(2003)
REVIEWED BY-STEVE GENIER DIRECTED BY-CIRO BALBO CAST-PUCCI TRES, RITA ANTONY, D.R.ROBERTS, JUSTIN LE BART, DAVE GIBBONS and NICHELLE TAYLOR. SOURCE-LIME PICTURES DVD NTSC REG 1
From the mind of legendary Italian director Ciro Balbo, comes his first English shot project, EATING THE SUN. A journey into the hot dessert of Arizona, infiltrating a small Satanic cult on the verge of resurrecting a demon laying dormant inside a young boy. Though this demon appeared with the add of drinking poisoned water. First they must nurse the sickened evil offspring back to it’s full strength, the only way in doing so is to feed it a new born baby. The recruitment of pregnant women begins.
Enter a young couple driving through the dessert in search of an opportunity listed in a local paper. Once there, they are drawn into a world of hell. Killing the husband and entrapping the young woman with a group of other pregnant victims. Tortured, probed and left to stew in their own excrement, they await their appending doom. As the small band of cult members assemble for the ceremony, a local redneck and his retarded son decide to help the women escape. Upon their escape, things go very wrong as the cult members catch on as they are in the process of fleeing. Things become very intense, very wrong and very deadly.
Packed with buckets of blood and guts, EATING THE SUN is a gore hound’s dream. The viewer is subjected to a whole array of goodies from the bowels of hell. Drenched in the scorching heat coming off the dirt dry dessert, inbred rednecks under the lead of a diabolical cult leader have a thirst for the outrageous. In the style of the legendary American director H.G. Lewis, Balbo infiltrates the often typecasted southern hospitalities and gives them a twist that will stick in your heads for years, maybe for a lifetime. Along with the horror, Balbo manages to keep the dark humor intact as well. Don’t go into this film expecting a Oscar for the writing nor the acting, EATING THE SUN’S sole purpose is to shock your system. From the squishing of heads, in the way of melons, to the birth pillows the female actors ware to give you the vision of their pregnancies. There is no shame spared here, just in your face film making.
Sloppy editing and shaky camera work, true signs of a seasoned director’s vision of something apocalyptic. Don’t let this methods unnerve you into thinking an amateur is here at work, surely not. This is gorilla film making brought to a whole new height. Picking actors from the normal folk and infusing them into a world many of us only read about in the news. "SATANIC CULT KILLS 7 PREGNANT WOMEN IN CEREMONY". Folks, EATING THE SUN is a true extension of what is really happening in your own backyards. Scary how a foreign director has to bring such a thing to the light.
This is the first film via LIME PICTURES and is certainly a clear sign that there is plenty more to come in the near future. Scoring the likes of the legendary Ciro Balbo was a feat in itself, but also managing to capture his first English language film is another whole thing. Something LIME should build upon with it’s next project, DADDY’S SOFT HANDS starring Dennis Haskins and Brinke Stevens. For more info on EATING THE SUN and DADDY’S SOFT HANDS visit LIME PICTURES.
2.5 BITCH SLAPS
