Death Factory (2002)

Posted on Dec 26, 2002 under Horror |

Written and directed by Brad Sykes
Starring
- Lisa Jay
- Karla Zamudio
- Jeff Ryan
- David Kalamus

Shot-on-video moviemakers occupy a precarious little niche in the ecology of films, like… um… turn on the Discovery Channel and find your own nature documentary analogy, okay? The point is, just as in nature, these films can be entertaining only so long as the niche they occupy isn’t better filled by some other, more gifted organism. In entertainment terms, that means that microbudgeters need to provide something that someone else isn’t providing. It could be a particularly edgy perversity (see Bloodletting or Terror Toons), or a concept that won’t appeal to a market outside a devoted audience (Track 16), or a unique viewpoint (Townies). Or maybe just a genre with which the big boys have gotten tired (Zombie Chronicles).

“So, maybe it was a CHAIR factory.”

That last example is instructive, because the director of Zombie Chronicles, Brad Sykes, is also the writer/director of the feature that I’ll get around to discussing here eventually, Death Factory. The latter is technically a more accomplished production, and benefits from greater attention to storytelling. But it loses a lot of its effectiveness by giving us a story that other filmmakers with greater resources can and do give us. Oh, I’m not saying that there are correspondences between Death Factory and the filmography of Spielberg or Altman, or even Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer; but people like Roger Corman or Fred Olen Ray are always more than willing to give us more accomplished direct-to-video fare that fills the same ecological niche as Death Factory. The micro-budgeter shouldn’t try to compete on the same terms with the big boys, and that’s where Death Factory falls down.

In an opening so well-known that it goes beyond trite, we meet two people who fit the most doomed archetype of all time: The Couple Who Decides to Get Snuggly In An Abandoned Facility. (With the regularity with which such characters get slaughtered, it’s a wonder that that particular gene still exists.) In this case, it’s Alyson (Alyson Beal) and Josh (Michael O’Karma) who decide that the abandoned factory on the edge of town would be fun to explore, and then that a beaten-up couch in said facility would be a good place for Alyson to seal their death warrants by removing her shirt. Though Alyson pooh-poohs it when Josh spooks at hearing and seeing things in the shadows, he turns out to be right, and a mysterious somebody/something bloodily claws them to death.

“Hey, what can I say? We got quotas!”

We’re next introduced to our throng of ethnically-diverse friends, ready to party as the college term lets out. There’s Rachel (Lisa Jay), who’s got Final Girl written all over the virginally white dress she wears; her childhood friend, sassy Luisa (Karla Zamudio); Derek (Jeff Ryan), the frat boy who’s smitten with Rachel, despite Luisa’s derision (in fact, his determined “white knight” declarations get almost creepy after a bit); Troy (Jason Flowers), the metal-head who’s got an unrequited thing for Luisa; and Francis and Leticia (David Kalamus and Rhoda Jordan), who’re black (that’s enough characterization for anyone, right?). The initial plan was to party at Francis’ house while his parents take a trip, but his parents decide not to go anywhere at the last minute. Gee, where else could they party?

Well, shucks, we all know that nothing’s a party-magnet like an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town, so off they trundle to the factory. Not before, though, we’re treated to the spectacle of a homeless man venturing into the factory and getting himself splattered by the ugly critter that lives there. (Said homeless guy is played by inexplicable porn superstar Ron Jeremy, which prompted the following exchange: I call my wife into the room. “See this guy?” I say. “He’s credited with over seven hundred hardcore porn movies. Then I watch her stare desperately at the screen, hoping that there’s some other guy that she’s overlooked.)

“Nah, I’ll stick with the frontal lobotomy.”

Anyway. Our fearless half-dozen assemble with partying supplies at the factory, which looks more like an unused warehouse than a high-tech facility. But the latter it definitely is, or was, as evidenced by (after much snarky “bantering” filler), they discover an office with papers still strewn about — papers that show this place to have once been Dyson Chemicals.

Because metalheads always know about these things, Troy regales the others with his secondhand knowledge of the secret scandal: That Dyson had been working on biological warfare stuff, and one of the workers had accidentally been exposed and died — but that later, someone or something had returned and slaughtered forty of the employees, at which point the government moved in and shut everything down. The news media, by the way, were bought off from reporting it. (Uh-huh. Right. Like there’s enough money in the entire world to compensate news syndicates for abstaining from “FORTY DEAD IN UNSOLVED MASS KILLING!” headlines.)

“And my mom said this dress better still be white when I get home, if you know what I mean.”

Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or even a biochemist) to figure out that the reports of the infected employee’s death are exaggerated. She’s still right here, as played by Tiffany Shepis, wearing pale greasepaint and sunken eyes, metallic dentures, a bloodspattered tank top, and weird pin-hinged claw contraptions on her hands which are never explained. And as is the habit of tortured creatures like her, she’s intent on slaughtering every partygoer and getting all gory with their bodily fluids as they each find reasons to drift off from the main party. (Understandable, given that the party has all of teh vim and vigor of a Depakoted octagenarian.)

By the way, in case the “have sex and die” credo wasn’t adequately demonstrated earlier, we get Round #2, as Francis and Leticia wander off and find a convenient bed, and get all naked and groiny. A BED?? The torn-up couch was bad enough, and at least then the participants didn’t get completely naked. Let me explain this for people who’ve never been in an abandoned building: THINGS LIVE IN OLD FURNITURE. Couches, mattresses, anything with stuffing — these are Disneyland for all manner of insect and rodents. If they had the brains of toast, Francis and Letitia would have found the discovery of a bed with immaculate white sheets as unbelievable as a dozen alien Greys singing a medley of showtunes. And watching them get naked and sweaty on a mattress that’s supposedly been in an abandoned building for over a decade… Ugh. Made me want to go have a shower right then and there.

Bloody tank tops. I hear they’ll be all the rage in the Spring 2003 line-up.

As you can see, Death Factory is a standard entry in the haunted house/Alien ripoff genre. But the problem, as I said before, is that there are more than enough movies out there on the rental shelves following the same outlines, and most of them are head and shoulders above this one in terms of resources. We’ve all seen enough abandoned factories and research facilities in these movies that the abandoned building used here doesn’t cut the mustard. Likewise, we’ve seen enough mutated creatures that simple greasepaint and fake teeth don’t have enough impact — especially when we see her on screen far too much, instead of keeping her to the shadows and encouraging our imaginations to help fill in the deficiencies in the budget.

Of course, if that had happened, we woudn’t have seen nearly as much blood, which is the one thing that Death Factory delivers in bucketloads (in comparison to direct-to-video product which aims very consciously at an easy R-rating). The mutated girl survives on blood, so each killing is full of ripping and tearing and sucking and spurting and gurgling. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll find it here, but after the first few killings go whole hog on the gore, there’s no where for the later ones to go to ramp things up; it becomes simply more of the same.

To compete with the established big boys, even in this unappreciated little genre, you either have to do what they do better than they do it, or do something that they’re not doing. Death Factory, sadly, mostly misses both marks.