Reviews

All the positive reviews here on imdb this film has got (which is the only place you will find any) are very suspicious, as they all sound like canned PR material from the distributor. "Destined to become a cult classic" and "good old fashioned popcorn matinee", jeesh!! Of course I should expect as much from Asylum entertainment - purveyors of schlock even Charles Band wouldn't sit through.

As soon as I saw that the films lead was also the films writer, producer, and director, I knew I was in for trouble. First of all the kid can't act, neither can anyone else in the film, save for Richard Lynch who was barely watchable himself. Bad sound, bad effects and the story just plain sucked, a mishmash of rip-offs from the matrix, total recall, and James bond. And in a film that was about 90 min, there was only about 10 min of Zombie action.

The DVD box claims "its night, dawn, and day of the dead at once" Now that implies allot of living dead action, but nope. None to be found, just the films director running around with bad martial arts, and a performance that made me wince at every word. Don't rent, buy or even consider this film if you are a living dead head. You can tell how bad it is by reading all the fake reviews here that the filmmaker and his buddies probably put up themselves.

I saw this at a private screening of short films in L.A. before it made the festival rounds, and found it quite funny. It details the job interview of a woman who must resist scratching her breast. Good performances with subtle comedic touches, the only thing that felt odd for me was the "triple take" that the boss does, then again that's just me. Keep an eye out for the old man in drag, delicious!

Director William Malone seems to much more interested in creating surreal imagery than of telling a solid story. Its not all his fault though, I hold more blame in the writers, for the story is what is really weak here. Still the premise was good and possibly salvageable, and Malone fell through in making it watchable. This is too bad because Creature and House on haunted Hill were great. Everyone has their bad days, and this film is one of them. I still feel that Malone is a very good director, and I will not hold a grudge because of this. I look forward to his next film.

If you dismiss the story, you will experience in this film a very creative collection of frightening visuals. Abstract and quite violent, Malone is very talented in creating what I call sightmares; an artists perception of what evil is capable of. So in sum, for a horror film it falls short, but for gruesome eye candy it gets a gold star.

Well what do you want, if you see the Full Moon on the back of the box, you know its late night cheese! All the films produced by Band under the EMPIRE label were great, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Troll, even Zone Troopers was fun. However when Empire Films folded, so did the quality of their films. So Full Moon is born, and they had themselves a pretty good little gravy train with Paramount distributing their flicks, but even they got tired of the same old vampire and Puppet Master junk, and subsequently pulled out. The pictures where pretty bad with big studio money, and without it they got worse.

Case in point with Voodoo Academy. Like most other DeCoteau films, there are allot of pretty young men running around in their boxer briefs, and a whole lotta fake lightening. Throw in an uninspired story, about 6 million candles, and actors who look like their bored and you have what I consider one of the worst Full Moon pictures to date.

I'm not going to beat this dead horse anymore by talking about everything that's wrong with this story, so I will talk about the only thing I consider good about this film, and that's the DVD Directors cut version. Now your probably wondering, if its so bad why would I want to see the director's cut? Two reasons; one, I wanted to see the footage that was so offensive that even Charles Band wanted it cut from the original release. It turned out to be 20 minutes of harmless male erotica (85 % of horror film rentals are by girls anyway) ho hum big freakin deal. The other reason I wanted this DVD is for the audio commentary.

DeCoteau talks at length about the process of "by the numbers low budget cookie cutter filmmaking". This is invaluable for film students like myself. Sometimes you learn how to do things right when you see how they are done wrong. All criticisms aside, Band has a very well tuned filmmaking machine (features shot in 4 days, that 24 pages a day!), and the special features of this DVD gives rare insight into Full Moon, the makers of films so bad they're, well bad.

Well what do you want, if you see the Full Moon on the back of the box, you know its late night cheese! All the films produced by Band under the EMPIRE label were great, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Troll, even Zone Troopers was fun. However when Empire Films folded, so did the quality of their films. So Full Moon is born, and they had themselves a pretty good little gravy train with Paramount distributing their flicks, but even they got tired of the same old vampire and Puppet Master junk, and subsequently pulled out. The pictures where pretty bad with big studio money, and without it they got worse.

Case in point with Voodoo Academy. Like most other DeCoteau films, there are allot of pretty young men running around in their boxer briefs, and a whole lotta fake lightening. Throw in an uninspired story, about 6 million candles, and actors who look like their bored and you have what I consider one of the worst Full Moon pictures to date.

I'm not going to beat this dead horse anymore by talking about everything that's wrong with this story, so I will talk about the only thing I consider good about this film, and that's the DVD Directors cut version. Now your probably wondering, if its so bad why would I want to see the director's cut? Two reasons; one, I wanted to see the footage that was so offensive that even Charles Band wanted it cut from the original release. It turned out to be 20 minutes of harmless male erotica (85 % of horror film rentals are by girls anyway) ho hum big freakin deal. The other reason I wanted this DVD is for the audio commentary.

DeCoteau talks at length about the process of "by the numbers low budget cookie cutter filmmaking". This is invaluable for film students like myself. Sometimes you learn how to do things right when you see how they are done wrong. All criticisms aside, Band has a very well tuned filmmaking machine (features shot in 4 days, that 24 pages a day!), and the special features of this DVD gives rare insight into Full Moon, the makers of films so bad they're, well bad.

Director William Malone seems to much more interested in creating surreal imagery than of telling a solid story. Its not all his fault though, I hold more blame in the writers, for the story is what is really weak here. Still the premise was good and possibly salvageable, and Malone fell through in making it watchable. This is too bad because Creature and House on haunted Hill were great. Everyone has thier bad days, and this film is one of them. I still feel that Malone is a very good director, and I will not hold a grudge because of this. I look forward to his next film.

If you dismiss the story, you will experience in this film a very creative collection of frightening visuals. Abstract and quite violent, Malone is very talented in creating what I call sightmares; an artists perception of what evil is capable of. So in sum, for a horror film it falls short, but for gruesome eye candy it gets a gold star.