DOG BYTES


Beaten to a pulp, small-time villain Nick Rendell awaits a gruesome fate in Darren Ward's A DAY OF VIOLENCE.


Toad Waves Occurred Last Night


A DAY OF VIOLENCE


2009, MVD Visual, 94m 53s, $16.95, DVD-0 By Lloyd Haynes


Writer-director Darren Ward’s


second feature following 1997’s SUDDEN FURY, this is a not-en- tirely-successful combination of British horror and post-Guy


Ritchie crime film. Bookended, SUNSET BLVD. style, by afterlife narration from Mitchell (Nick Rendell) as he lies dead on a mortician’s table, the story of his final 48 hours is told in flashback. Mitchell, a debt collector for small- time Southampton crook Casey (Harold Gasnier), steals rather than collects the £100,000 he dis- covers in the squalid flat of a junkie client. Switching his alle- giance to Boswell (Victor D. Thorn), one of Casey’s nastier rivals,


8


Mitchell learns that the stolen money belongs to his new em- ployer. Realizing that he’s a dead man if Boswell finds out the truth, Mitchell plans to abscond with the cash and reunite with his estranged wife, but doesn’t count on the now- dead addict providing Boswell with damning evidence of his theft. Released straight to DVD in Britain and making its US debut


with this 1.85:1 release, A DAY OF VIOLENCE demonstrates Ward’s boldness as a director of violent set-pieces: a stand-out se- quence involves someone being strung up by his ankles and cas- trated with a pair of garden shears, a scene far more gruesome and dis- turbing than a similar one in Steven


R. Monroe’s remake of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010). A later se- quence in which a panic-stricken Mitchell faces a similar fate is

Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94