A music video crew is all shook up as a masked marauder wields a hunka hunka homicide in THE BACKLOT MURDERS.
Sherman) and an FBI agent try to find and destroy the ship be- fore it is too late. Less exploit- ative than NIGHTBEAST, this works in plot components seem- ingly inspired by THE HIDDEN and the original ZEIRAM but to little avail. The use of 16mm gives the proceedings a more professional look than the DV movies Dohler has made in the interim with Joe Ripple (who has a supporting role here and also worked on the crew) but the pac- ing is slow and little of interest transpires. ALIEN RAMPAGE does represent a marginal tech- nical improvement over Dohler’s earlier work but, for better or (mostly) worse, both THE ALIEN FACTOR and NIGHTBEAST were more enjoyable than his current output. The presentation looks crisp
and clean, with some graininess intrinsic to the film gauge. Ste- reo is indicated on the keepcase but the audio is monaural in character and the shoot was evidently plagued by sound
problems, as much of the dia- logue is poorly looped. Two brief instances of tiling were ap- parent on our review copy. Ex- tras consist of a trailer, two still galleries (one devoted entirely to Baltimore cinema’s second fa- vorite son, George Stover), and some bloopers.
THE BACKLOT MURDERS
2001, Razor Digital Entertainment, DD-2.0/MA/LB/+, $9.99, 90m 12s, DVD-1
By Shane M. Dallmann Just as they’re about to shoot
their first professional music video on the Universal Pictures backlot, a barroom incident con- vinces the members of a band known as the Wiseguys to jetti- son their belligerent lyricist. The self-proclaimed “psycho” swears revenge. And wouldn’t you know it—the shoot itself is sabotaged when the Wiseguys and their girlfriends fall victim one by one to a masked madman. Is it the
disgruntled wordsmith? A sup- porting character with ulterior motives? Or some SCREAM-like combination of the above? Con- sidering that David DeFalco’s film (co-written with Paul Arens- burg and Steven Jay Bernheim) follows the pattern of trying to have it both ways (the charac- ters know and joke about all the murder movie clichés but find themselves unable to avoid them), the answer becomes ob- vious even in the early stages. Still, THE BACKLOT MURDERS isn’t without its occasional amusement value. Corey Haim (unrecognizable from his SIL- VER BULLET days) has fun as the cocky, clueless Wiseguy Tony, Priscilla Barnes does well as the agent who sees only dollar signs when starlets complain about female exploitation, and Charles Fleischer plays the gay director stereotype to his own advantage in an entertaining turn. The au- thentic backlot setting lends it- self to some jokes at the expense of today’s fans as it references
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