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directed by Bill Robertson
USA 2010

 

Vegetarians are disappearing in the quiet town of Bisbee, Arizona. When "Priest" (Joanthan Ash) discovers that his hallucinatory cactus garden has been used for a cannibal cookout - with a local endearing, panty-stealing pervert as the main course - he and grungy buddies head straight to the local gun shop and arm themselves with an array of automatic weapons (and one speargun) and go cannibal hunting. They determine that the victims are being targeted through the town's vegetarian restaurant (populated by pretentious, Bohemian poets of which one of the cannibal hunters remarks "My god, they fuckin' deserve to be eaten" which is echoed by the cannibals) and they quickly identify the white-trash-looking culprits. They play a game of cat and mouse around the streets and alleys of Bisbee (the crew seem to have had the run of the town) as the cannibal hunters gather intel and spoil a few meals until Priest is caught and the cannibal hunters begin their final siege. The plot may be not be well-constructed - one body is enough to determine that there is a "club" of cannibals responsible for other disappearances and a quick check on the net at the library (which happens to carry an ancient tome on cannibalism) is enough to determine that cannibals prefer vegetarians - but it makes for a brisk 79 minutes. There are no truly bad performances, just the usual awkward ones. The faults in the acting come not from a complete lack of talent so much as some forced attempts at quirkiness with uneven results. The slathering-on of music in every scene is distracting and some of the dialogue gets muffled in the mix. The photography and lighting are mostly flat with blown-out highlights in background windows but the action is always visible. The coverage is good (i.e. there are insert shots where there should be). It's better-made than the misspelled "Staring" credit in the opening titles suggests (although one wonders if "Mucis by" was intentional). The poverty of the production and effects (including bludgeoning by plastic baseball bat) actually work for the film (although the gunfire is convincing). As such, it feels less like a seventies throwback than a reminder of the home made eighties horror video productions for the burgeoning rental market and is a painless viewing experience.

Eric Cotenas

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DVD Review: Chemical Burn (screener) - Region 0 - NTSC

Big thanks to Eric Cotenas for the Review!

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Distribution

Chemical Burn

Region 0 - NTSC

Runtime 1:14:11
Video

1.33:1 Original Aspect Ratio
Average Bitrate: 3.83 mb/s
NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s

NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.

Bitrate

Audio English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo
Subtitles none
Features Release Information:
Studio: Chemical Burn

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen - 1.33:1

Edition Details:
• none

DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010
Amaray

Chapters 1

 

Comments

I have confirmation from Chemical Burn that the screener disc is NOT representative of the final product. The screener disc has no menus or chapter stops. The entirety of the film is windowboxed (I have no idea if this is what the retail disc will look like or if this is some method to distinguish a screener version from a retail version but there is nothing on the case or the disc-face label that define it as being a screener).

Although the film runs only 74 minutes, the disc's total runtime is more than double that because after the film ends, it plays again but it is not on a loop. It has been encoded onto the disc twice which explains the low bitrate (the DV image probably will look minutely better on the final disc). Audio quality is at the mercy of the original mix (some dialogue gets lost under the endless music and some screams and shouts occasionally clip). There are no extras but the final disc will include an award-winning short film titled A ROAD KILL CAUTIONARY TALE.

  - Eric Cotenas

  


Screen Captures


Uncropped image with borders on all sides

 

 

 


 

 

 


 

 

 


 

 

 


 

 

 


 

 

 


 


DVD Box Cover

CLICK to order from:

 

Distribution

Chemical Burn

Region 0 - NTSC

 



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