Of the Evil Kind - DVD

Movie: Actually, Cody (Cory Knauf) just wanted to celebrate his mother's 50th birthday with his biker gang. But Cody already has a bad feeling when to the party in the remote house his ex Michelle (Tiffany Shepis) shows up with her new lover. Her little sister Megan (Christian McDowell), who has had a crush on Cody for a long time, makes the evening a little sweeter for him. But trouble really starts when Trixie (Mackenzie Frigens), a girl from the gang, suddenly shows up covered in blood and starts obsessively attacking her friends. It is only with difficulty that Trixie can be tied to the bed. But that's not the end of the problems, because suddenly a rival gang shows up and captures Cody and the others. Soon the whole thing threatens to escalate into a bloodbath - but is only the tip of the iceberg.

With From the evil kind Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores, better known as The Butcher Brothers, have dared to a curious genre mix: what starts as a brutal biker film mutates into exorcist horror, only to then want to compete torture horror in the style of Hostel. And if you think that's enough, you're wrong, because at the end another genre creeps into the mix, which shall not be revealed here, so as not to spoil the surprise for interested viewers. The whole thing doesn't make any sense at all, but has quite a decent entertainment value.

Great cinema shouldn't be expected, though. After all, the whole thing was directed on a mini-budget in just 21 days. This is then also sometimes more, sometimes less clearly noticeable to the film. Obviously, there wasn't much emphasis on proper character sketches or polished dialogues. Rather, with absurd ideas and crude violence, the entertainment value should be screwed up. Clearly: for viewers who like trashy horror, the bill is quite right in some scenes. But unfortunately there is for German viewers there a big drop of melancholy: unabridged the film did not come through the FSK.

This was especially with the very violent opening sequence also little surprising. And so Von der bösen Art already had to let some feathers for the rental version. However, most of the cuts here are done quite well, so the film still works in this version despite cuts. Whether this also applies to the even more heavily cut FSK 18 retail version cannot be judged at this point, as the rental version with the SPIO-JK seal was available for testing. The fact is that German horror fans once again get the short end of the stick. However, since in numerous Internet forums the blame is gladly sought at the distributor, it must be said that Sunfilm has quite tried to bring the film uncut to Germany. The fact that this was not successful is more than annoying - especially in view of the fact that one can see which films are allowed to be shown to children over the age of 6 (unfortunately, this also includes films that are actually released for children over the age of 12) and one assumes that adults can judge what is good for their children. The FSK doesn't seem to believe that they can judge for themselves, since films that are clearly made for adults are always only allowed to be released in heavily abridged form. The logic will probably never be fully clear, at least to me.

But back to the film: regardless of the cuts, Of the Evil Kind is certainly not a really good film. It does, however, have a decent fun factor in its own unique way, provided the inclined horror fan is willing to engage with the somewhat trashy staging and the occasionally somewhat amateurish acting of the cast. The completely twisted finale is so absurd that you just have to laugh. No great art, but an acceptable fun.

Picture + Sound: The low budget is also noticeable in the technical implementation. While the picture is clean, here and there the source material looks slightly washed out. Overall, the sharpness is on a decent level and can also convince in the darker moments, in which here and there light image noise can be discerned. The sound is okay, although the dialogue on the German soundtrack sounds a bit too front-heavy mixed. Overall, the DTS track is the best, as this is where the few surround effects come into their own the most. Good!

Extras: The nearly 19-minute making of is absolutely commercial-free and offers an entertaining look behind the scenes. However, the sound is rather poor, which is distracting in that there are no subtitle options here whatsoever. This also applies to the four minutes of cut scenes, although at least the sound comes out of the speakers clearly. Furthermore, the DVD still has the trailer to the film in German and English, as well as other program tips of the provider to offer.

Conclusion: Von der bösen Art is a genre mix that takes some getting used to, but knows how to entertain, provided you can get involved in the production. The German release suffers once again from partly very obvious cuts, which the provider Sunfilm unfortunately had to make after the FSK denied the uncut version the release. Only those who are not bothered by this and who like bloody entertainment of the slightly wackier kind, can safely risk a look here

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp