Great example of how NOT to make a movie

Carnage Road (aka "Carnage: The Legend of Quiltface")(2000)
Starring: Dean Paul, Molinee Dawn, Melissa Brown, and Mack Hail
Director: Massimiliano Cerchi
Rating: One of Ten Stars

Four photography students head into the Nevada desert to take photos for an extra credit assignment, but they find themselves stalked by a machete-weiding killer who wears a mask fashioned from the faces of his victims.


This is quite possibly one of the worst slasher movies ever made. The pacing is bad; the establishing shots go on well after the setting has been established and they keep repeating; the dialogue and characters are lame (with Hail's portrayal of an obnoxious van driver being the most interesting character in the whole piece); the acting is atrocious (although, in fairness, Paul and Dawn actually started out pretty good--the scenes of them in their apartment lifted my hopes forthe rest of the film... only to dash them); the kills are weak and dull (and repetatively weak and dull... I think the production must have only had one cut-away weapon to use); the gore effects are on the level of a high school backyard camcorder production; and the foley artist was probably the most incompetent of everyone who worked on the production (the same teeth-grinding sort of sound was used no matter what Quiltface chopped, the punching sounds were just bad, and he missed the opportunity to cock a gun).

The only thing that saves this movie from being a 0-Star effort is the unintentional comedy that grows out of the final battle (well, more like the final slap-fight) between Quiltface and Robert (Paul), the last survivor of his rampage, and the way that Paul illustrates exactly what it means to "cry like a little girl."

I'm sure he behaves like I would if confronted with a mad killer wearing a mask made of human faces, but the simpering and shrieking like a 12-year-old school girl doesn't exactly make him appear manly and it is quite hilarious to watch. So is the fact that Paul has to take babysteps and not run very fast so that the actor playing Quiltface can keep up, what with his restricted vision in the mask and the rocky desert floor.

I suppose that the electronic score was also a little better and more effectively implemented than is typical for a movie like this.

The bottomline, though, is that "Carnage Road" is another one of those movies that is worth watching to see how NOT to make a movie.