murderpartymovie.com

Other holiday-themed blog titles which were under consideration today:

I’m Dreaming of a Fright Christmas, I Saw Mommy Killing Santa Claus, The Twelve Slays of Christmas, Scary Christmas to All and to All a Good Fright!, Ghost of Christmas Slash, A Slay in the Manger…

Ahhh…I love this time of year, don’t you? The decorations, the carols, the good cheer…groping strangers under the mistletoe, ulcer-inducing egg nog hangovers, lying to your parents about how well your career’s going…yeahhhp, the Holiday Season pretty much makes up for the rest of the year being so breathtakingly depressing.

And how do we celebrate this special time, kids? That’s right…with presents! So don’t forget to grab your copy (hell, make it copies) of MURDER PARTY, now avilable from Magnolia Home Video/Magnet Releasing, before it’s too late– because this sucker will absolutely sell out! Heh. (nervous tug on collar)

MURDER PARTY is the perfect gift item this year for that special person in your life who enjoys violent, perverted, druggy movies with all the uplifting spirit of a burning orphanage! Plus it’s funny! Click any of the links below and buy buy buy!

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7959165

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-Party-Chris-Sharp/dp/B000U6YJME/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1198169092&sr=8-1

http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/movieDetails/336207

Well, kids, today’s the day for the Office Holiday Party (oh yeah: still have day jobs!) and you know what that means, right? Get smashed on free white wine, try to French kiss the boss between crying jags, and barf all that shrimp cocktail out in the cab-back-to-Brooklyn some kind stranger finally poured you into, minus one shoe! But before I head off for all that delightment, here’s some fun reading material I’ve thrown together for ya…

“Murder Party”

Murder Party (2007)
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Starring: Chris Sharp, Stacy Rock, Alex Barnett, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt, Beryl Guceri, William Lacey, Skei Saulnier, Beau Sia, Bill Tangradi
80 Minutes
Certificate: 15

The low-budget “Murder Party,” a Jeremy Saulnier directorial effort with a host of little-known actors filling out the cast, combines all in one entity a brilliant throwback music score, constant dry-wit dialogue, fine acting, simplistic story dynamics and a blood-drenched finale. All this it does handily, presenting a thematically unusual end product with the capability to make viewers laugh and vomit so frequently that they might well end up doing both at the same time. It is a slow-burn, talk-heavy comedy that finally erupts into a tongue-in-cheek blood orgy during the final minutes, and is an altogether more successful comedy than any of the most recent. Easily, it puts to shame the likes of “Black Sheep,” “Severance” and “Slither” and, surprisingly for a straight-to-DVD release (though it must be highlighted that this is a festival favourite), qualifies as one of the year’s most capably made genre efforts (as either comedy or horror or both).

A loner drone who works the dreaded job as a Parking Ticket guy, Chris (Chris Sharp) is a man with little stimulating activity going on in his life and little personality to boot. When he chances across an invitation to a so-called Halloween “Murder Party” he pieces together a cardboard Halloween costume and heads its way, not taking the name so literally. When he arrives he gets a pretty unpleasant surprise. The people he meets there–the sarcastic and coked-out Lexi (Stacy Rock), her biggest admirer Macon (Macon Blair), the PSP-playing Bill (William Lacey), the alleged art guru guy Alexander (Alex Barnett), the awkward Paul (Paul Goldblatt), mysterious drug dealer Zycho (Bill Tangradi) and the unsure-of-herself Sky (Skei Saulnier)–aren’t as innocent as they might initially appear to be. Soon enough, Chris finds himself tied to a chair, the knowledge that this is a literal murder party bestowed upon him. As he learns, the group intend to murder him for the sake of art. The primary question so becoming, can Chris, a man so pitiful in every sense that even his cat can psych him out, find some way to escape a seemingly certain, bloody death?

The first full-length feature for director Jeremy Saulnier, “Murder Party” doesn’t appear to have someone with so little experience at the helm. The camera movements and set-pieces are excellent throughout, the visual aesthetic on-hand thanks to Saulnier (who also plays cinematographer) glorious despite the movie’s limited budget. Saulnier appears to be an expert at his craft that knows exactly what he wants to get out of his projects and, if he should continue in the independent horror domain further, could well be a name to look out for so far as genre fans are concerned in the future. His work defies belief and surpasses any expectations in every area, invaluably raising the quality of a movie that, despite being pretty talk-heavy, would originally appear to have nothing going for it.

Acting performances are shockingly exemplary for a low-budget horror’s standards. The stand-out turn arguably coming from Stacy Rock as one murderer-to-be, Lexi. With only the second movie in her filmography Rock turns in an excellent portrayal of a care-free young woman seemingly so willing to kill another individual for a grant she may or may not get. She’s intermittently funny and horrifying in the role, outshining all co-stars. As the victim-elect Chris, Chris Sharp is dryly hilarious and likable playing a part of a guy who unintentionally throws himself into harm’s way. Less great but still pretty darn good is Alex Barnett in full deadpan mode as the mistrustful Alexander. Otherwise, great displays come from Paul Goldblatt as Paul, Macon Blair as Macon, William Lacey as Bill and Bill Tangradi as Zycho.

You can never really trust that a low-budget horror B-movie is going to be anything of actual worth, even award-winning ones like “Murder Party.” For example, the highly-praised, critical hit “The Hamiltons” was a poorly executed independent production that grated on the nerves and didn’t play fair with its audience. Substantial reasons for the film’s adoration in the press weren’t really given. Fortunately, “Murder Party” isn’t a disappointment. The rightful recipient of the audience award for Best Narrative Feature at the Slamdance Film Festival and for Best Feature at the Vail Film Festival, this is a funny and unnerving film from director-cinematographer-screenwriter Jeremy Saulnier. Granted the script isn’t a perfect one, but it still works. An early scene which places the uncomfortable Chris on the train with a rapper rapping away at the side of him isn’t particularly ingenious or original, but it gets the laughs anyway. “Murder Party” can squeeze the laughs out of bloody deaths, too. One character has an allergic reaction to raisins that were in the food Chris brought to the party and falls to the ground, slamming her head and breaking her skull open on an object unwisely placed. The way in which this is done is pure gold.

“Murder Party” isn’t as predictable or formulaic as most mainstream features these days are either. Bizarre attempts to murder Chris, for example, rear their heads that include plots to cut off his penis and set him on fire, pickle him to death (yup), a pancaked-face train ‘accident’ and so on. The character confrontations are also joyously strange. One guy threatens to have another shot if he doesn’t remove his 19th Century Vampire costume, the group react nonchalantly to the death of one of their collective, a game of ‘truth or dare?’ comes with truth syrum aplenty and the eventual turn-against-eachother bit arrives as a precursor to the hysterical bloodbath climax. Hell, one guy even becomes a wolf+man hybrid. It all sounds pretty stupid and believe me it is. But it’s also funny. Dead funny.© Tom Elce – 2007

http://te-movies07.blogspot.com/2007/11/murder-party.html

Thank you, Tom! That one’s especially heartwarming because we were starting to think our cousins across the Pond plain didn’t care for ol’ M.P., the reviews out of England generally being what they were. Here’s one Brit who’s digging what we’re selling and with one groovy review, he restores my faith that one day there could finally be peace between our two nations.

And here’s another high-five from UpcomingHorrorMovies.com, just click the link to read the review…

http://www.upcominghorrormovies.com/reviews/murderparty.php

And dangling there at the bottom like a pale sickly remora on the belly of a great fish is this one poor lonesome little comment…

Daniel :

Posted Yesterday

This is what happens when a bunch of yuppy art people make a horror movie! This movie had potential but turned out to be terrible!

Hmm. Well, Daniel, we’re sorry you didn’t enjoy the movie but between washing the minivan, taking the kids to soccer, and getting to all the neighborhood council meetings, there simply wasn’t time to live up to the potential that we didn’t even know we had. No one said being a yuppy was easy.

And here’s another disgruntled chap who’s missing eighty minutes of his life now…

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(2007)
review by A.J. MacReady

“Everybody DIES!!!” – Bill The Baseball Fury

Recently seen at film festivals Slamdance and South By Southwest, Murder Party is a low-budget horror movie presented to us by The Lab Of Madness; it’s somewhat of a cross between The Breakfast Club (small group of people in one location, lots of dialogue) and a flick like Texas Chainsaw (pretty much everybody is nuts and is planning to kill our hero in some horrible way before things go wrong and the cast starts dropping like flies).  Occasionally quite comedic, with moments of splatstick as well as satire, everything devolves into a bloodbath before the night comes to an end.

(more…)

FUCK!!

I’m sorry. It seems as though I’ve done it again…made a headline out of a big fat lie. I don’t mean to, it just…I get excited and it just comes out that way.

William and Macon are NOT, in any way, shape, or form, appearing in the sequel to Batman Begins. But yesterday evening, we did slap on our nerd caps and we did hustle up to the IMAX theater to join hundreds of co-nerds who had likewise showed up for the “secret” event, all invited by the Joker himself! Our “tickets” identified us as members of the Gotham City Public School System and yes, I got them because I routinely check Batman-on-Film.com, and yes, I am a grown ass man, and yes, I was giddy as a motherfucker, too.

We waited on line for about forty-five minutes and then they hustled us into the cavernous theater as  steely-eyed security goons prowled around looking for camera phones. Some poor turkey without a microphone attempted to welcome us–did he say he was the screenwriter  Jonah Nolan? It was impossible to hear him– and then lights went down and we were shown, as had been expected, the first scene from The Dark Knight.

Two things immediately stuck me:

1) Even if it is a one-time-only secret showing of just six minutes of the most anticipated geek movie of next year, in New York there will STILL be a assholes showing up who are perfectly content to talk through the whole thing. To the repulsive yo-boy Growing Up Gotti knockoffs sitting behind me with their incessant  “Yeahhh baby!” Austin Powers impersonations: may you all choke to death on your own rancid cologne.

2) The Dark Knight is going to be HOT AS SHIT.

No need to go over the footage point for point, there are enough detailed shot breakdowns to be found online, if you like. Suffice to say, it’s a bank robbery scene that introduces the Joker.

Seth Rogen said a funny thing the other day about the culture of fanboy blogs and message boards, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it was something like “Nerds love to complain. If Jesus Christ announced that he was making a movie with Frank Miller, the nerds would still find something to complain about.”

So, so true.

And there has been a tremendous amount of message board bitching over this new incarnation of the Joker: “Goth-Joker! Laaame! Ledger’s overrated! Emo-Joker! Gayyyy! Looks like Beetlejuice! Nicholson or nobody! Wah wah wah!”

Let me just say, no respect intended: “Wrong.”

In the clip we saw, the Joker has almost no lines at all. He’s wearing a clown mask the whole time (exactly the same as one Cesar Romero wore on an old Adam West episode! Winky winky!) and so it’s almost entirely with body language that he’s putting across this palpable sense of menace. Stoop-shouldered, workman-like, almost wearily squeezing off rounds and strapping grenades to terrified civilians. When he suddenly comes under fire from the shotgun-wielding bank manager, he’s scrambling for cover, all panic and confusion. The ongoing doublecross he’s pulling on his cohorts is ice cold.

And when he finally does speak, when the mask comes off and flashes the grin, it’s not this broad, cartoonish, giggling, wacky insanity. ‘Columbine’ was what popped into my head.

As for “Heath Ledger is overrated?” Puh-leeze. You don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about. If it’s the makeup design that’s bothering you, okay, whatever, but even that was given the real-world Christopher Nolan treatment: “War paint.”  Given the earthy tone established in Batman Begins, it’s hard to argue in favor of another vat-of-chemicals origin story.

No fat Prince-dancing, no poem-reading, no “let’s vandalize an art gallery!” cornball bullshit. It’s an all-new Joker, finally, the killer creep I’ve been waiting for.

After the bank robbery sequence, there was a quick montage of shots from the movie:

The Joker firing a machine gun. Again, he looks like a sick animal.

Batman vroooms  around on his crazy cycle with the Judge Dredd tires, cape snapping behind him, totally badass. 

Tumbler, Tumbler, Tumbler.

Jim Gordon takes an axe to the Bat signal…and that got me all goosebumpy.

Maaaan….I can not wait for this one.

Even if we are shooting our next flick when it comes out, as we hope to be, I’m not coming to set that day, no sir. I’ll be at the theater with my two tickets for consecutive screenings. Sorry, Jeremy.

My one complaint is this: the new Batsuit design is too….busy. Getting a little too close to Green Goblin/Power Rangers territory for my liking. I dig that it’s high-tech body armor, yes, keep it realistic, by all means. But there’s just too many plates and panels and overlapping shit going on there. I mean, when you’ve got Batman there on top of a building in a long shot (at dusk no less!) and all the intricate components of his armor are still perfectly visible from that far off…..well, that’s too much. It undercuts the idea of a living shadow, y’know? I’m not suggesting a full-on Alex Ross spandex costume either…I’m just saying, they could’ve split the difference….

(Ed: who the fuck is Alex Ross?)

Doesn’t matter, though. Just a minor quibble with what will otherwise certainly be the best movie ever made by a human being. Ever. I’ll stake my life on it.

(Ed: careful, now…Transformers? Phantom Menace?)

Hardcore Film Maniac Exclusive Review: “Murder Party”

“Murder Party”
2007
**** out of ****
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Cast: Chris Sharp, Macon Blair, Alex Barnett

FACT: The last great horror comedy was “Shaun of the Dead.” Before that, I can’t even remember when the last decent one came from.

ANOTHER FACT: None of you bastards have heard of “Murder Party,” which is why it’s so fucking awesome.

“Murder Party” is not a horror film. It’s a satirical look into the horror subgenre that we now hate. It’s like Jeremy Saulnier took notes while watching every film that showed blood on boobs and said, “Hey, wouldn’t this be funny if we do that?” Then they take the Eli Roth/Rob Zombie approach, and every little bit of death that is included into the picture, it’s considered ‘art.’ I don’t know about you, but if a little independent movie like this makes it to my top ten of ‘007, a screener for such a fun movie is now considered as artistic as Da Vinci’s painting of his ass crack. The day you find a better movie suited for the torture-porn subgenre you come running the hell to me and you tell me about it.

Chris (Chris Sharp) is one of those police-officers that will ruin your day just for writing you up for a parking ticket. The man is so unstable that he doesn’t even know how unstable he is. He’s as bland as Kevin Federline’s rapping skills and gets less action on the job than Molly Shannon’s coochie. On the night of Halloween, he purchases a few horror video-tapes, and picks up an invitation for a Murder Party. He ignores it, until his cat won’t get off of his chair so he could watch the movies. So without a chair and a TV, he goes ahead to the party, dressed up in a cardboard knight costume.

Well, our hero gets there, knocks, and gets kidnapped. They gag him and tie him up in a chair. These kidnappers are nothing more but “artists,” led by Alexander (Alex Barnett). Within their “Murder Party,” they take truth serum, do lines of coke, and get drunk. Also within the night, they turn the tables on each other with Chris just sitting there, waiting for someone to put him out of his misery. By the end of the movie, these dildos are all dead, except for two – a guy with a chainsaw and a guy dressed up like one of the gangs from the classic film “The Warriors.” Within the last thirty minutes, “Murder Party” has one of the best endings that I’ve seen in a long, long time.

You noticed how I described these kidnappers as artists and dildos. They consider themselves as an artist, but everyone else is considered a dildo. But as the audience, we consider each of them dildos. It’s like O. Henry was jerking off into Saulnier’s pillow and “The Ransom of Red Chief” came out from his sperm-flyer. The similarities between the two are so alike that the kidnappers are put through more torture than the actual victim is. Until the end of the movie, Chris actually looks like he’s having a lot of fun just from watching these dildos go at it.

I also said that this was a satirical look into the sub-genre of torture-porn, which is almost a satire in itself. When we actually meet these guys, already one of them gets killed just by tripping over something and hitting their head on something else. Did I spoil the joke? No, because it just has to be seen to be believed. It’s so funny that I actually shouted out the word ‘dildo’ during the second watch. And that’s only the first kill. The next deaths are so funny that I think my left testicle dropped three inches from laughing so damn hard.

But nothing beats the final thirty minutes of the film, which is a long chase sequence that ends up to a completely new territory of artists having a rather bigger party. This part’s so funny just because we’ve seen it so many times by horror directors today and all of them are meant to scare us. This chase takes its sweet ol’ time and is funnier than the entire movie of “Hot Fuzz.” Halfway through the chase sequence, it takes a twist that I never even seen coming. I laughed so hard because I think I would have done the same thing if I really had to do it.

Chris Sharp gives a hilarious performance to someone who is twice as bland as Billy Zane’s character in “The Mad” and twice as stupider than Jon Heder in “Napoleon Dynamite,” and it works. I tried to stay away from comparing this film to “Napoleon Dynamite,” as the back of the DVD suggests that it is a mix between that and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” but that is clearly mistaken. “Murder Party” is original. It takes on the torture genre as stupidly as stupid could be. Chris just sits there and watches the characters go at it, like Napoleon Dynamite did back when he was in the middle of a school election and Uncle Rico moving in.

“Murder Party” is one of the best times that you will have without lubricant. It smells good and it tastes good, so it’s good enough for me. How the hell a movie like “Murder Party” goes straight to DVD and “Captivity” and “Hostel II” go straight to theaters is fucking beyond me.

http://hxcfilmmaniac.blogspot.com/2007/12/hardcore-film-maniac-exclusive-review.html

Wow! That’s Tony D. for ya, one of the more prolific and colorful online film critics out there right now. Check his page, HXCFilmManiac.Blogspot.Com, for more pieces in his signature take-no-prisoners style. I’ve never met the guy in person, but I imagine him looking something like the Tasmanian Devil with a laptop. I feel badly that Molly Shannon had to get caught up in the whirlwind there- because I do love her so- but that’s just how it goes sometimes in the brutal Mad Max-ian  landscape of the Blog World. Shit gets raw and shit gets said. Sorry, Molly, but we gotta post the hot reviews, even if they do slam your lady parts.

Thank you again, Tony D!

And now, more stuff…

ITEM! Baby Ella is fat and squirmy and cuter than two otters holding hands in a saucer of cream!

ITEM! Macon (Murder Party’s sad-assed werewolf) turns up on a new episode ‘Law & Order: SVU’ to say a few lines and oogle Mariska Hargitay…as soon as we know the air date, we’ll let ya know!

 ITEM! Forward March of the Merch! Coming very soon we’ll have all-new Murder Party T-shirts, stickers, buttons, automobile anti-freeze, mustard, cock rings and recycled diapers! So stay tuned for all that goodness…

We hope that all of you had a great Thanksgiving and wish you all the best as 2007 gets ready to cry ‘Uncle’…

Lotsa love and Happy Hanukkah!