Sawed (DVD)

...latest DVD he'd received - Sawed (also known as Devon's Ghost: Legend of the Bloody Boy).

STORYLINE

The plot is flimsy, to say the least, but the gist is that 10 years ago, in a small town in America, a 7 year old boy went missing. He was presumed killed by his drink and drug addled parents, who became minor celebrities through the media circus surrounding their trial, until they too went missing, along with their high-priced ...
...Boy, who was reputed to have killed his parents with a baseball bat. The film starts in the same town at the present day, just before The Bloody Boy returns and goes on a killing spree.

Somehow, having read a blurb that was probably similar to mine, my idiot best friend still saw fit to add this to the list of dodgy, second-rate B-film horrors on his rental list! To be fair, had a budget of some description been spent on the film and ... more

Whilst monthly DVD rental packages undoubtedly bring much joy to many film fans, they are also ready and waiting to heap woe on the renter who adds titles to pad out their list, even though they've not heard of them, much less read any reviews on them! So it was that, last night, I went to a friend's house and watched the latest DVD he'd received - Sawed (also known as Devon's Ghost: Legend of the Bloody Boy).

STORYLINE

The plot is flimsy, to say the least, but the gist is that 10 years ago, in a small town in America, a 7 year old boy went missing. He was presumed killed by his drink and drug addled parents, who became minor celebrities through the media circus surrounding their trial, until they too went missing, along with their high-priced defence lawyer. Thus arose the urban myth of The Bloody Boy, who was reputed to have killed his parents with a baseball bat. The film starts in the same town at the present day, just before The Bloody Boy returns and goes on a killing spree.

Somehow, having read a blurb that was probably similar to mine, my idiot best friend still saw fit to add this to the list of dodgy, second-rate B-film horrors on his rental list! To be fair, had a budget of some description been spent on the film and thus a partially competent cast and crew been hired, they could have made one of those half-assed horrors that are so bad they have a kind of cheesy charm, but seemingly this was made on a budget of pence (or more properly cents) and so falls short even of the heady heights of cheesy charm!

CAST / ACTING

It's difficult to know just where to begin dissecting this tripe, but we'll start with the actors, none of whom you'll have heard of... lucky you!

The main cast members are Symphony (Karan Ashley), who has a link with the Bloody Boy because she actually saw the kid, all covered in blood, back when she was also a seven year old child, her boyfriend Craig (Jonathan Cruz) and close friends Genesis (Kristy Vaughan) and Josh (Johnny Yong Bosch). The acting was thoroughly amateurish from start to finish. Most of the time it was beyond wooden, though this probably wasn't helped by the bilge that is the script (we'll come to that later)! I don't want to labour the point of how bad the acting is, but I really can't, and wouldn't want to, remember seeing worse acting in any film or TV production.

Some of the minor characters actually do a marginally better job than the main cast, including Freedom (Matt Moore) who is, for the most part, just about believable as a slightly geeky, slightly Goth (he wears mascara) high school kid who happens to be an expert on the Bloody Boy. Funnily enough, the child actors playing the parts of the main cast as children actually do a much better job than their older counterparts, although their roles are obviously much less demanding.

For my money, the villain in these types of films is usually the star of the show and thus a decent bad guy can make a poor film... well... slightly less so. In this case, Devon Walker a.k.a. The Bloody Boy is played by the distinctly not 17 year old (the guy must be late twenties at the very least) Reza Bahador. Bahador actually manages to be fairly intimidating at times, but mostly when he's not moving. When he stands in the shadows, looking fairly big and athletically built, in his baseball outfit with the cap pulled down to conceal his face, wielding his unlikely weapon - a baseball bat with a buzzsaw blade sticking out of it (hence the title, I assume), he is a moderately menacing, if slightly ludicrous, figure. When he walks, however, his attempt at a menacing, purposeful stride looks awkward and unnatural and when he's forced to nearly run, whilst struggling to maintain this gait, he looks just a tad silly! To add insult to injury, I noticed that the buzzsaw blade is only half a blade clamped into the bat, rather than a full blade embedded, and the teeth are pointing the wrong way to have much effect when he swings it!

One further point regarding the cast is that, whilst American films often cast much older actors as teenagers, the casting here seems to have ignored age almost completely at times. The Two main girls could pass for late teens, whilst the two main guys are clearly older than that. One of the cheer leaders looks like she's in her thirties and one guy in the party scene must have been well into his thirties - the guy had a full goatie beard and he wasn't even hidden away at the back of the shot!

MY OVERALL OPINION

Everything about this film screams cheap. In fact, I'll bet most people would have no trouble believing that this was a High School project! The script is downright awful and the dialogue seems about as natural as the contents of a Playboy bunny's bra! The music is appalling and the special effects are neither special nor even worthy of the name effects; with the severed limb in one scene being blatantly rigid and the blood varying from scene to scene between bright red and near black.

I'm not somebody who often notices things like the quality of camera work and editing, but in this case the camera work was shaky and the editing was a joke! One particular scene stands out where two guys are talking and the camera keeps panning wobblingly back and forth between them, with numerous choppy cuts between angles that all combines to give the cinematic equivalent of sea-sickness (well, you will be sick of see-ing it... bum bum!)! To make matters worse, the colour shifts perceptibly as we cut between the two camera angles!

With a running time of only 79 minutes, there is little time to unfold the plot and fill us in on the back story, so much of the script is clunky exposition designed to get the relevant information across as quickly as possible, thus leaving time for the death and fight scenes. The fight scenes struck me as somewhat familiar in style to something I'd seen before, but where had I seen that...? After a minute it hit me - Mighty Morphing Power Rangers! The frantic pace and martial arts or pseudo-martial arts style was highly reminiscent of the Power Rangers and sadly that's the best thing about the film! The fights are actually pretty well executed and, once you've got over the surprise of Symphony and Josh being high school kids with kick-ass moves, are actually quite enjoyable! It's slightly odd to watch Josh go from lying bloodied and in pain to jumping about, kicking and punching like a ninja on speed, and it's a touch odd that a girl with the martial arts training of Symphony should trip over quite so often, but it's still far better than the rest of this dismal piece!

It wasn't until I came to write this review and checked out the cast listings on IMDB (Internet Movie Database) that I found out why this is - Karan Ashley and Johnny Yong Bosch are ex-Power Rangers! Furthermore, Johnny is listed as co-director (with Koichi Sakamoto), Karan is down as one of the producers and they are both listed as being involved with the editting. It all starts to make sense! I'm guessing that this was financed by Mr. Yong Bosch and possibly even Ms. Ashley, though she may merely have been roped in to help her ex-ranger buddy out. Who knows? More importantly, who cares!?!

The fact that the two main characters come from a children's TV background may explain the total lack of nudity in the film. Bare in mind that even horror films with reasonable budgets tend to throw in some nudity, with extra nudity often added where the budget is lower, and you'd half expect the girls to be naked most of the time, but all we get is one bra scene and a bit of kissing - pah! What's the point in that! In fact, it makes me wonder where the 18 certificate came from, because there's not much bad language, no nudity and not even very much gore! I seriously doubt that this would frighten a 10 year old, so the rating would probably seem harsh even to those of the Mary Whitehouse school of film classification!

The only other good thing I can say is that it'll make you laugh. I'm sure that wasn't the intention of the makers, but you'll either laugh or, if you can't look past the dire production, cry. I suppose after all it's not entirely without it's own kind of cheesy charm, but that's not enough to make it worth your while to endure this tosh!

Clearly I can't recommend this film to anyone in their right mind, although I'd have to suggest that if you're a huge fan of the Power Rangers and you love low budget horror, this may just be the greatest film you'll ever see!

PRICE ('cause I just know you'll be rushing to buy it after reading this!)

Apparently it's available online from £10-11, with amazon looking the cheapest in my limited search. I'd guess you could get a copy from ebay for pence, they may even pay you to take it off their hands!
 

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