Review: Excreamer

Excreamer

Director: Shane Mather

2002

Comedy/Horror

Aliens, hostile toilets, a lunatic scientist and a rampage contagion that reminds of classic zombie symptoms. This is only some of the things this movie contains. The background is that NASA sent up a secret spaceship, full of toilets, into space in 1971. The reasons for this is still commonly unknown except for those who occupies the most influential positions in the power structures hierarchy Many years later when the spaceship reappears on earth, an alien species has taken control of the toilets and sets about to make use of them in their own demented plans Suddenly, people all around the globe start behaving like they’re crazy and turns into perverted maniacs.

Is it really possible not to like a film with all these elements? It seems to be as good as it gets as long as the twisted plot is concerned. At least that’s the feeling I got from reading the storyline. I would, however, have liked some more contexts. It feels a bit like there are some scenes that are put together just for the heck of it, and for the sole purpose to put it out on DVD. Naturally there’s mitigating circumstances as the movie itself had absolutely no budget, and you more or less have to enjoy the good parts of it rather than disliking the bad.

This is absurdity combined with splatter and the most important thing about it isn’t the skills of the actors. They simply don’t have to meet the award winning standards for their contribution in a production of this kind. Also, there’s no point in getting irritated by the films lack of logic, the absurdities just have to speak for themselves. That’s part of, if not the entire point of, the humour itself.

As far as I’m concerned, I felt that there was a little too much poop in the movie. The zombie-like decease is namely spread though shit - through the mouth that is. How this came to be is uncertain since there is no distinctive coprophagy to fall back on. My own theory is that the toilet seats contaminate humans through regular use, through the intestines and through the mouth. I honestly wish that more time were spent visualizing of how the toilets chase the humans, since there since some of these scenes are just hilarious to watch!

The movie itself is just about 63 minutes long, but it’s enough. It feels as if you don’t need to se any more of the special effects by that time. It’s noticeable that the Mather brothers doesn’t master the effects in full and in some cases the blood looks more like beetroot juice than blood that I’m happy with. In this area they’ve done a lot better job with the poop effects. There is also some CGI involved, which gives the film a kind of an amateurish sci-fi feel (that I like). But this technique has, luckily enough, not been used whenever the violence is concerned and its use is limited to the environment and things like that.