Main cast: Damien Puckler (Simon), Cameron Bowen (Brian), Braxton Davis (Bill), Mara Hall (Auntie May), Jacob Hobbs (Kip), Tonya Kay (Star), Christy Keller (Jan), Charito Mertz (Candi), Milly Sanders (Daisy), Jeremy Thomas (Ren), Ire Wardlaw (Nicole), and Semi Anthony (JB)
Director: Steven Judd
Death Factory is not really a factory – there isn’t one anywhere in this movie. The main “attraction” here is a museum of serial killer paraphernalia. Basically, the movie is about a busload of people who find themselves stranded in what seems like a deserted small town. Their bus broke down earlier, but the bus and the driver mysteriously vanish when they go look for it. So, they can only buckle down in that place and find some way to call for help. However, there just have to be two troublemakers – in this case, two self-professed Goth kids Ren and Star wander off to find a place to have sex and get high, only to end up in the Death Museum. They find a book, “The Book of the Dead”, and just have to speak aloud the words that summon a bunch of serial killers back into town. Let’s see, there are Albert Fish, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, the Zodiac, and oh, Jack the Ripper who turns out to be a lesbian in dominatrix gear. What’s a horror flick without some lesbian evil, after all?
The most well-drawn character here is Simon, and that’s because the movie opens with easily the most gruesome scene in the entire movie: Simon’s abusive father slashing open his mother’s throat after beating that woman into a pulp, just before Simon – then just a boy – beat the man to death with a golf club. This scene is disturbing and hard to watch because it is easily the most real element in this story: there are monsters like Simon’s father who exist in the real world, after all. Anyway, now, Simon and his brother Brian are adults. Simon is back in town – his dog tag implies that he was formerly in the military, but the script blatantly tells me that he actually did more covert assignments – and he takes this trip with his brother as chance to reconnect after never seeing much of one another in the last few years.
Therefore, when the resurrected serial killers start taking out the passengers (as well as one another – they don’t play nice as a group), it is so convenient that Simon has his super action hero kung-fu skills to kick rear ends.
This movie is not exactly the most amazing one around – the budget is clearly nothing remotely close to Hollywood standards – but it does try to be entertaining. It tosses in some lesbian moments and topless female moments, but for those who like eye candy of the man meat sort, Damien Puckler has some pretty biceps and he is in his boxers in a scene that is meant to be disturbing, but turns out to be more sexy than anything else. He’s not winning any awards here, as he spends most of his screentime glowering blankly, but he is such a pretty fellow, it’s quite a shame that his biggest role to date is a recurring one in the TV series Grimm and his CV is not littered with more movies that require him to be naked as often as possible.
The biggest problem with this one is that it does not have as much gore and violence as it should have. It does feel as if the serial killers get taken out too quickly; the movie spends more time building up the tension for the killing spree, only to have the killing spree end way too soon to live up to the audience’s expectation. The murder scenes cut away too quickly, so there is hardly any lingering moment of gruesome fun.
Oh, alright, this is a crap movie. But I watched it twice because Mr Puckler is so pretty to look at. Come on, look at those muscles! The way his shirt clings to his torso! He’s like a hotter version of Charlie Sheen, minus all that annoying crap that makes it impossible to like Mr Sheen even a little. So yeah, two oogies for the movie, but four oogies for the hot guy (even if he seems to be dwarfed by other male cast members, but who cares – short hot boys deserve love too), so three oogies for this movie. What, I can do this, I’m the boss here, and until Mr Puckler stars in a movie that requires him to play the beefcake as much as possible, this is the best we get, so let’s just go with the flow, mute the movie, and ogle that guy.
