Review of Demented Death Farm Massacre (1972) by Ennis Brokeback L — 26 Jan 2011

As lackluster as this movie is, I do have to toast John Carradine, who plays an incidental part in "Demented Death Farm Massacre" (its second title, after the original "Honey Britches," among about a half-dozen others). Carradine can make at least scenes he appears in watchable, even when the films surrounding them are garbage; yes, I've seen "The Unearthly," "Red Zone Cuba," and "The Incredible Petrified World.".

Carradine is like a longer-lived Bela Lugosi, with the former's Ed Wood period lasting three decades longer and shifting hands among multiple cut-rate directors. Both men were excellent actors often confined to giving memorable, above-average performances in films and alongside fellow thespians unfit to lick their boots.

In "Massacre," Carradine plays the Judge of Hell, a ghostly figure completely separated from the action by both setting and the fact that his footage was shot by producer/co-director Fred Olen Ray, who bought the rights to the little-seen "Honey Britches" years after its release, added unrelated scenes with Carradine, coined the name "Demented Death Farm Massacre," and released it through Troma.

The main story concerns a quartet of inept but tough-talking jewel thieves who, while on the lamb in the backwoods South, decide to hide out with religious zealot moonshine merchant Harlan (George Ellis) and his naive wife Reba Sue (Ashley Brooks). Unfortunately, the gang takes not only advantage of the hillbillies' hospitality but for fools as well, attempting to intrude on Harlan's bootlegging and his wife as well.

Morality tales are certainly weird to associate with Troma and backwoods intrigue, but the movie does somewhat advance an agenda, taking a kinder view of the hardworking (if dissolute) Harlan than the duplicitous, opportunistic, callous hoodlums who terrorize him and his wife. However, Troma was also a studio that never met a critique of sanctimony it didn't like; it's no small wonder Lloyd Kaufman and company agreed to release Ray's rejiggered version of "Honey Britches," with its knife-twist of an ending.