Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain [DVD] [2003] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

The movie starts very "in your face" with plenty of nudity and gore and then settles back for the next 40 minutes or so building atmosphere and a creepy ambience. There are some nicely directed scenes which seem to highlight the creepy house and the dark, mysterious woodland beyond. There are several moments in here which will make you jump and some of the scene cuts are deliberately designed for this effect.

However, after all this good build-up the movie falls a bit flat at the end. Once the first murder occurs the rest seem to follow in very quick succession without any apparent reason or motive. There are one or two jokey death scenes which I found a bit forced and staid and the finale was a bit disappointing.

It followed the tried and tested rules of the slasher genre but fell apart at the end, in my opinion. The build up was good and it felt quite creepy in my living room for a half an hour or so.

Only three stars due to the poorly executed ending and the very dodgy Irish link. Most of the actors kept slipping from fake Irish to Fake Scottish to the "Mary Poppins fake English" that all Americans seem to be able to do. It's funny to start with but gets on your nerves after a while.

This film is pretty much like every other camping-trip-ruined-by-inbred-cannibals movie you've ever seen - except Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain does it with aging pornstars. I have to question the filmmaker's reasoning here. Young pornstars I could understand. I don't care how hot Chasey Lain, Jenna Jameson, and Taylor Hayes were back in the day, all of the body reconstruction work is beginning to show, as are the effects of various substances they've probably injected into themselves at one point or another. Furthermore, why do I want to go through the torture of watching a horrible movie just to see a couple of them topless when a quick Google search could take me right to video clips of them getting their freak on when their implants were still new? I will grant the filmmakers a little leeway when it comes to Ginger Lynn Allen, since she has actually done a fair share of mainstream films over the years. But get this - these guys have Ginger speaking with an Irish accent. You just have to laugh at this nonsense.

Okay, getting back to the actual film. I don't know what college these folks are from, but their teacher, Karen (Bobbie Phillips), has eschewed the classroom setting in order to bring them to Ireland and show them real history. Her entire lesson plan, I must note, seems to consist solely of a few moments spent cracking jokes around a circle of rocks. Only one girl, Shae (Brandi-Ann Milbradt) is even interested in the subject; the others just want to have sex. Everyone soon goes their separate ways, get attacked by cannibals, yada yada yada. The whole thing would be excruciatingly unbearable were it not for one man, this film's one and only saving grace. And that man's name is Gary (Simon Peacock), who turns up again and again, right out of the blue, to warn the Americans not to stray off the path in those dangerous woods. Say what you will, but I think more horror films could use weirdo Scotsmen popping up now and again to utter dire warnings in that distinctive Irish brogue.

Let's be clear: this is a lousy horror movie with an atrocious ending. Yeah, it's good for a few laughs but that's it. The only good thing about it is the gore, but I obviously didn't find the film nearly as gory as some. Yeah, there's blood and entrails and all that good stuff, but it all looks fake. No one loves a good beheading more than I do, but the one in this film is just ridiculous. Of course, the gore would have been much more satisfying if we had been able to see the film as it was originally made. Sadly, Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain is what is left after a significant amount of gore and nudity got snipped out of the original version. Why you would heavily edit the only two things going for you (in this case, nudity and gore) is beyond me; it's cinematic self-castration.

a group of american students are on a trip to ireland for halloween to study the local rituals and as is usual bump into something they didn't bargain for
what this does have going for it is that it seems to have a better budget than most other films of this ilk and subsequently it looks better than most
it builds a creepy atmosphere quite well for the majority of the film and the direction is pretty good and nicely stylish
and it does have some very attractive actresses involved too
the downside though is that this has already been done too many times already and we really didn't need this film to be made as it adds nothing new to the mix
the acting is pretty poor and the special effects aren't great either
when the death does begin i found it was when i started to get bored they ruin all the eerie stuff that they had build and manage to completely trash that in 10 minutes of sex and blood
in short it could have been great but they played it safe and gave us something obvious that we have all seen before