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(More customer reviews)When country performer Trace Adkins shows up in "TRAILER PARK OF TERROR" looking like a 'Thunderkiss '65'-era Rob Zombie, it's tempting to write this flick off as a 'Texas Chainsaw Wannabe', or maybe a 'House Of 1000 Ideas That Have Been Done A Million Times Before'. But Adkins gets credit from me, because for the brief time he's on-camera, he does manage a pretty impressive screen presence.
The same goes, shockingly enough, for the rest of "TRAILER PARK..." as well. Having sat through countless horror duds that purported to be more 'gruesome' or 'over-the-top' than anything seen before, I can't say that "TRAILER PARK..." is any more extreme than any of its gore-soaked precursors. And it's amusing & worth some chuckles, but high art this AIN'T. Yet, at the same time, "TRAILER PARK..." defies the odds, and avoids being just a forgettable, one-trick, cheapie horror gimmick. Sure, the whole redneck vibe is in full swing, with your standard. broadly-generalized mobile-home caricatures (bigoted, overweight, slovenly, undereducated malcontents and floozies) romping around and saying "y'all" a lot. And the deep-fried rockabilly soundtrack, though groovy and energetic, is one hell of a cliche. But... the nice thing about "TRAILER PARK..." is that despite its limited trappings and Z-grade pedigree, it's still much better written, acted, and overall produced than it probably deserved to be.
Regardless of the nod & wink (or is it a "shout-out"?) early on in the film to gore-meister/hack director Herschell Gordon Lewis, this film aspires to be a least a teensy bit better than just a brainless splatter-show. The gore FX on display here ARE copious and well-crafted, with great demon/zombie makeups, amputations, disembowelments, and a particularly painful set-piece involving homemade 'beef jerky'. But "TRAILER PARK..." is also decent during the parts in between, the lines are delivered snappily, and the back-stories of the various seedy residents of the park are actually sort-of interesting, unlike so many other flashback sequences in lesser films. What stands out about "TRAILER PARK...", and what left me with an overall feeling of goodwill towards this picture, is that the filmmakers clearly opted NOT to just rush through everything else and throw a quick, bloody gag-reel together and call it done. It actually works because it feels like at least a little thought was actually put into making it a slick, rockin', free-wheeling trip through Hayseed Hell. In short, it's much, MUCH more skillfully produced than most of the other straight-to-dvd crap out there today.
It ends up feeling like it belongs next to some of the better 80's genre flicks many of us remember fondly, such as "RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD" or "RE-ANIMATOR", while featuring the stylistic flourishes of more contemporary entries like "FROM DUSK 'TIL DAWN", "DEAD & BREAKFAST", or "2001 MANIACS" (which is, itself, a remake of a Lewis gore film, and would go GREAT on a double-bill with "TRAILER PARK..."). But these comparisons, depending on your cinematic tastes and experience, may be meaningless... so let's just say that "TRAILER PARK OF TERROR" is highly recommended for late-nite viewing, especially if you're in the mood to kick back and get in touch with your "violent, cackling, undead-inner-hillbilly" side.
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