Pink Eye is an Efficient
Micro-Budget Horror Creation
Pink Eye
is the latest offering from Savage Rose Productions and
Lost Angeles
Films. Though the dollars spent are few, a lot of impact is squeezed
from every penny.
Written
by The Horror Czar (BHM Editor Don
Sumner) December 4, 2007
Release:
Premier January 8, 2008
Directed by: James Tucker
Written by: Joshua Nelson
Starring:
Melissa Bacelar as Delilah
Joshua Nelson as Brandon
Joshua James as Edgar
Emma Hinz as Daisy
Bridget Megan Clark as Holly
Savage Rose Pictures and Lost Angeles Films have teamed up
before, notably on the project Eat
Your Heart Out
starring the ravishing Melissa
Bacelar. The projects coming from this
team keep getting better in terms of gore, story and effective use of
limited resources.
Pink Eye is the story of an insane asylum where
ghastly drug experiments are conducted. There are other things going on
in this nut house as well that include orderlies wearing shrunken-head
masks while they rape the female patients - Remember those machines
that would dry out a carved apple to make a prunie little head with a
face on it? You could get them from the huge Sears catalogue when I was
a kid – and I think director James Tucker got one for
Christmas one year and based the mask on the memory.
The visual
of the prune-face mask becomes relevant when one of the
crazies, Edgar, escapes and dons the mask before embarking on a
murderous and pillaging rampage that ends in an abduction of Delilah
(Bacelar) and the quest for her rescue by boyfriend Brandon (Joshua
Nelson).
There are
several notables to Pink Eye, and most of
them are amplified considerably by the fact that the budget for this
one was extremely low. First is the gore. I already knew after watching
Eat Your Heart Out that there was a love of
over– the– top gore inherent in this filmmaking
team, but a few scenes in Pink Eye took this to a
new level. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a
young woman graphically rip her eyeballs out because she thinks there
are ants behind them…AWESOME!!
The acting
is very good, especially the performances of boyfriend
Joshua Nelson and the two child actors Emma Hinz and Bridget Megan
Clark. My only complaint is that there wasn’t enough Melissa
Bacelar. She is set up as the romantic interest and child caregiver
early on, but ultimately her part is pretty minor until the end. I
would have liked to have her character developed more so that the
impact of her abduction packs a bit more punch. Still, the scenes of
Melissa tied up and screaming while surrounded by mutilated bodies just
about makes up for it. I could have done without a few of the ancillary
characters, especially the stoner dude…he was fine, but
ultimately pointless. Less stoner dude, more
Melissa…that’s what I say, but my crush on Melissa
Bacelar is well documented so who am I?
The
villain in Pink Eye is a complete drama queen,
which I like. A skin disease that makes him a monster, the vicious way
that he rips rats apart, the shrunken apple head mask and the James
Earl Jones voice work together to create a credible monster worthy of
nightmares.
Tons of punch on a shoestring budget is the beauty of Pink Eye.
This independent horror creation proves that tons of money and big
studios cannot eclipse real moviemaking passion. Questions
or comments about Pink Eye? Contact us!
Update: I spoke with
Melissa
Bacelar today and voiced my concerns regarding her lack of screen time.
She told me that the filming location was so cold that the cameras were
freezing, requiring that many of her outdoor scenes be cut. I reminded
her that “cold girls in tube tops make good cinema”
according to Kaufman of Troma, but unfortunately there was nary a tube
top in the house.
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