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The film has many negatives.
(1) The acting is way below par. It
would be below par for a porn film. I never heard of any of these
"actors", and neither has IMDb.
(2) The special effects are about as
bad as any film not made by Ed Wood.
(3) Well, you've read the plot
summary, so you know there's nothing original.
(4) The dialogue is routine stuff "We
have to leave now". "C'mon, don't tell me you believe those old
legends". Yadda yadda.
In the midst of the bad acting,
special credit must be given to Joshua Dodrill, whose performance as
Scarecrow #2 was only exceeded by his turn as Scarecrow #3. There is
a rumor that the Oscar committee may give him two of the five "best
supporting actor" nominations, because they just can't decide which
scarecrow was better.
There are some minor positives:
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(1) Some of the
photography is quite good, even though the camera movement and
editing were not especially proficient. The scenes from the 30s
actually look pretty darned good.
(2) There is a good skinny-dipping
scene.
(3) The ending credits include
funny outtakes which demonstrate the problems with no-budget
filmmaking. This was absolutely the best part of the film.
Aside from that, move along. Nothing to see here.
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TUNA's THOUGHTS
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Dark Harvest (2003) is a zero
budget horror with a very familiar plot. Three couples go to a
farm house for a week, even though they are warned that it is
haunted. The second night, really inept scarecrow skeleton
ghosts kill three of the six, not including the one they are
supposedly after. While the plot is old hat, they didn't follow
the usual formula. First, all of the gore is in act three.
Second, there is no nudity in act one. Third, none of the women
run, fall, hide behind a tree and die.
The couples are also somewhat unusual. We have a hetero couple,
a lesbian couple, and a mixed race (black and Caucasian) couple.
The acting is unbelievably bad. Not only do they all seem like
they are reading lines from a cue card, but they often breathe
in the wrong place, leading me to suspect that they had never
seen the lines before. That is possible, because two disasters
during the two week shoot caused massive rewrites. First, an
overgrown cemetery that figured prominently in the plot was
burned to the ground overnight, and then all of their barn props
were burgled.
There were some positives, most especially the daylight skinny
dipping scene. I found one of the gore scenes particularly
effective. One of the woman is hung from a cross like a
scarecrow using barbed wire, and presumed dead. We then see her
pulling her hands and feet through the barbed wire bindings to
escape. There is also one great line of dialogue.
"Alex, I think the bitch-strength Midol is in Aisle 2."
Decent camera work and good nudity is not quite enough, even
with special bad movie points, to give this more than a D+. |
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The
Critics Vote ...
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The People
Vote ...
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| The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is. My own
guideline:
A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film.
C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable).
D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre.
E
means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre.
F
means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for
fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C-
that often, because we like movies and we think that most of
them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know
that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below
C-.
Based on this description,
this is a D (Scoop)
to D+ (Tuna). Totally
unoriginal genre film with amateur acting and cheap effects.
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