The Burrowers

Tuesday night's midnight madness film was the world premier of The Burrowers, a horror / western genre film. Fuck, do you know how many films fit into those two genres at the same time??? The only other one is Cannibal the Musical, but that movie was a lot of other things too. So far this has been thee horror movie of the MM program, course there are still 4 more nights to go. Lets get back to the movie.

The Burrowers
Directed by J.T. Petty

As usual before the movie starts the MM programmer introduced the audience to the director of the film J.T. Petty. He was a pretty laid back kind of dude didn't have much words at the beginning and was adamant to bring some of the cast to the stage as well. Karl Geary, who plays an Irish Immigrant searching for his soon to be betrothed. Also on stage was Clancy Brown, yes the Clancy Brown, Mother FUckinG Lex Luthor from the WB Justice League Series and also asshole Brother Justin. This dude is the mother fucker you don't want to mess with, and also a pretty funny guy.

Anyhoo, the film was an outstanding production. From the very beginning the tone is set as Far and Away having a love chile with Tremors. This is an outstanding entry for the Midnight Madness set, becauses you have a well shot western that truely exudes the North Dakota wilderness with the dark and creepy living beneith the surface. The real kicker is that this is also a period piece. No modern day tech or even a flash light, just good old rifles and laterns to protect you from what lerks in the dark. Another benifit of the setting is the opportunity to use the racial divide.

The start of the film is a shot of our hero Coffey who plans to ask his girlfriends father for permission to marry her. Unfortunately the night before her settlement is attacked and her family is no where to be found. Some locals work with the US army to hunt down those responsible and their first suspect are the local Native American tribes. The next course of events sees the locals splitting from the US army to find the missing family and Coffey's girl. Along the way the pick-up Callaghan, the army cook who fled for feeding the army's prisoner. And a Native American girl, whose character name escapes me and bloody IMDB has been absolutely useless to find it for me, who informs our heros that what there are seeking isn't a tribe but an animal called The Burrowers. Neat huh. And the only ones who know how to fight back is the Ute tribe.

The look of the burrowers is thouroughly creepy, and but the noise they make isn't really that scary, not to be mean but it sounds like it came from the Jurassic Park sound track. During the Q and A J.T. Penny was ask about how the design came about. The sum of the answer was Molerats are scary and Spiders are scary. What I really like is that you don't feel cheated when you finally get a good look at the monsters. Not like fouckin' Cloverfield where you wanted to punch it everytime you saw it like an ugly baby. And they were represented as a natural beast that has always inhabitted the land and their current attacks on man was the result of the Americans' impact on the natural environment, parrallels anybody?

I hope what I've had to say could sway you to watch this movie. Yes this is my Mother Foucking Endorsement. You will love this movie, but more importantly, you will love the hillariousnos of the Q&A if you could find a video posting of it. Some people came with really good legitament questions deserving of the film. The there were two individuals that pretty much shat out their mouths ate it and regugitated it back out creating utter confusion for the Programmer, Director, and Actors who could do nothing else but Laugh, and everyone else laughed too you over pretensious genre fucks.

WATCH THIS MOVIE