown) person with a lot of money, fame and solid cult-status. But I'll give it a try anyway.If I understood everything correctly, this is director Joseph F. Pardas first movie, made in 1996. Shot on super8 and with a bunch of uneven but interesting actors in front of the camera. The story, in short, is about Richard Streeb, a famous artist known for his brutal and bloody paintings of murder and mayhem. One dark (of course!) night he's getting murdered himself and his brother, Bill (played by the strange looking but quite handsome Joseph Zaso) starts his own investigation to find the murderer and try not to get murdered himself. Because... the murders continues, and almost everyone in the cast gets butchered in all different ways until the surprise ending comes - which even fooled me.
The story is actually to complex to fully be examined here, I recommend you to buy the movie and see for yourself.
So why is it hard for another indie to review an indie-movie? Because it's hard to be constructive. I know, probably better than a lot of other reviewers here, that it takes a hell of a lot of talent, energy and struggling to make a movie more or less without a budget or professional actors. It's like raising hell, instead of raising money! And as a filmmaker myself I really want to support Joseph and his gang so much as possible, but it would be unfair to both me and him to not be honest.
5 dead on the crimson canvas has a lot of good things, and a lot of bad things. First of, the titles is perfect. It really wants me to see the movie. But that's maybe not what people want to read about? It's an ambitious movie. Very ambitious. The locations are impressive, with more production value that a lot of similar projects never could have. The actors a many and some of them are really bad, but a few is also quite good. I guess the sync-job took away some of the passion in the voices and acting. So it's a lot of soul and heart in this movie and even if it's shot on super8 and the source material is quite bad, the nice cinematography shines through. The gore is for the most very good, with a few exceptions. But I don't think a gorehound would be disappointed. The body count is high, which is always a good thing in these kind of movies, and everyone gets what they deserve.
The direction and editing are a bit uneven. Sometimes it resembles a stage play with actors walking in and out of the frame, with some close-ups that has a strange and irritating framing. In some of the murder scenes the editing lacks tension and it's more like a very simple home video with cuts in the camera and no though behind the scene. But the movie gets better, and somehow it seems like it was shot chronological, but that's probably just my imagination. Because it always takes a while to get used to the directors vision, and sometimes the brain gets used to the style. I don't know really. For example, there's a montage at the ending of the movie that is really great, and that made the whole movie for me.
I think the main problem for me was the sound. It didn’t have a natural feeling and most of it seemed to have been recorded in the studio afterwards. So it felt like watching a movie with oddly placed speaker-voice all the time.
So it has it's flaws, without a doubt, but also has a lot of good things going on. And as a Swedish filmmaker I'm highly impressed by the energy that American indies have. Here in Sweden there's maybe one (or if we're lucky, two) indie-movies per year that gets a release, but in the US it seems like hundreds. I guess that's both good and bad. But 5 dead on the crimson canvas differs from many of it's competitors, because it actually has some decent lighting, photography and goes far beyond the usual homevideo-cam-horror-flick-made-in-the-garden-with-to-young-friends-playing-older-people-amateur-movies.
STORY/FILM-3/5 BITCH SLAPS
PICTURE-2/5 BITCH SLAPS
AUDIO-2/5 BITCH SLAPS
EXTRAS-4/5 BITCH SLAPS
OVERALL DVD-3/5 BITCH SLAPSPurchase this At X-Ploited Cinema
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