Director – Greg DeLiso (Canada’s Best Kept Secret)
Starring – Peter Litvin (The Room Rap), Georgia Kate Haege (A Haunting), and J. J. Brine (Goth Chlyde: Re-Creation)
Release Date – 2016
Rating – 4/5
Tagline – “Blood, babes and…bagels”
I love stupid horror movies. Always have and always will. I love inanimate objects killing people like vacuum cleaners in Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars, condoms in Killer Condom, tomatoes in the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes series, and I’m almost certain I bought a killer banana movie titled Banana’s Mother Fuckers. The sillier the better to me. That is why I love Troma so fucking much. I have been following Troma and their releases for well over a decade now after I watched the first Toxic Avenger when I was in high school. These movies are always side splitting and filled with ridiculous amounts of blood and gore. They may not always be good but they are always entertaining.
Sometime ago Troma sent over a press release for their newest acquisition Hectic Knife. This looked right up my alley and I had plan on grabbing a copy from the Troma table at Cinema Wasteland in October. A few weeks ago actor Peter Litvin reached out to me to review the film. I was expecting to have a few laughs and see some oddball humor but I was not expecting this outlandish comedy that had me laughing from beginning to end. Thank you Peter for reaching out to me.
**Spoiler Alert**The film follows Hectic Knife (Litvin) who is a knife wielding vigilante trying to rid his city of crime. Every day and night he spends his time killing thieves and drug dealers when he’s not practicing his sweet knife skills. He had trained for years but now he has met his match. A new villain, Piggly Doctor (Brine), has moved in and is now blowing up children. He must partner with unlikely people including his estranged family and the father that abandoned him to stop Piggly Doctor from blowing up other children.**Spoiler Alert**
I judge some movies by how Troma they are. That sentence doesn’t make sense in literary terms but horror and movie fans know exactly what I mean. Troma is the gold standard when it comes to no budget “what the fuck” movies. Most Troma releases, whether it be Troma originals or Troma distributed films, always have stories that makes you wonder how any rational person could come up with it. Hectic Knife is a Troma movie if I’ve ever seen one. It has laughs, crazy dialogue, and an unexpected story.
Acting in this one is bad but it’s bad on purpose. The cast is acting out their scenes as unconventional characters so their acting is not what you would expect to see in a more serious horror film. I don’t want to say they suck or that they are not trying because they are but the film is a comedy first and foremost so the cast is acting accordingly. Almost like the cast of Brain Donors.
The story for this one is a beautiful medley of arthouse, comedy, action, 80s street justice, with a little martial arts. When I say a little martial arts I mean it follows the theme of the Lixploitation flicks of the late 60s and 70s but doesn’t actually have any kung fu. The writing for this one was either extremely simple and it just came to the writing team or it was very complicated to get all the pieces to fit together. Either way, I applaud the two.
The film had some predictable humor, as well as, humor I was not expecting. My favorite was when the characters would narrate the point the of the scene or audibly tell the viewer the plot devices being used. That added a whole new level of comedy to the film. With that being said, there was a few scenes that I did not jive with. Some were very dry and didn’t have the humor the rest of the film had to pull the viewer through it. These scenes are far and few but I can’t give a review and saw the film is flawless…
Finally, the film does have some on screen kills. As you suspected, the kills are mostly done by knives. We get some bloody stabs and throat slashes but that is pretty much the extent of that. The effects are not that great but the blood does flow freely. On top of that we are treated to several different visual effects from stop motion to computer generated. Overall, Hectic Knife is an impressive piece of guerrilla film making. The film incorporates different styles, techniques, and genres which results in a pretty entertaining no budget flick. I highly recommend this one.
