• Straight to Video
• Director: Roy Knyrim
• Written by: Pat Coburn, Brian Patrick O'Toole, J. Victor Renaud
• Running Time: 92 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: R - Restricted
• Cast: Aime Wolf, Reggie Bannister, Peter Stickles, Nicole DuPort, Kristin Novak, Ky Evans, John Thomas, Chris Finch, Karol Garrison, Howard Berger, Gregory Nicotero, Bill Lloyd, Greg McDonald, Stephen Van Dorn, Aristide Sumatra, Brad Carlson, Damian Lea, Anna Mercedes Morris

I have an image in my head of Patrick Tantalo and a bunch of his Creep FX buddies sitting in a room brainstorming ways to promote their work. “Let’s make a movie that showcases our special effects craftsmanship,” I hear one of them saying. “All we need is a script which we could write on our bathroom breaks… We’ll get one of our make-up department buddies to direct it and, what the heck, we’ll get Greg Nicotero and a few other KNB FX guys to appear in it, and presto, we got ourselves a movie.” Yup, that’s definitely the thing knocking around my cranium when I was screening “Cemetery Gates”, a below average b-movie waste of fucking time and space -- designed specifically as a marketing trailer for a first rate FX team that only hardcore horror afficianados would recognize.

To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. The sheer abundance of beautifully executed gore sequences is about the only thing this film has going for it and even they grow tiresome about one hour past go. The characters are perfunctory and boring, including a hodge podge of stereotypes and thrown in typescripts that feel as though they stepped on set from another movie. Even the story itself feels like an extension of Stephen King’s original “The Crate” idea from “Creepshow” (and that’s not the only thing they lift from that far superior film -- falling tombstones, anyone?) with a few other clichéd nonsensical items tossed in to spice up the coughed up phlegm pile.

Medical testing on what they assume to be a bear propels two eco-activists (yeah, eco-activists – like we haven’t been there before) into stealing his ‘crate’ and driving it out to the nearby countryside – out near the old woodland cemetery where they buried some miners in the 1800s -- to release it back into the wild. At the same time, an aspiring filmmaker/student Hunter Belmont ("Skinned Alive" star Peter Stickles) is looking to make his first film – a zombie movie, no less, in hopes of pleasing his professor (with a zombie film?). So, with plenty of pot, alcohol and a cassette tape comprised of people farting (if only I was kidding), Hunter drags his five-man cast and crew up into the mountains to, yeah, you guessed it, the same woodland cemetery. Back at the lab, Hunter’s dad (Reggie Bannister) and Dr. Christine Kollar (Aime Wolf) are coming to terms with the reality of their own dire situation. It wasn’t a bear that the eco-vists ran off with but rather a genetically mutated Tasmanian Devil – the same type of thing we saw in “Creepshow” only with a darker, more menacing sheen. Considering that it killed Hunter’s mother some years earlier in a tragic accident, we know that it’s a wee bit dangerous. With shotguns and tranquilizers in hand, Kollar and Daddy Belmont make a mad dash to the forest in hopes of tracking down and eradicating the creature before it can get free and pose a threat. Little do they realize that their “Preshus” (as in 'Precious' -- yes, that’s its name) has gotten free and has been gnawing on everything human in sight including a pair of morons looking for gas, peyote toking KNB FX artists Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero, Hunter’s entire cast and crew (minus Hunter and girlfriend), a jogger, a drunken fisherman, a trio of 'Duke boy' redneck hicks and even a few rotting corpses.

The blood runs red and in gallons in so many kill scenes that after so long, the whole affair begins to drag like a Friday afternoon session of Parliament. Adding zilch to the narrative, cardboard characters swagger onto the screen with the sole purpose of being fodder for the Beast. With the exception of Nicotero and Berger, who are a momentary shocker in their funny and unexpected parts, and who come and go and then get killed in the film’s most gruesome slaughters, the remainder of the silage are a total waste. I mean how many times can a person watch an arm get torn from its socket before the eyes start to droop and the stop button looks enticing. No suspense. No build-up. No nothing.

So featureless and crude are Hunter’s crew/cast/friends shooting the zombie flick in the graveyard that I was completely zoned out to their activities and eventual fate. Seriously, Hunter seems to be aspiring to unfathomable heights of profundity offering a lengthy exposition on his zombie-film-to-be that’ll leave you howling at its absurdity – its obvious intention. I suspect that this is the director's way of throwing out a mocking “Fuck you!” to all young aspiring filmmakers everywhere who have their lofty goals of making great art deflated by the reality of their finished product. Nicole DuPort (2007's "Southern Gothic"), as the beautiful, doting girlfriend is tiresome and her constant nagging and manipulation left me wanting to throw her face first down the pit that housed the creature. Kristin Novak (2005's "Death Tunnel"), who slightly resembles “Reel Zombies” star Kalyn Carter, has some good scenes, and seems to revel in her freewheeling, ditzy character. I liked her, but I suspect that it’s only because I’m fond of Ms. Carter. Novak, aside from her single-digit characterization, also provides the film’s requisite nudity. Cult movie icon Reggie Banister (2008's "It Came from Trafalgar"), playing up the well-worn semi-mad scientist who can’t relate to his artiste son cliché, seems to be having a jolly good time. He does an admirable job keeping a straight face with material that he must have known was dreck. He never loses his stern veneer, approaching every scene as if he’s tackling Shakespeare... or taking a shit.

Surely gore fans will adore this film, which is nothing more than a vehicle for special effects grisliness. So many beheadings, severed limbs, rotting cadavers, amazingly violent stunts (some that’ll leave you wondering if people actually got injured), eviscerations and anything else you could dream up – all of which fits neatly into the film’s 92 minute runtime, yeah, gorehounds will be spanking it to this one like Nacho Martínez tossing off to Jesus Franco’s “Bloody Moon”. There’s nothing else to recommend about this film. Nothing. Nadda. To better articulate this, every instance a proverbial redshirt walked on screen to be monster kibble, I found myself tossing more glances at my newly purchased pair of shoes than at the disembowelment-fiesta playing out on screen. I can hear you saying about now, “So what’s the score fifth-string writer from some crappy obscure website that nobody reads?” Well, the Tasmanian Devil is like a jacked up on crank, tearing shit apart, big-teeth freak… of boredom. Maybe the appearance of a wisecracking sycophantic wabbit would have made this tolerable but I doubt it.

If you ever encounter a big pile of Tasmanian Devil dung in the woods, I would say that avoiding it is the smart thing to do. Personally, because I care about you, my two readers, for 92 minutes there, I was neck deep in it. Skip it!!

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Check out the trailer for "Cemetery Gates" if you dare.