Crapila…
And so, The Asylum decide it’s time to unleash more cinematic mayhem on the world of low-budget nonsense once again, and I get to be the unfortunate soul to have to sit through the nightmare. One day I shall be rewarded for my endurance by a film that will still be utter crap, but also fun to watch. Sharknado was crap, yet enjoyable crap, but I didn’t get THAT one. Oh, no. I somehow managed to get every other one this year. I have to admit that this was like watching Arnie in Predator compared to last months seriously bad The Bell Witch Haunting, a contrived PoS (the ‘S’ stands for, eh, Slime?) if ever there was one. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m comparing Attila to Predator, because I’m not.
- Attila
- Directed by
Emmanuel Itier - Cast
Chris Conrad, Luke Barnett, Poncho Hodges - Release Date
31 December 2013 - Ed’s Grade: D
Attila is about a well-built dude in a cheap rubber mask making stupid noises (grunting and so forth); being hunted by so-called soldiers, who comprise of wildly mismatched actors and sports people of highly varying heights and, dare I say, talent. (Some of them can indeed act but why bother with a gig like this, right?) We start off in the days on Attila the Hun, where the “Staff of Moses” is used to give his “Hun sons, the dark power of the staff.” Jump to present day — Uranium War — Battle “Sandstorm,” where we finally get to meet the star and actual actor Chris Conrad, who plays the Captain of the unfortunate group he’s about to lead. Conrad played this part straight instead of have fun with it, as he stood out like a sore thumb doing this amid substandard performances and uninspired direction from Emmanuel Itier. Steve Hanks most certainly had fun with his part, playing it with all the overacting he could muster in his role as the General.
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Having sportspersons who want to try their extremely large hands at acting is fine, but they won’t be shown in a good light with Emmanuel Itier helming a film. Itier is OK for these films that 14-year-old boys get all excited over, but I just don’t see many others taking them seriously in this type of fare. I know there’s a substantial market for this type of film and that’s cool; a film’s a film and all that. I just wish they could set a higher standard as they have it all there if they bothered. I reviewed a film recently that cost $2000 to make, and while that was a different type of movie, Brandon Slagle’s The Black Dahlia Haunting, proves what can be done if you make a film for the passion of film, and not merely as a financial endeavour.
Attila will pass the time if you’re stuck for something to do, and have exhausted all other options (knitting a scarf, playing Angry Birds, listing three things to like about Justin Bieber, etc.), but it has no fun contained in a single frame to make Attila even watchably bad.
Review by Ed Blackadder, Lead Entertainment Writer
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