SIDESHO . . . . 0r, CHM's Go To Florida

[indianasmith]

Who doesn't love a good Cannibal Mutant Hillbilly (CHM) movie?  After seeing a couple of really bad additions to this genre (THE BLOODSHED and BLOODLINES), this little movie was a nice refreshing change of pace, and a reminder that CHM's aren't just found in the Ozarks and the Appalachians.

Here's the basic plot - The Goodall family - John and Christy, their daughter Gwen and son Cory, plus Gwen's best friend Steffi, are travelling through Florida on their way to the girls' softball camp, taking the back roads to indulge John's fondness for photography.  Stopping at a remote gas station and general store, he sees a sign for an old-timey sideshow full of  hokey attractions.  He asks the cantankerous old lady who minds the store if it is still open, and she says it's been shut down for years but some of the attractions are still there.

So John decides to check it out.  The place looks like a ghost town, but they are greeted by a rather eccentric old barker who agrees to give them the guided tour.  The girls and wifey enjoy the reptile house, while Dad gets invited in to a special showroom ("an attraction a man might not want his family to see!" the barker explains).  There he sees a bunch of hideously deformed human fetuses, which freaks him out enough that he is ready to blow the dump.  Meanwhile, Cory finds a boy his own age (about 10) with a deformed face, who is reading old comic books in the barn.  He befriends the lonely child, and they chat for a few minutes till the old barker comes in and shoos the boy off.  Then the family loads into their minivan and takes off . . . . only to have the car die a few miles down the road.  There's a large house nearby, whose owner doesn't have a car ("my cousin had a car once . . . he done used it to run over my other cousin!" he explains).  But he offers to let them spend the night in some old fishing cabins down by the swamp.

That night the girls sneak out to smoke a reefer and get kidnapped by two CMH's.  The boy runs out to  the van to check on his pet box turtle, Ninja,  and sees someone walking around, checking out their vehicle.  He runs back and wakes up John, and they go to check on the girls and find all of them gone.  Then they are attacked by a CMH whom they manage to kill, and the old lady from the store catches up with them.  You have the obligatory explanation (the place used to be a convict camp, the prisoners killed all the wardens, the state conveniently hung a few and forgot about the rest who escaped into the swamp. They have inbred so badly that more and more of them are born deformed. 

Anyhoo, one thing leads to another.  The little deformed boy tries to save Cory and gets shot by the old lady, and Cory brains her with a turtle.  It becomes a battle between the Goodalls and the CMH's.  I will say this is one of the least competent CMH bands I have seen in any movie.  The Goodalls, by my count, took out FIVE of them before the family lost any of its members. 

If you like this sort of film, this one was fun but not spectacular.  Very little nudity (and I suspect the one RGBS  was of a stunt breast), but tons of great gore.  As Joe Bob would put it, we have turtle fu, outboard motor fu, snakebite fu, scalpings, and one good double electrocution.

I give this one about 3 1/2 out of 5 stars on my low budget, direct to video CMH movie scale.

[Cult Movie Mania]

Any idea if it was actually shot in Florida?  If it's swampy, Louisiana may have substituted.  I can tell you that in the real world, Florida does indeed have its share of CHM's.

I saw the DVD at Best Buy last night.

[Sister Grace]

Who doesn't love a good Cannibal Mutant Hillbilly (CHM) movie?  After seeing a couple of really bad additions to this genre (THE BLOODSHED and BLOODLINES), this little movie was a nice refreshing change of pace, and a reminder that CHM's aren't just found in the Ozarks and the Appalachians.

I'm sorry to hear that you had the aweful trauma of being exposed to Bloodlines. Unfortunately, I received Bloodlines for christmas last year... i swear i was a good girl, why'd i get stuck with that lump of coal?   

[indianasmith]

Trust me, THE BLOODSHED made that one look like an Oscar winner.  I actually did a fairly comprehensive review of BLOODLINES on this forum . . . you ought to look it up.  It was pretty tongue in cheek.

[Andrew]

The little deformed boy tries to save Cory and gets shot by the old lady, and Cory brains her with a turtle.

As in he beats her head in with a turtle?  That is...odd.  Funny, too, because I have a review for "Death Dimension" pending and in that one the bad guy has a big snapping turtle that he uses to threaten the female protagonist.  "Talk, or this turtle will bite your tits off! TALK!"

Now, a real backwood inbred would have beat somebody to death with a opossum.

[CheezeFlixz]

This one is in my "TO WATCH" stack, I might check it out tonight ... it's either this one or "Meatball Machine", I was going to watch it the other night but opted to watch "War of the World 2" ... a test pattern would have been more entertaining. 

[Sister Grace]

The little deformed boy tries to save Cory and gets shot by the old lady, and Cory brains her with a turtle.

As in he beats her head in with a turtle?  That is...odd.  Funny, too, because I have a review for "Death Dimension" pending and in that one the bad guy has a big snapping turtle that he uses to threaten the female protagonist.  "Talk, or this turtle will bite your tits off! TALK!"

Now, a real backwood inbred would have beat somebody to death with a opossum.

I once saw someone throw an angry coon in a car on someone. It wasn't pretty...

[indianasmith]

What's really funny is, right before he hits her, he whispers to the turtle:

"Ninja . . . pull your head in, NOW!!"