#razor sharp studios

Steve (Eamon Hardiman) is a socially awkward nerd who gets financially taken advantage of by his mother and her boyfriend. Upon her request, he finds a job at a debt collection agency, where he is immediately tormented by his co-workers (although the ladies seem to like him). Steve’s built-up frustration and victimization has created within him a psychosis which compels him to kill all the people listed on his spreadsheet who owe debt, and various random people along the way who happen to have poor credit. Meanwhile, a lesbian witch ritual is happening in a suburban home; Steve stops by to watch. One of the witches may also be an aerobics video star, but that doesn’t matter. Literally no one is safe from Steve’s spree of collecting death, and that’s what matters.

Directed by Missy Dawn and produced through Razor Sharp Studios, Steve: Death Collector initially started out as a previously shot mock trailer that set up the to-be movie as a sleazy, retro, minimalist, shot-on-video slasher movie. Upon watching the feature-length final product, however, the viewer will see that it nixes the vintage aesthetic of the trailer for a more modern look and feel (though Hardiman’s wardrobe is still off the 80’s rack). Shot in HD, in 3-D, and for under $2,000, Steve is ambitious to say the least. To say a little more, the movie is fairly adept at keeping the viewer’s attention for the entire 90 minutes despite the frequent bouts of filler material (such as Steve pouring gasoline in a single spot for, how long was it? 2 minutes? I didn’t stop to check, I was fast-forwarding) and also tossing in a few genuine moments of dry comedy and gutter-dwelling exploitation.

The majority of the cast were pulled from Razor Sharp’s last film Pig Girl, and even though that movie came out just last year, there is some noticeable improvement in the acting department here in Steve. The dialog is less amateurishly improvised, there is more interesting dynamic between characters, and a lot of the actors have unique roles instead of seeming to basically play themselves under a different name. Steve also amps up the gratuitous nudity and sex teases thanks to that unusual witchcraft tangent the movie takes about half way through. What it lacks, though, are enough likeable characters. Steve is not likeable. I kind of have to root for him, and he does get better towards the end, but he sure is a miserable puss when a rockabilly song isn’t following him around killing people.

Steve: Death Collector has a relatively high body count and some pretty show-stopping kills, including a rubber dildo strangulation to start the movie off and one of the most over-the-top body meltdowns I’ve seen in some time. The high number of different locations was refreshing, although I may just be glad the action had been taken out of the woods. There is a cool synth score that turns up only occasionally, but the soundtrack is mostly rock songs including not one but TWO Billy Idol cover tunes. Lastly and ultimately, the movie benefits most from its overall sleazy nature; although the picture quality is pristine, there is an invisible layer of filth that is covering the screen at all times.

College drop-out Casey is forced by his mother to get out of the house and go on a male bonding camping trip to the notorious Camp Wood with his short-tempered but well-meaning stepfather. Totally not looking forward to this lame family vacation, Casey plans to meet up with his slacker friends who are camping in the same location for some partying. After slipping some sleeping pills into his stepfather's drink, Casey meets up with his pals, but only to be targeted by the Pig Girl, the insane daughter of slain local serial killer Porkchop. After regaining consciousness and running into a dead teenager, Casey's stepfather has to locate the partiers and escape the campgrounds before they are added to Camp Wood's ever-growing body count.

Pig Girl is the fourth installment/spin-off of West Virginian filmmaker Eamon Hardiman's Porkchop series, which is preceded by Porkchop, Porkchops, and Porkchop 3D.  These previous micro-budget slasher films miraculously combine hackneyed amateurism with a conceptually terrifying villain and gut-busting laughs, and often follow typical killer-in-the-woods conventions and narrative.  I expected more of the same with this new film, and for the most part Pig Girl delivers everything we have already seen before in the series.  However, Pig Girl does manage to be the best looking and most professionally shot entry of the lot, and perhaps the best entry overall next to maybe Porkchops (aka Porkchop 2: Rise of the Rind).

Pig Girl throws the best elements of the Porkchop trilogy into the mix, including Missy Dawn's reprise of her role from the last film as the title antagonist. In fact, most of the cast is borrowed from previous Hardiman films, providing Pig Girl with a reunion-type feel and the comfortable sense this was the result of a bunch of friends with good chemistry making a movie together, at least for those who are familiar with the series. The gore, including the opening flesh-melting sex scene and an electric hedge trimmer gut carving, is done rather well, but the violence is surprisingly sparse throughout most of the running time, leaving more room to focus on the characters. The soundtrack is a fun mix of rock music and haunted house orchestral drones, but the highlight is the closing Ramones-core theme song "Pig Girl's Camp Wood Weekend." And finally for all you granola-heads out there, the nature shots around scenic Camp Wood add some beauty and contrast to the movie's boobs'n'blood cheap thrills.

Now with any Hardiman effort that features a crazed pig-faced psychopath, there are going to be some unique technical anomalies and weird editing choices, and Pig Girl is no exception, like when the aspect ratios suddenly change from widescreen to wider-screen and back again. But the most unusual part of this movie is when the climax happens AFTER the end credits have started. I have never seen that before. And if that's not strange enough, the end credits are put on hold for a while to show a totally out-of-left-field epilogue (and maybe a hint to a second Pig Girl movie?), making the total length of the end credits from start to finish almost 20 minutes. That's insane. I don't know if I'd call that progressive filmmaking, but it does make the experience unpredictable.