Billy Club (2014)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Marshall Caswell, Erin Hammond, Nick Sommer
Directed by Drew Rosas and Nick Sommer
Distributed by Uncork’d Entertainment
To all those non-believers that continue to bash the all-American national pastime that is baseball (games take too long, the steroid issue), one simply needs to insert the missing piece of the puzzle in order to restore a sense of regaled opprobrium… and that is the implementation of the Billy Club.
Okay, so I MAY have been stretching my wish list a bit too long there, but come on, who could resist the opportunity to see a nail-studded Louisville Slugger do some real damage to not only the horsehide being tossed around, but any positional player that may object to said rule change?
Look, any way you swing it, this goofy and gory addition to the horror heavyweight lineup deserves a crack at the cleanup spot, and while the movie certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously, there’s just something fun about watching a revenge-fueled kook swinging for the fences with a home-crafted thunder-club that would make Roy Hobbs from The Natural run to the visiting team’s dugout for safety. I’m serious when I say that the bat is a work of art itself, with a fully-retractable bayonet of sorts in the head to complement the assortment of driver-tacks that are sure to send any batting average through the roof.
The movie follows a group of four friends that are reuniting to commemorate the anniversary of the tragic killings that took their Little League coach and fellow teammates from them years ago. Now older (and slightly more annoying), the foursome have an odd connection to the killer, who was sent away after the initial killings, and the first part of the movie (aside from some very enticing kills) is spent cementing the relationships that the group has with each other. Both humor and terror are combined, and aside from some side-stepping actions that will have the audience shaking their collective skulls, a nice foundation is laid out for the second half, where the home run derby truly commences.
Allison (Erin Hammond), Bobby (Marshall Caswell), Devon (Matthew Dunlop), and Kyle (Nick Sommer) are the type of crew that make the atypical “trapped in their high-school glory days” bunch that much more believable, and when all is said and done, and the identity of the catcher’s mask-wearing killer is revealed, there actually is a slight bit of remorse for the character, especially with the bullying undertone that the movie slightly focuses on.
As I mentioned earlier, Billy Club uses not only a sizable amount of gore, but an appropriate helping of flaky laughs provided by both Dunlop and Sommer (one scene involving a potential drug overdose is worth the price of admission). I know that I can be a severely critical goon when it comes to low-budget flicks, but there certainly is a way to distinguish one from the other, not only in presentation, but how the end result can be taken in by the viewer’s eyes and mind.
Billy Club won’t take the place of some of the great 80’s slashers that it was modeled after, but it definitely deserves mention as a nice accompaniment to the trailblazers that set out long before it, so don’t tip over your DVD collection just yet with these words I’m typing, but pop this one in your player when the mood strikes you, and enjoy some good old-fashioned diamond-slaughter from a guy that swings harder than A-Rod on roids could ever do.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
