The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

The distinguishing feature of Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill was consistency. It consistently displayed utter incompetence in every element of the movie, without exception. In so many bad movies you can point to a good idea, or a good performance, or something good. Not here. This thing sucked thoroughly in every possible way.

Admittedly, a few things sucked worse than others, so maybe it wasn’t completely consistent. The music stands out for dishonorable mention. Ralph Rieckermann, you should never be allowed near music again. And seriously, why did such terrible music have to be played so often and so long? It was way too much music by general film standards.

The acting was also amazingly, universally bad. Stilted delivery, scenery chewing overacting and missed cues, sometimes all from one actor in one scene? Brilliant! Almost all the actors also had the dubious distinction of being unappealing in every way, although I have to admit the final girl/lead Chelsea Jean was okay. She couldn’t act at all, but I have a thing for spunky redheads.

The direction and cinematography — both by Byron Werner — were clumsy, amateurish and distractingly bad. Amazingly, Werner makes his living as a cinematographer. Admittedly, on crappy, low-budget projects, but still. This was bad. The shots were consistently framed in a way you couldn’t tell what the fuck was going on, or at least couldn’t see it even if you could guess by context. Far too many cheesy, MTV-style effects were used, mostly at random times. Everything was poorly lit and most of it was underexposed. According to the credits this was shot on film, yet it managed to look a lot like crappy digital video. The editing sucked, too. There were obvious mistakes in shots, cuts that lingered too long, cuts that cut too soon. The editing wasn’t done by Werner, but I assume it was under his direction, so I will blame him for that too.

And we haven’t even gotten to the plot, yet. Ready for a shocker? The story was terrible. It started with a flaky premise, shot that full of holes, then fell apart halfway through. A drug dealer stumbles onto a cursed town and gets eaten by zombies. Then his drug dealer boss carjacks a van full of teens (seriously? a big-time coke dealer can’t afford his own car?) on their way to some tournament and forces them to go to the town to find the drugs and money. Zombies come for them. Luckily, one of the kids knows all about the legend of the town and the horrible, evil, no-good undead Confederate that haunts it! Unluckily, that proves to be completely useless! Luckily, one of the girls (the one I liked) turns out to look like his sister! She uses this to trick him after everyone else is dead and mercifully, the film ends.

So, yeah. I’m afraid Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill earns a spot in the hall of shame. One of the worst movies I have ever seen.