Reel Advice from the Video Store Guy

Miner's Massacre

DVD

*

Directed by:

John Carl Buechler

Writing credits:

Antonio Olivas

Karen Black ....  Aunt Nelly

John Phillip Law ....  Sheriff Murphy

Richard Lynch ....  Old Man Prichard

Vernon Wells ....  Jeremiah Stone

Martin Kove ....  Caleb

Jeff Conaway ....  Reverend Sutter

Brad H. Ardin ....  Forty-Niner

Michael J. Elwell ....  Jeb (1849 Sheriff)

Sean Hines ....  Nick Berman

Carrie Bradac ....  Claire Berman

R

90 mins

I find myself personally offended by movies that won't start until they've run half a dozen trailers, and Miner's Massacre does just that.  The fact that there's no way around it, no way to cancel or fast forward or do anything BUT sit and watch trailers for perfectly awful movies that I've in many cases seen already (refer to my previous review of Snake Island, and you'll see what I mean) just infuriates me.

Seriously.

So Miner's Massacre already has one strike against it for this special brand of video terrorism it's subjected me to...it had better be a DAMN good movie.

Well, already I'm worried.  The opening forty-five seconds features more Playstation quality CG than I've seen since the Playstation era.  It's really rather shoddy, given what we've seen so far.

Having firmly established the quality of the so-called special effects we'll be getting a gander at throughout our little film, let's see if we can't rustle up a decent story.  After all, a well-crafted story can often make up for even the crappiest special effects, and the attempt can often endear audiences.

Sadly, this particular plotline is about as endearing as a pile of skinned puppies.  This particular piece of still-warm sewage is about a miner that comes back from the dead for no apparent reason by way of an altar he apparently chose to die next to.  Amazing foresight on the miner's part.

"Yep, Ah'm not a-dyin' 'til Ah git back to my say-tanic alter up in th' foothills.  Then Ah kin come back and start killin' anybody Ah sees with gold!"

Subsequently, we segue over to a young couple who receive a gold nugget in the mail.  They decide to go find more.  Not exactly a real predictability bucker, now is it?

Worse yet, ANOTHER couple crops up, heading on into the town where we just saw the undead miner chop a man to bits.  Miner's Massacre isn't very long on cohesion.  I do however give it some bonus points for prominently featuring a ghost town.  I have a soft spot for ghost towns, and seeing one in Miner's Massacre was quite pleasant.

Sadly, however, the rest of it falls apart, becoming just another slasher movie with a cheap backstory and a villain with inhuman strength and implausible tolerances for pain.

I couldn't BE more sick of slop like this.  It does nothing new; it contributes nothing; it's just one more gorefest trying to market itself in an already glutted marketplace.  WHY can't we get any originality out there?  

Extra features, apart from the rack of previews we were subjected to for the first few minutes, are virtually nonexistent.  Only a trailer and English / Spanish language voice tracks are available for you to select. No point in even wasting DVD plastic with these "options."

All in all, Miner's Massacre is yet another piece of cinematic garbage in a landfill stuffed with similar products.  It depends on cliches that were old when they first showed up and should have been retired years ago.  It attempts to fool its viewer with a blaring soundtrack of almost inappropriate titles dredged from someone's idea of a bargain bin.  

It's garbage, and I hate it.

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