With
renewed interest in mid-80s no-budget homegrown shockers such as Combat Shock, Street Trash, The Driller
Killer, The Last House on the Left, Mad
Foxes and Devil Story, it was
only a matter of time before Jim VanBebber’s ultraviolent urban gang warfare
film Deadbeat at Dawn rejoined the
ranks thanks to the studious efforts of Arrow Video. Somewhere between The Warriors and Class of
1984 with a fraction of those films’ respective budgets, this very
do-it-yourself homemade endeavor shot on rough 16mm film over the course of four
years by writer-director-star VanBebber is a gleefully over-the-top dose of
outlandish ultraviolence and bloodletting.
An
exceedingly simple visceral exercise in madness and mayhem, this grimy, nasty
little number chronicles the exploits of Goose (VanBebber), a brutal and
ruthless gang leader armed with nun chucks and a shotgun who tries to go
straight at the behest of his occultist girlfriend Christie (Megan
Murphy). Having been around the block
numerous times before with the likes of Death
Wish and the far classier Bring Me
the Head of Alfredo Garcia, we know the protagonist’s hiatus from violence
will only be brief and the rest of the picture is a gradual buildup in between
his depressed drunken sauntering through the urban landscape amid junkies and
drunks towards his inevitable thirst for revenge.
Not
a film one needs to think too hard about while watching, Deadbeat at Dawn is basically a student film designed to unleash
extreme hyperbolic and sometimes cartoonish ultraviolence and gore you’ll never
seen in a polished mainstream film from the Hollywood system. Acting of the misogynistic thugs,
impoverished reprobates and leering creeps is serviceable at best though some
performances from the cast members made up of friends and family are stronger
than others. Mainly though, this gritty
underground shocker is mostly a check-your-brain-at-the-door compendium of VanBebber
slicing and dicing his way through gang members with some death defying
homegrown stunts that would make Sweet
Sweetback’s Melvin Van Peebles blush.
The most apt description
one could give of this resurrected exploitation flick is that it is an
unadulterated trashterpiece. While I
myself enjoyed the Hell out of it, this absurdly outlandishly violent thing
is liable to turn most casual moviegoers off.
Fans of the trashterpiece theater, however, are likely to get a good
swift kick out of Deadbeat at Dawn which
as is leaves an impression on the viewer that’s hard to immediately shake. There’s just something about clumsily
rendered roundhouse kicks, heads being bashed in, throats being ripped out by
bare hands, multiple stabbings and hands blown free of their fingers that makes
fans of Troma-era gore fests giddy. Deadbeat at Dawn won’t win any elite film
accolades anytime soon but bloodthirsty hounds foaming at the mouth salivating
for a chunk of fresh meat will find plenty to chew on with this certifiable gut
cruncher.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki
