But, now that my vacation is over (:::reminiscent tear:::) and Mr. Snow has supplied me with a new non-molten copy of his movie, we can help him out and give Us Sinners a little exposure... to the three or four people who will eventually read this. In the interest of full disclosure ("Disclose" her? I hardly know her! Wakka-wakka-wakka!), though the man did provide me with a free copy of the movie (two free copies...) this review is coming from the perspective of a guy who previously spent $2 to rent it via Amazon... despite not being able to watch the downloaded file. The only people harder to win over than critics who see your movie free? Actual consumers who spend their money to watch it, of which technically I am one. And if there's one thing I know how to do, it's consume. Please, keep all penis comments to yourself. Ladies, if you'd like to offer yourselves up for some cunnilingus though, be my guest. My beard feels like someone rubbing a furry mitten between your thighs... No? Oh well, your loss.

In the interest of not spoiling a lot of the movie (as a courtesy to George), I'm going to be a bit scant on of some of the more integral details of what Us Sinners has to offer. Given the opening scene, I can tell that not giving too much away is going to be harder than that time I had to give up huffing magic markers in the third grade... from which I'm still getting "the Sharpie shakes" 20 years later. The first three minutes alone are pretty unnerving as we get a creepy peek into a childhood trauma that would one day turn a boy named Tim Connelly into a very disturbed young man into his adult years. In fact, when we catch up to Tim, he's repeating that whole "Holy Mary Mother of God" prayer over and over while choking some blond with his tally-whacker. After presumably busting his nut, our Henry Lee Lucas-to-be (still wearing his tighty-whiteys just to add to the revulsion) proceeds to break the woman's neck, I'm guessing while his wang's still tickling her tonsils. Careful there Tim, if you want to keep Lil' Tim attached I'd suggest removing him from the vicinity of something dangerous like a pair of teeth. The obvious solution? Try to limit your "death head" thing on women with dentures.

During his off hours, when he's not schlong suffocating whores or getting yelled at by his puritan mother (who he still lives with), Tim holds a managerial job at a place called Do It All Cleaning. I'm guessing his promotion to a position of even minute power was either the result of pity or some legal precedent about giving employees a mandatory boot up the corporate ladder every 5 years, because Tim's way too timid to be boss material. Either way, I don't see positive things in the futures of his co-workers, who treat him like the creepy kid in school who never talked to anyone and whose family couldn't afford to have hot showers more than twice a week. The feeling of inevitable doom for these cast members only becomes more so when some of them start to suspect Timmy's the one behind the recent rash of hooker mutilations in the neighborhood. As with 90% of movie serial killers since Psycho, Tim's ladykilling ways are all about the ages old need for self-empowerment. To make up for the harassment of his domineering mother and the limitless shit he takes from his should-be underlings at work, the guy kills women for a hobby. There's a glimmer of hope in the plot though, because Timmy's fast falling down the stairwell of love for a new girl at the office named Louise. Were Huey Lewis and the News onto something with all that "the Power of Love" crap, or will Tim's inability to take his life by the proverbial balls end up as bad news for Louise the first time she goes to give New Jersey's answer to Ed Gein a "special oral handshake" as her thanks for paying for a trip through the drive-up window at Long John Silver's? Or maybe, just maybe, neither one happens. Maybe nobody dies and it's all just a dream or the snow globe inspired hallucination of a retarded kid whacked out on propane fumes. Hey, you'll never know until you watch it.

Us Sinners was made with less money than the average household spends on toilet paper in a month. As such, I feel sorry for George Snow's ass crack during the shooting of the movie. If you're on this site (which you'd pretty much have to be if you're reading this review...) then chances are you've been exposed to the no-budget digital video medium before. We've all seen them, in a much more frequent frequency in recent years, to the point where it's almost unfair to hold it against the movies' makers. Cheap technology doesn't excuse a poor cast and rehashing the same old slasher story though. It feels like Mr. Snow filled his cast with fairly attractive people willing to engage in pseudo-rape scenes rather than enlist more capable actors. Again, it's a micro-capital production, but listening to some of this delivery makes my wincing genes double-over. Blegh. Brandon Schraml is actually not too bad as our resident psychopath nor are Brenda Cooney (Louise) or Leslie Hughes (Tim's mom), which is a fortunate thing considering they make up the bulk of the screen time, but everybody else brought forth an all-too-familiar suffering that any self-respecting Cenobite should aspire to inflict on their victims. On another note, I'm a bit baffled about the use of disembodied voices for certain parts of the movie. Were there really no extras available to fill the roles of "Tim's boss", "Tim's boss's wife", or "Neighborhood bullies"? Was Snow putting his movie together as part of a drunken bar bet that he couldn't fill 15 roles with less than 10 actors?!

Where indy movies more often than not suffer in the production values and acting caliber departments, they can still make up for these shortcomings with excellent storytelling and creative writing, right? Only if they can accomplish those things. Us Sinners' storytelling, though different than most slashers in the sense that there's no anorexic excuse for a "mystery" about who the killer is, still provides little more than a straightforward "follow the killer" formula peppered with frequent flashbacks that offer no real twists or turns to the tale that we haven't seen before. Whether Snow is intentionally aping/homaging serial killer movies past or subconsciously channeling flicks he's seen before into his own pale amalgamation, Us Sinners is somewhat starved for original material. What it lacks in breaking new ground in creative content though it works instead on hitting viewers upside the face with shock and gore. Blood and guts fans will have plenty to play with as old skool red stuff pours from stab wounds, dismemberments, and one character's unfortunate-but-gruesomely entertaining run-in with a firecracker. As for the shocks, well, the easiest way to sum them up in one statement would be to call the movie itself a Tromatic gross-out flick without the humor or environmental conservation messages. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is entirely up to your personal tastes.

Unfortunately, Us Sinners does suffer from that cinematic butt tremor that now haunts me since my first viewing of Night Ripper: a seemingly endless stream of scenes consisting of the video camera strapped to the passenger seat of the killer's car as he drives between points 'A' and 'B'. Sure, they're not as torturous in length in this instance, but static "dashboard p.o.v." shots for any extended period of time (especially when accompanied by a soundtrack of Christian radio station programming) are one of my "pet peevs". Or, if you wanted to refer to it in a less cutesy way, you could say they're tantamount to bamboo chutes under my toenails or a car battery clamped to my foreskin. If you can't drop all of them, at least trim them down to 3 seconds or less each won't you?

As stated before, in articles that George has cited in discussing the feedback for his flick most reviewers are polarized when it comes to whether Us Sinners is a resounding achievement in the modern day genre of genuinely independent horror or a so-called "epic fail" no matter which end of the cinematic swimming pool people drop it into. For me, it doesn't fall into either extreme. Despite the uncomfortable shock moments, nothing else about it is especially memorable and thus leads to an equilibrium of the decent and the disdained. In traditionally cheesy reviewer style, allow me the following analogy: Us Sinners manages to pan a few nuggets of good story possibilities, but never quite works hard enough to strike the big vein under the surface and bring home the gold rush meant to make its fortune... I promise not to bring out any more goofy New York Post type shit like that for at least a few months.

Us Sinners definitely succeeds in leaving one very dramatic impression on me though: the next time I hear somebody saying "Pull the string!", for the first time since Ed Wood I won't be thinking about Bela Lugosi...