- « Shame / Hunger. Both on DVD-Blu-Ray combo packs today. (*********9/10)
- Haywire. On DVD May 1st. (*******7/10) »
Year: 2012
Genre: Horror
Country: United States
Language: English
Starring: Val Kilmer, Ving Rhames, Luke Goss
Director: Kevin Carraway
DVD distributor: Alliance Films
Every now and then, someone asks me for a clarification of a B-movie versus…well, NOT a B-movie. And I’ll say this. It’s an inexact science. Usually it means low production values and a movie made on a budget. If the cop station in a movie looks like the copy room at your office, it’s a B movie. Also, a B-movie spends very little on actors. If there are a bunch of actors you’ve never heard of, or a bunch of porn stars, or Cuba Gooding Jr., it’s a B-movie.
Then there’s Val Kilmer. If HE’s in a movie, it’s a B-movie. Because Val Kilmer will now work for food. He’s been getting a lot of work lately, and you can tell because he’s clearly been eating a lot of food. Or Ving Rhames, who seems to be an agreeable guy, one who will appear in your movie if he happens to be walking by the set that day.
The latest movie to have Ving Rhames walking by the set, and to pay Val Kilmer in buckets of KFC, is called 7 Below. It’s one of those silly horror movies where some mystical being controls people and makes them kill each other, and the real killer is revealed only at the last minute, then there’s a twist, and I’m just glad it’s over.
It comes to DVD April 17th from Alliance Films. It seems that they didn’t have quite enough of a budget to spring for the 20-piece family bucket, because Val Kilmer has very little screen time.
The thing about these B horror movies is that it’s very rare that any of them are good. That’s because just making the movie is the goal, and then distributing it for people who will buy any horror movie they see. So an interesting premise, a good script and a solid cast are all irrelevant. Instead they just slap a bunch of stuff together, get a quasi-big name for the price of a double down sandwich, throw it on video and move on to the next one. The best you can hope for is adequacy. And that’s how we get 7 Below.