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Released by: Terror Vision
Released on: February 1st, 2023.
Director: Mike Savino, Mark Veau
Cast: Lori Regonini, Christina Murphy, Lori Carson, Mark Veau, Michael Savino
Year: 1990
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Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator – Movie Review:
Released in 1990 with a camcorder and some fake blood, the sixteen minute Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator opens with a group of teens having a party. As we watch them mouth off and drink some Buds, the whole thing has a weird home movie vibe to it.
At any rate, a girl named Lori is concerned about the noise the fridge makes and is told by one of the male hosts, Mark (played by Mark Veau), that it was recently defrosted. We see this in flashback and the icebox really is pretty frozen. They weren’t gentle when they used a claw hammer to clean it out, and now the fridge hates everyone.
Lori's boyfriend Mike (Michael Savino) shows up, tells Mark things are getting serious and she's spending the night. Then we meet a dark haired girl named Liz. She lies in bed at looks at the posters on the walls in Mark’s bedroom (his interests include the band Berlin, Lowenbrau beer and smoking) while Mark shaves. Are they are gonna get it on? Yes, and, shock of shocks, Mark shows the camera his bare ass!
After a hot heavy round of sex, Lori goes to kitchen for a beer and the fridges closes on her arm and severs it from her body. Red smoke comes out of it and it pulls her in. Lori’s boyfriend is next. All of this happens while a cat watches Mark and Liz have sex. Then the phone rings! A blonde wanting to go to party calls, no answer so she heads over to see what is going on, all while Mark – and then the cat – head in to the kitchen…
Featuring some pretty awesome refrigerator kill scenes (including one with some sort of flamethrower device), make sure you watch this one all the way through the end credits for some extra mayhem. This was clearly made without any real money behind it but as goofy as it is, you’ve got to admire the creativity in the kill scenes and the whole thing winds up working way better than it really has any right to. Obviously made with a cast of friends rather than experienced actors, the performances are less than amazing yet absolutely perfect for the movie’s gonzo tone.
Originally distributed on VHS to various rental stores, the film was bundled with The Hook Of Woodland Heights, also directed by Mike Savino in 1990 with some of the same cast and crew members and running forty-one minutes long. Featuring a ridiculously catch theme song performed by a band credited as The Heartbeats and titled ‘Hooked On You,’ the story introduces us to a horny guy named Tommy (Michael Elyanow) and his gal pal Katie (Christine McNamara).
They hop into Tommy's car, 'The Green Monster,' and take a drive out into the woods for a little quality alone time without any idea that a man named Mason Crane (Robert W. Allen) has killed a pair of attendants (using a clipboard to kill one of them!) and escaped from a nearby lunatic asylum. Mason only has one hand, and in place of the missing appendage he manages to cram a big BBQ fork in its place - perfect for killing people intending to make out in a car, but not before offing some kid along the way!
Highlighted by some pretty creative murder set pieces, The Hook Of Woodland Heights isn't meant to be taken seriously. The whole thing is played way over the top, especially Allen's performance as Crane, which is really the highlight of the movie. He delivers some impressively physical work here, really throwing himself into playing the crazy, something that is helped quite a bit by his ridiculous makeup job. The rest of the cast are fine, they handle their roles well enough even if they aren't especially award worthy, but Allen steals every scene that he's in.
Directed with noticeably more polish than the first short on the disc, this is still very much a low budget, shot on video affair. That said, the clipboard to the head and hook to the crotch kill scenes are pretty funny. The cinematography is a bit more creative and the score works fairly well. All in all, this is a pretty entertaining watch.
Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator – Blu-ray Review:
Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator and The Hook Of Woodland Heights arrive on a region free 50GB disc and are both framed at 1.33.1. Presented in AVC encoded 1080i high definition and taken from tape sources, these look about as good as they probably can, given the movies’ low budget, shot on video roots. Picture quality is pretty soft looking and there are tracking lines and the like noticeable throughout, but again, there’s only so much you can do with a thirty plus year old movie shot on tape to improve picture quality. The screen caps below give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. It’s perfectly watchable and certainly won’t be a problem for fans of SOV cinema, but it can’t exactly ever be reference quality. The Hook Of Woodland Heights does fare better than the first movie, the picture has better colors and is more stable, but again, SOV is always going to look like SOV, and that’s okay so long as you know what to expect. Both presentations here certainly look much better than the other versions that have made the rounds over the years.
The original English language option is offered up for both movies in Dolby Digital Mono format. Optional subtitles are provided in English only. Audio for both movies can sound a little warbled in spots but overall, things sound about as good as they probably can. Again, The Hook Of Woodland Heights does sound better than Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator but still wears its low budget origins on its sleeve.
Terror Vision has really done a great job rolling out the red carpet for this release and stacked it with extra features. Attack Of T Killer Refrigerator features a commentary with Mike Savino and Mark Veau (which is actually a featurette where the two sit in a room while the movie plays in part of the screen in front of the viewer) who talk about how this was the first production they made together as students going to college in Massachusetts. They talk about where the ideas came from, how they came to make the movie on video using what was available to them, learning as they went and piecing the story together using clips from different parties they'd had, how the movie came to be distributed on VHS, getting the movie reviewed in Variety, shooting the movie for twenty-five dollars total, creating the soundtrack by spinning vinyl backwards in an echo chamber and lots more.
The disc also includes an Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator 2 trailer that runs forty-eight seconds as well as The Very First Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator which is a forty-four second clip showing off what would come in the formal short.
The Hook Of Woodland Heights Commentary also has a commentary with Veau and Savino done in the same style with the movie playing out in a small portion of the screen for the viewer. They talk about what they learned while doing the first project, bringing more production value to this second Media House Production, memories of shooting specific scenes, where they got the idea from around the time they were finishing college, putting the script together, shooting on 3/4" tape and editing on 1" tape, working with the different cast members in the movie, the different gear that they used to make the movie, how some of the effects work was done and lots more.
The Hook Of Woodland Heights Documentary is a twenty-eight minute public access style documentary piece that starts off showing off some behind the scenes clips and photos from the movie before then going on detail the production. Hosted by Sean Nelson and Suzie Fields, we learn about the different drafts of the movie, how the score was created, what the different cast and crew members did, what the release party was like, the locations and lots more. Interviews with Savino and Veau, Robert Allen, Christine Macnamara, Michael Elanyow and a few others as well as a load of behind the scenes footage make this pretty interesting.
The Hook Of Woodland Heights: A Look Behind The Scenes is a lengthy fifty minute assemblage of behind the scenes footage showing off all sorts of footage shot on set during the making of the movie. We get a nice tour of 'The Green Monster' car, we see the cast and crew rehearsing on location and working out different key scenes, get a look at how the equipment was set up and even get to see what happens when the cops show up at the shoot to answer a call about a lot of screaming happening in the area, the post production and editing work and lots more.
The 'Hooked On You' music video, featuring The Heartbeats, is a pretty awesome four minute piece that shows the band at work in the studio and goofing around and generally just doing the rock n roll thing in front of a green screen with footage from the movie playing behind them. It's awesome.
The Days Before Christmas is a ten minute short set during Christmas time where a woman finishing shopping at the mall and gets asked for spare change by a man who lost his job who wants to buy his children some presents. She gives him some money they go their separate ways. When she gets back to her car, however, she finds a homeless woman using her car for heat. She offers to get the woman a warm coffee and drive her home and on her way back witnesses the worst of society, and then things take an odd twist.
You can also watch the short with a commentary from Veau and Savino where they go over the making of the short by discussing how it won an award at the 1992 Houston International Film Festival, where the story idea came from, having trouble securing the mall location they needed, casting the movie and working with the actors, how and why certain shots were set up the way they were, who did what behind the scenes, the quick production schedule and cold temperatures they had to deal with and putting the ending together.
Media House Films: Defrosted is a fifty-two minute documentary with Savino and Veau discussing how their company started with Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator before then going to talk about how they came to meet and work together, making up a lot of their first project as they went along, creating content to run on the TV station that they worked with, using their connections to get access to a lot of great music and musicians, going on to make The Hook Of Woodland Heights and getting original music for the movie. Robert W. Allen shows up to talk about what he did in front of and behind the camera in the movie, trying to get Snapper made and what happened with that project, working on The Days Before Christmas, getting their movies distributed, what's currently happening with the second Killer Refrigerator movie, how the internet has led to a cult following for their movies and projects that they hope to get moving in the future.
Snapper: The Man-Eating Turtle Movie That Never Got Made by John Campopiano is a thirty minute look at the Media House movie that never wound up being finished. Essentially Jaws with a snapper turtle, this shows how in 1989 a whole bunch of footage for the movie was shot before then explaining the history behind the project and what inevitably happened to stop it from being seen to completion. Veau and Savino are heavily interviewed here, talking about horror movies that influenced them in their younger days, where some of the ideas came from for Snapper, coming up with the story, casting the movie, how Scott Andrews came to help out on effects work, creating the snapper effects, shooting some of the stunts for the movie without permits or insurance and what eventually killed the project. It's a shame it worked out the way that it did, because what was shot for it looks like it would have made for a really fun horror movie.
Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator - The Final Word:
Terror Vision’s Blu-ray release of Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator and The Hook Of Woodland Heights won’t dazzle you with mind blowing audio and video quality but it does provide two classic shot on video productions a new lease on life with presentations that let these movies look about as good as they’re probably ever going to. On top of that, we get loads of extras that do a great job of not just exploring the history of the two movies, but of providing a deep dive into the lives and work of the people who made them. Great stuff, and highly recommended!
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Attack Of The Killer Refrigerator Blu-ray screen caps!
