Tweet
Released by: Breaking Glass Pictures
Released on: 8/2/2011
Director: Tommy Brunswick
Cast: Kane Hodder, Antoinette Nikprelaj, Jerry Reid
Year: 2011
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Tommy Brunswick's 2011 throwback to the glory days of early eighties backwoods slashers stars Kane Hodder of the Friday The 13th and Hatchet films in a story that begins when a guy named Matt (Jerry Reid) finishes up in bed with his girlfriend, Angie Antoinette Nikprelag). Once he tells her how hot she is, and she agrees, she takes a phone call from her friend, Eva (Maria Hildreth) who tells her that she and her boyfriend, Dax (Paul Elia) are all set to head out to the five year high school reunion coming up. Angie's going too, she'll meet them there, but Matt is sitting this one out, he's not down with reunions and who can blame him. At any rate, the girls agree that they'll both drive off Exit 33, as it's the fastest shortcut to the reunion location.
Along the route lies Ike's Last Chance gas, what seems like a pretty normal gas station but which is in reality the lair of a crazy guy named, no so surprisingly, Ike (Kane Hodder). Here he and his son do the evil bidding of a ghost that controls their every move and forces them to do things like kill people, mostly hot chicks with 'perfect eyes' for his collection, and make them into jerky. Given that there are hot chicks en route to the reunion, it stands to reason that Ike might want to fill their cars full of bad gas so they break down, so that he can tow them, and then whack them with crowbars and stuff, right?
Exit 33 is a fairly by-the-numbers backwoods slasher that borrows pretty heavily from films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tourist Trap, and, yes, the Friday the 13th movies but which hands out dollops of impressive gore to help distract us from that. Performance wise, the movie is all over the place, though Hodder is decent as the hulking, lumbering killing machine even if his line delivery is sometimes a little bit wooden and he doesn't do as well in the more dramatic aspects of the movie as he does in the more sensationalist ones. As to the rest of the cast, no one here really stands out as amazing but they are all sufficient enough in their respective roles. The gore effects are the star of the show, they're nice and splashy and done with good old fashioned make up effects, no CGI in sight. Don't expect much in the way of T&A, you'll be disappointed, but the murder set pieces are done fairly well from a technical level.
Fairly erratic in tone, there are moments where Exit 33 works well (Hodder doing his killing machine thing) and moments where Exit 33 doesn't work so well (other cast members attempting comic relief - do we really need to spend so much time with a random hunter reading a girly mag while taking a dump in the bathroom? No. The answer is definitely no.) but if you're a Hodder fan and enjoy his work, well, he gets loads of screen time here. From a technical perspective the movie is fairly well shot and edited and has a bit more polish to it than a lot of other indy slashers that have come and gone over the years. There aren't any great twists here and the film definitely favors gore over atmosphere, but bonus points for at least trying to give the Ike character a decent back story and high fives for Hodder managing to actually evoke some sympathy from the audience in a few scenes.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Exit 33 arrives on DVD in a 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that would look very good for a low budget shot on video production were it not for some unusual quirk where the image jitters any time the camera moves. Clarity and detail is fine given the source material and color reproduction and skin tones are all good, but that jitter is really distracting. Aside from that there aren't any issues, but it's hard to look past this one quirk.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track is pretty solid, offering clear and well balanced dialogue, a slick sounding rockabilly infused soundtrack and some strong, punchy effects. There aren't any alternate language options or subtitles provided.
Extras are plentiful, starting off with an audio commentary featuring Kane Hodder who talks about what he does in this movie ('I kill people in this movie, I know it's a stretch'…) he jokes. He talks about how he met the director, how Tommy brought him on board with the promise of doing something a bit different than what he'd done before, and what it was like working with the various cast and crew members. Hodder clams up now and then but generally keeps pretty chatty for the most part. His delivery is very laid back and casual but his fans will enjoy getting his take on what it was like making this movie.
Kane Hodder also pops up in a twenty-one minute interview where he talks about his time working on this picture, what he liked about his character, and how he feels about the project. Hodder comes across as a pretty down to Earth guy and a gracious interviewee. There's also a thirty-nine minute Behind-The-Scenes featurette included here that is mostly just fly on the wall type shots of various scenes being shot, with Brunswick doing her directorial duties from off camera. Seeing how some of the effects work was done is pretty interesting but some interviews or commentary spliced into it would have helped given this a bit more worth.
Rounding out the extras are a trailer for the feature, a still gallery, and trailers for a few other Breaking Glass DVD releases, menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
A fairly pedestrian slasher with a good soundtrack and some impressive kill scenes, Exit 33 probably won't appeal to many outside of Hodder's fanbase but will no doubt appease those who fall into that camp. Breaking Glass' DVD is a good one, and contains some quality supplements, though the obvious caveat being that the transfer is glitchy.
