The Wickeds
(Screen Entertainment Region 0 PAL DVD)
(2005)
review by Blackgloves

The seemingly unending deluge of low budget Digital Video-shot indie horror flicks from the US continues unabated with the appearance of John Poague's "The Wickeds": the latest entry in a dubious sub-genre to be released in the UK by Screen Entertainment. This particular production also showcases the questionable comedy-acting talents of one Ron Jeremy; who now, having somewhat exhausted his former "skills", seems instead to have moved full-time into the world of indie horror. The formula here will be rather familiar: rubbish acting, creaking production values and a general air of desperate amateurishness exemplified by the uncomplicated low-grade video look of the feature. But, once you've suitably lowered your expectations before settling down to view this enthusiastic tribute to 'classic' horror films of the recent past, it has to be admitted that "The Wickeds" does display an immense amount of energy and guile! Once it gets going, it keeps the screen filled for the rest of its run-time with a relentless barrage of confidently rendered gory schlock; so-much-so that one hardly has time to note the fact that there may-well not be one original idea in the whole slapdash spectacle! No matter: if you're gonna steal, you might as well steal from the best ... and, during its eighty-odd minutes "The Wickeds" shoehorns plot-lines and incidents from "The Night of the Living Dead"; "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "The Evil Dead" into one lumbering and rather unruly screenplay -- with a sprinkling of "The Amityville Horror" tossed in for good measure as well!

The film kicks off, as-per-usual, with a group of irritating 'young people' off to spend a Halloween vacation in an abandoned house which is also currently being used as the set for a horror movie. "One of those crappy, low budget, cheesy slasher flicks" says the stereotypical, annoying geek of the group, (Oh, the irony eh!). All of the 'kids' fulfil the time-honoured roles any horror fan will be familiar with by now: we have the joker geek, the sporty jock, the horny couple, the screaming hysteric and the resourceful tomboy heroine. The group turn up at the remote farmhouse to find that the interior has been eccentrically decked out with macabre decorative ornamentation such as a naked plastic baby doll which is hanging from its foot by a chain in the living room! Overall, the house is the filmmakers' obvious tribute to the interior of the Sawyer household in Tobe Hooper's original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -- and just in case we don't immediately clock this fact, the annoying geek character pipes up: "Wow ... this place looks like something out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre!"

This is just the first example in a whole plethora of pointlessly overemphasised "ironic" references to classic horror films which plague this production throughout the rest of its run-time (I'm even placing the word ironic in quote marks now! That's how post-modern things have got in the world of indie horror lately). While the horny couple go off upstairs to make out, the rest of the gang squabble among themselves like annoying adolescent characters always do in films like this to pad out a few more minutes of screen-time before the bloodletting gets going ... its what passes for character development! Meanwhile, in a nearby cemetery, grave-robbing duo Gus (Ron Jeremy) and his dim-witted sidekick, Billy (Bryan Donoghue) have opened the grave of an evil Satanic cult leader named Teufel (Michael T. Schneider) in order to steal a valuable amulet from his corpse. We will later learn that this vampiric character also used to own the house where our intrepid kids are now camping out. While Billy is attempting to prise the amulet from Teufel's body (incidentally, the make-up on the Dracula-capped, white-faced Teufel seems to be inspired by the Captain Spaulding character from Rob Zombie's recent "House of 1000 Corpses" which means that not only does this film reference classic 70's horror but also other tributes to classic 70's horror!), the corpse opens its piercing eyes and clamps its jagged fangs around his wrist, tearing away a bloody clump of flesh! Even though he has been watching the whole thing, Gus is still sceptical that anything is amiss and accuses Billy of overreacting! As the two make their getaway across the graveyard, they are accosted by a marauding army of the living dead who have been reawakened by the theft of their leader's amulet (it seems Teufel's followers who have all been interred in the cemetery's grounds)! Here we get numerous visual references to "Night of the Living Dead" (a naked zombie chick) and Fulci's "Zombie 2" (decaying, worm-ridden, skeletal zombies rising from the earth). These sequences appear to be shot in a real cemetery (a great comfort to the relatives of the deceased to know that their loved-ones' resting places were being trampled by a gang of film extras in zombie make-up, I'm sure!) although, despite the place being overrun with zombies (a despite those shots of crusty zombies rising from the earth), the place appears perfectly orderly and non of the graves have been disturbed in any way!

Gus and Billy make their way to the old house where the kids are staying, and manage to find a way in through a backdoor leading into the cellar. Soon enough, the zombies and their vampire leader follow and surround the place in typical "Night of the Living Dead" tradition. This is not all that the group have to worry about though: the place is also haunted by the murdered family who lived (and died) in the house after Teufel's death! The rest of the movie is a fast-moving rollercoster of cheap gory set-pieces that sees a menagerie of zombies, ghosts and vampires laying siege to our beleaguered protagonists. As the geeky horror fan of the group quips: in a situation like this, you have to ask yourself, what would Bruce Campbell do?

Surprisingly, though the acting from the young cast and the laconic Ron Jeremy is hardly Oscar winning material, director John Poague displays some degree of skill in keeping the pace lively and there are actually several well-timed jolts along the way as well. The zombie make-up is pretty good and seems to be inspired by just about every species of flesh-eating muncher that has appeared on-screen over the last thirty years: we have Romeroesque blue-skinned zombies, Fulciesque maggoty zombies and even examples of the super-agile, fast moving zombies who've become popular recently with horror directors. It may look rather crappy, be filled with set-pieces stolen (in a knowing homage sort of way) from other much better movies, and stifled by an artless script and graceless acting, but "The Wickeds" actually does engage the attention for the full run-time with its energetic, well-executed shocks and gory, entrails-ridden scenes of bloody excess. In the end though, this flick displays all the signs of a movie being more influenced by the recent trend in reviving 70s style horror through a combination of homage and parody than it is influenced by the actual movies themselves!

The film is presented in a non-anamorphic, letterboxed print and does not feature any extras apart from a trailer, which gives away all the best bits as trailers are often want to do. There are also a bunch of trailers for other Screen Entertainment titles.