Machete Joe (2010)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

A lot of fun.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Summary is that this movie isn't worth watching. But the really bad thing is that it could have been good if they taken the same care throughout the whole movie. The camera-work was decent and showed that they cared enough to try. Others have said the acting was terrible, but there I disagree. I found the actors believable, it's just that their dialogue (1) didn't tell me anything to get interested in them so that they were all generic characters and (2) the script had the characters doing unbelievable things and didn't flesh out the story of Machete Joe at all. He's just sort of . . . there.If the script had been written so that the characters had something to say and were doing things that were believable it would've been interesting. As it is, it's not worth a rental.

Outside of the novelty of having blacks in predominant roles, this slice'n'dice opus offers nothing really new or surprising. The premise is formula stuff: A group of aspiring filmmakers find out the hard way that a local urban legend that they are making a movie about is real. Director Sasha Krane, working from a talky and generic script by Gordon Greene, not only relates the familiar story at a sluggish pace, but also crucially fails to generate any much needed tension or creepy atmosphere. Worse yet, the annoying characters spend the bulk of the screen time bickering and arguing with each other, thereby ensuring that they are decidedly less than appealing and sympathetic. Paul Campbell as the hideously disfigured titular killer just ain't that scary and the attempts to make him a pitiable tragic figure fall flat. Ernie Hudson as the amiable local sheriff and Art Evans as van driver Sammy are both wasted in minor nothing roles. While it's nice to see "Assault on Precinct 13" star Austin Stoker in a decent sized part, he's alas saddled with playing an obnoxiously pompous and arrogant jerk. The rest of the cast are passable at best. Fortunately, this movie does deliver on the gore, so it's not a total wash-out. That said, both the limp dissatisfying ending and Vincent Gillioz's standard hum'n'shiver score also leave something to be desired. However, the sharp cinematography by Christopher Wailings gives this picture a pleasing crisp look. A pretty blah and forgettable flick.

I haven't written a review for a film in quite a while but after watching this movie I feel compelled to do so!! I have NOTHING good to say about this movie at all!! The big stars of this film are Art Evans and Ernie Hudson but they only appear in this film a TOTAL of about 5 minutes COMBINED. The acting is horrendous, some of the worst I've EVER seen and I've seen MANY bad-acted movies. I would even put the movie "The Room" above this one in terms of better acted bad movies. There are NO redeeming qualities about this movie so I'm going to stop now because I just realized that I'm wasting my time reviewing a film that ALREADY wasted my time!!! Just stay away from Machete Joe!!!!

I find it very hard to review movies like this. I am a huge horror fan and I watch a lot of B Movie crap and you can't really say its horribly bad and to avoid it because you have to know what you're going into. The movie is bad...its just horrible...and its mind blowing to think that at least one of the IMDb reviews was a perfect 10/10 because that's just utter stupidity. There isn't anything redeemable about this. The acting is awful, its not even acting, the special effects are ridiculous, its not even gory because the kills are done off camera so that they could spend no money on special effects. But the cast has to know what they are doing is bad, they may even act bad on purpose, hoping they will making something so bad that it'll be good...a cult classic perhaps but Machete Joe will never reach that because its just plain stupid. I won't even spend time talking cast because they are all awful. I can't even imagine why Ernie Hudson (easily the biggest name in the film) would even have a cameo in this but he does. The only redemption for this is that you might get some chuckles out of how bad it truly is and for what its worth the story isn't a complete loss. Essentially a young boy watches his mother being raped, and then out of torture has his face brutally scarred and thus becomes a serial killer. The setting is awful, looks like plastic rocks and trees. Machete Joe isn't even a movie...its literally a joke. Even fans of the truly bad horror movies won't even find this watchable. Just steer clear of it. 1/10