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Aaron Gaffey,
Kyle Yaskin,
Nadia Angelini,
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Joe Castro
see all cast/crew...
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: Live/Artisan
: Action, Quest, Revenge
: 89 min.
: English
: Spanish
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Forget the old anti-drug television commercial with the egg and the frying pan, the drug-addicted psychopath in Joe Castro's Jackhammer Massacre is all the ammunition that Nancy Reagan would ever need to convince youngsters to "Just Say No." A formerly successful businessman whose dangerous drug addiction leaves him jobless and indebted to a ruthless drug dealer, Jack Magnus is injected with a lethal dosage and left for dead by the pusher for failing to make payment. Awakening to find that he is stronger than ever before, paranoid Jack embarks on a brutal killing spree that the city - and the viewer - will never forget. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
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| Straightedge Horror?
by nyetah
November 28, 2004 - 11:30 AM PST
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0 out of 1 members found this review helpful
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The moniker is appropriate but I haven't decided whether or not the term "straightedge horror" is necessarily a dichotomy or not. Although I guess it's somewhat of a moot point because, ultimately, when it comes down to movies people just want to know, "Is it good?" Or, "Is it bad?"
It is cynical to trivialize the agony that full-blown drug addiction can cause in the real world. We all know that it can take friends from us and it can take us away from friends. Why is it though, that so many addicts seem to completely lose their creative edge and gain an unequivocal sense of what they think is "Right" when they give up drugs and find sobriety? True, creativity is painful. But so is dogma.
The fact is, "The Jackhammer Massacre" doesn't explore the beauty of the last breaths of a drug addicted president in the throws of relapse as he is tossed from office into the pits of hell by none-other than G-d herself. Rather, it asks the viewer to care for a group of clean-cut, muscular jocks as they take off their shirts to show their apparent sober virility and then are systematically slaughtered by a paranoid, PCP-Meth-Heroine fueled man with a non-tangling, extra-long extension chord.
If you are coming down off of a week-long meth-binge and you are looking for further evidence why this is not a good choice, then keep the lights on, turn up the volume and take notes. For the non-12-steppers, the movie is a bit flat to watch -- just like it's arduous for most of us view an hour-and-a-half of women getting brutalized just to prove that abusing women is bad. There is a clear and admirable vision behind this film and it may be valuable to certain GreenCiners in its current form. But the story could have used the touch of someone not so entrenched in the self-admiration of sobriety. If you want to check out some decent examples of low-budget gore effects and hallucination scenes then turn down the sound a bit, burn a spliff and throw on a Suffocation CD. But for a better example of low-budget, anti-drug horror that works, see Frank Henenlotter's film "Brain Damage." |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 3.60)
5 Votes
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