Once the inevitable horde of ravenous, blood-streaked ghouls makes an appearance and charges after our heroes, the movie quickly settles into a run-fight-zombies-run-some-more scenario that keeps moving (it runs only about 70 minutes plus credits), but never really goes anywhere. The early sequences of the three driving and walking down empty streets are the movie’s most impressive, not just for their stark atmosphere but for the fact that the nonpro filmmakers were able to accomplish them on a tiny budget. A trio of guys decide to forego the bash and head into the city to catch a bar concert-and as they hit the highway at what should be rush hour, it proves to be strangely deserted. Cut to a group of Florida high-schoolers who are having the usual problems-bullies, getting cute girls to notice them-as they plan to attend, or not, what promises to be the party of the year (even though a bit of dialogue suggests it’s being held on a Monday night). The ingredients are all extremely familiar, starting with a prologue in a military/scientific morgue where an experimental corpse gets feisty and chows down on a worker. It’s thus appropriate, but a little disappointing, that Automaton Transfusion doesn’t demonstrate any progression beyond the aforementioned features on a narrative level either. Though well-mastered, the disc’s 2.35:1 transfer is anything but slick, which was clearly the intention. Although it was shot on digital video, Automaton Transfusion has been postproduced to bear the grainy, gritty, jittery, high-contrast look of small-format celluloid. Bookwalter and Leif Jonker were passionately crafting microbudget ghoul epics like The Dead Next Door and Darkness on Super-8 film. Yet as much as it typifies a few recent genre trends, the generation this movie seems most representative of actually flourished two decades ago, when grassroots auteurs like J.R. “Every Generation Has a Horror Film That Defines Its Culture…This Is That Film,” the trailer on Dimension Extreme’s Automaton Transfusion DVD hyperbolically states. Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 8, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |