Manhunt...

I actually won this DVD via the Melon Farmers website (a site all about censorship related issues, primarily UK stuff) - a website which has inspired me in several of my DVD purchases (and indeed, in hunting down the uncut versions). Anyway, they did a competition for a copy (three actually) of this Norwegian horror flick, and I recently sat down to watch it.

Immediately you can tell where this movie's allegiances lie - The Last House on the Left (David Hess' "Wait For The Rain" opens the movie) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (bunch of kids in the middle of nowhere travelling in a camper van coming acropper of some undesirables, set in 1974), then add in a little touch of The Evil Dead (there's even a list of "fake shemps" in the credits) and you should know whereabouts you're going to be at ... except in Norwegian.

It's a low budget production, shot on digital and coloured appropriately by draining much of the greenery from the scenery (if I dare get a bit rhythmic for a moment) - it features a sparse script with nothing much to offer in the way of originality, but this is a low budget exploitational horror flick after all. You'll gradually tick off a list of genre moments as you progress through the trim, but appropriate, 75 minutes running time.

Then there's the characters - to be honest this is where I got a bit frustrated - "Roger" (who owns aforementioned camper van) is a complete and utter twat throughout, so you don't care a bugger about him. Then there's "Camilla", who is frustratingly loud whenever they need to be quiet - yelling "ROGER?!", or constantly asking filler questions like she feels she has to fill the life-saving silence with something lest she go for five seconds without hearing the sound of her own voice. I literally lost count of how many times she was told to "be quiet" and "shut up" throughout the movie, there's at least three instances in the movie when this happens, and within each instance she's told several times ... you're trying to escape from man hunters - shut up and stop giving away your position (and stop annoying me)!

Then there's a brother and sister, who I was generally neutral towards (although the brother was often the one expressing my own frustration towards Camilla's constant noise-making). Chuck in some grimey looking rednecks, a hitch-hiker (*looks at the TCM remake* nod nod, wink wink), and a gaggle of man hunters and you've pretty much got your cast.

Gore, however, is where Manhunt stands most confidently. There's not a ton of it by any means, but when you do get treated to a bit of the old claret, you'll get what you paid for so-to-speak. Aside from a couple of stand-out moments, the gore wasn't especially inventive, but it's good enough to keep you going.

Good for a watch for genre fans with a production which shows promise for future endeavours from those behind it, but it's probably not going to stick with you for especially long.