Review by
Sue Finn
Directed by: Aaron K. Carter
Starring: Mel Novak, Irwin Keyes, Ben Woolf, Juliette Danielle, Veronica Ricci
A suited up yuppie asks the pink mohawked bartender (Vince) about renting
the ‘country’ themed bar for an office party, but our punk bartender
excuses himself to do some shady business with a group of black-donned men
who are clearly there for criminal pursuits.
Yuppie (Frankie) takes a moment to overshare about his ‘controlling’
girlfriend before Gio the hit man shows up to waste the men in black.
Turns out, Gio and Frankie are both guns for hire.
Boss-man Mister Kinski (scenery-chewer Mel Novak) requests Gio’s
presence and orders him to eliminate his partner Frankie.
“You have an hour to kill”, he tells him.
After this we are treated to a very long opening credits sequence
featuring iconic shots of LA life before we get down to the business of
the anthology horror film...
While our hitmen drive around LA, they tell each other stories which make
up the bulk of the movies runtime.
The first story ‘Valkyries Bunker’, is about an abandoned Nazi hideout and
a group of girls in the '80s who, looking for a marijuana patch, stumble
upon said bunker.
They each meet off-screen sticky ends in an anticlimactic denouement.
Meanwhile, between tales, the hitmen flashback to their own exploits in
vignettes that add little to the narrative.
The next story told is ‘Assacre’ which is as crude as its title, and tells
about a charmless vlogger who intends to eat a 10 pound burrito in a speed
eating competition. When a new winner is announced our protagonist and the
previous champ decide to take flatulent bloody revenge.
Next up is ‘Hog Hunters’, a tale of a vile bestiality fetishist and his
hogs, and a misogynistic rapey bowling club who are disgusting antiheroes.
Yes it’s as repellent white trash nasty as it sounds and though I suspect
it's meant to be Troma-style fun, it's really just gross and made me want
to take a long hot shower.
The wraparound story is resolved in the final chapter that features rival
crime bosses and a lame shootout.
Written, directed and produced by Aaron K. Carter, this was
obviously a labour of love for the film-maker, and as a supporter of
independent film, I wish I had enjoyed it more, but sadly it fell short of
what it could have been.
The banter between the two hitmen (Frankie Pozos and
Aaron Guerro – both much better than the material) works well, but
the short stories feel like ideas rather than fully fleshed tales and
needed a lot more work before they were committed to screen.
Nothing is authentic to the selected time periods, the dialogue is
cartoonish and the film quality is shabby to say the least, but if you can
embrace the cheese and cheapness you may enjoy some of the vignettes.
For me the ugliness got old quick and while I enjoy a good genre movie as
much as the next girl, these shorts were not clever enough, nor had enough
heart to push through the issues they were burdened with.
The acting is actually well above expected and some of the actors have
charisma a-plenty, but the anthology parts of this anthology movie let
them down; and so this hour and half movie was about an hour too long.
An Hour to Kill is on Amazon Prime
Video US now. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
