“DEAD & ROTTING” (2002)

Starring: Debbie Rochon, Stephen O’Mahoney, Tom Hoover, Trent Haaga, Jeff Dylan Graham, Barbara Katz-Norrod, Christopher Suciu, Tammi Sutton & Jamie Star
Written by David P. Barton & Douglas Snauffer
Directed by David P. Barton
Tempe Entertainment

Polly Staffle Rating: **

With all the ingredients of a film that should be a part of a late October moviethon in place, “Dead & Rotting” is a fun watch. It takes place around Halloween, there’s a spooky house, a good witch and a bad witch, hillbillies, ghouls and creepy music. That being said, I wish it had gone in another direction than it did. I found myself rooting for the villain instead of the hero and things don’t pan out so well for my wicked witch.

“Dead & Rotting” is the story of an old woman Abigail (Barbara Katz-Norrod) that lives deep in the woods with her unusual son Pox (Christopher Suciu), who often can be seen around town drinking milk from a bowl at the local bar. For the most part the two outsiders keep to themselves. Some say Abigail grows marijuana and supplies the county with most of its weed. Others say she is a witch that uses trespassers of her land as fertilizer, keeping the victims in an almost coma state and growing plants in their heads.

Like any small town when there are rumors of haunted houses and witches, local “good ol’ boys” have to go see for themselves. So Hollis (Stephen O’Mahoney), J.B. (Tom Hoover) and Eric (Trent Haaga) cram in the front seat of a pickup truck to have a look see. Before getting a peek at the witch, Pox scares them off. Later they see Pox at the bar and give him a hard time. He eggs their truck and they decide to kick his ass. Slowly, one thing builds on another and the situation escalates kind of like gang warfare. Abigail pops up in town and blows magic dust on the men, making them sick. Stoners Asher (Jeff Dylan Graham) and Shugi (Jamie Star) are then involved and are supposed to head out to the witch house armed with rocks to throw through her window. They instead bring pornographic magazines to pose as students selling subscriptions, so they can sneak into her house and rob her stash. Something heinous happens to Pox during the pothead raid, so Abigail decides to whip up a potion on Halloween night to turn herself into Debbie Rochon so she can exact revenge.

It’s at this point in the film that I am on the side of Abigail and want our “heroes” dead. Abigail does make most of them pay, but I wasn’t completely satisfied from here on. Abigail hooks up with the men at the local pub and they all take turns with her that night, having unprotected sex, one after the other. When she gets back home, she plops a fertilized egg out of her body, places it in a pumpkin and buries it in the ground. From that spot three zombie-like ghouls arise to help her. Our heroes are then forced to “fight fire with fire” and look to a witch named Rose (Tammi Sutton) in hopes she can bail them out.

To me the story is a lot stronger if you have the viewer on the side of Abigail and you have her prevail in the end. Like I said, I was already on her side, but the film wasn’t made to play that way. She and Pox are way more likeable than Hollis, J.B. and Eric or the stoners. I wanted to see the world of Abigal and Pox opened up, giving us a bit more back story and making them more human. There are also two fairly big scenes in the script that would have really gotten us behind Abigail’s vengeance had they been tweaked just a little. One, we do not see the incident with Pox. We don’t even really see the aftermath. We see Abigail’s reaction and even that is cut short in my opinion. Two, Abigail’s sexual encounter with the three men should have been rape. Ok, so having a witch with magic powers get raped is a bit far fetched. Not if before she turns into Debbie Rochon it is explained that doing so would leave her venerable. Then have Eric, who’s kind of a good-looking Steve Buscimi playing a paranoid role that reminded me of Franklin in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” slip Abigail a roofie or have Hollis playing it like Don Juan, sweeping Abigail off her feet and then inviting his boys to join in on the action without her consent. Either way, the foundation would be in place for a brutal vengeance story. Yes, maybe my version would be more cliché and perhaps I’m a tad partial to films about revenge, but I still think it would be better with those modifications. I also would have liked the Halloween element played up more than it is or taken out all together. It’s kind of just there and if you aren’t paying close attention you won’t even get why Eric is dressed in full drag in one scene. There were also actors in “Dead & Rotting” not used to their potential. Sutton, who also served as the film’s production designer, and Star were both solid in their screen time, but they did not have much of it. I kind of felt like their characters should have had bigger parts or eliminated.

Having said all of this, I did enjoy the film. There may be some low budget horror movie fans that will love “Dead & Rotting” to death. It’s got B-Movie Scream Queen Debbie Rochon in it and she’s even naked in the first scene she appears in. It’s got some good gore effects as it should since debut director David P. Barton has been a special makeup effects artist on a slew of bigger budgeted projects like “Starship Troopers,” “Tales from the Darkside” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” There’s great music from Jon Greathouse and Midnight Syndicate, who happen to be the folks responsible for just about every haunted attraction’s soundtrack you've ever been to. There’s also a catchy “Do you know what happens when you’re dead and rotting?” rhyme Abigal and her victims recite. It reminded me of both the spoken word interludes on Acid Bath’s “Paegan Terrorism Tactics” and the “1-2 Freddy’s coming for you” poem from “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” Overall, it’s not the kind of movie you’d watch over and over again, but I highly recommend it as a fun film for a slumber party or a horror marathon, especially after a long night of trick-or-treating. But probably best of all, this DVD is a steal at the current Tempe Video catalog price of $6.99.

- CCF, May 2006