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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 2.40:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  • Dual Layer (RSDL )
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • English: Dolby Digital Stereo
  • Commentary - English: Dolby Digital Stereo
  Subtitles
  • None
  Extras
  • Teaser trailer
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Audio commentary - Dir. Eli Roth
  • 3 Featurette - Making Of; Popcorn Taxi Q&A; Pancake Boy Audition Tape
  • Animated menus
  • 3 Short film - Animated - The Rotten Fruit

Cabin Fever

Warner Bros./Warner Home Video . R4 . COLOR . 88 mins . MA15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

SPOILER ALERT!
This review may contain spoilers. Then again, it may not. I say: Live dangerously, read the review.

EXT. NIGHT

Five obnoxious clichéd American teens on vacation are telling scary stories around a camp fire.

Obnoxious Teen #1: WOO! Everything sux! I’m such a dumb cow! Look at my boobs! Aren’t they great?

Obnoxious Teen #2: Wow, man, like yeah, they are. Now where’s my beer, ‘cause I’m the crazy one. Who wants to root a tree? Me so horny. BOOGER! BOOGER BOOGER!

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"Damn. The prom is tomorrow. I'll never fix my hair in time."

Obnoxious Teen #3: Hey, man, I’m, like, the responsible one, so will you all just chill out, act your age and be responsible for, like, one minute in your life? Right, so who wants to die first so I can run like a sissy into the woods to hide?

Obnoxious Teen #4: I’m the quiet bookish type who isn’t as attractive as boobgirl. But I’m wild in the sack. Weeeee...!

Obnoxious Teen #5: And I’m the nerdish, quiet guy who secretly loves the quiet girl. I could be played by an accounting student, that’s how dull I am. I deserve to die a violent death.

SUDDENLY...

A strange looking hermit man appears. He looks like he fell into a vat of strawberry jam. He walks slowly and smells. His skin is flaking off.

HE IS DISEASED!

Diseased Hermit: Help me. I think I’m sick. *COUGH* Please... I don’t think blood should be pouring from my eyes. *HACK* Or my arse…

He vomits up DISEASED BLOOD all over the teens.

Obnoxious Teen #2: Leave us alone man! What do you want from us? Do you want a beer? Is it beer you want? Will you leave if I give you a beer? ANSWER ME, DUDE!

Obnoxious Teen #4: He’s trying to steal our car! Stop him! And make sure the car damaged in the process so that we’re stuck here!

Obnoxious Teen #3: He’s looking at my boobs! KILL HIM!

They kill the crazy infected guy, but they all catch herpes when they celebrate with a group tongue kiss.

INT. CABIN.

Obnoxious Teen #4: Oh. My. God. I feel, like, so, like, sick. My skin is, like, falling off. Did anyone bring some Clearasil?

Obnoxious Teen #2: Shit! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! Let’s burn her alive! She’ll make us all sick!

Obnoxious Teen #3: No. We must lock her in the shack outside, away from the group, thus making a point about the isolation forced upon the less attractive people in society when compared to the young and beautiful. Like me. I use Pantene with Frizz Management Anti-Dandruff Solution. See how soft and shiny my hair is?

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"So. Is that your car all covered in blood and shit? yeah? Alright then. Cool."

Obnoxious Teen #2: F*CK THAT, MAN! This is a cheap arse horror flick! There aren’t any messages! It’s about covering everything in blood and making people sick! Burn the diseased bitch! Buuuuuuuuurn her!

AUDIENCE: YEAH! BURN HER! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!

Obnoxious Teen #3: No, we mustn’t alienate her because she’s not beautiful like me. She can be helped. We’ll write to Extreme Makeover. With new boobs, straighter teeth and a new hairdo no-one will ever notice that her skin is peeling off like a blood filled onion and that she is dead.

They lock her in the shed and submit her photo to Extreme Makeover and Queer Axe for the Straight Corpse.

Obnoxious Teen #2: Oh F*CK, MAN! Now my skin is falling off! She made me SICK! HELP ME! Help me PLEASE!

Obnoxious Teen #3: Okay, we've already made a point about the xenophobic nature of beauty, so LET'S BURN HIM!

AUDIENCE: YAY!!!

Later...

Some of the teens decide to go for help.

Obnoxious Teen #3: HELP! We’re too stupid to drive back to the city and get proper help, so we’re gonna stay in the woods and ask for help from backwards inbred hillbillies who just want to be left alone and would rather kill us than have big city folk know there’s a flesh eating killer virus on the loose. HELP!

Obnoxious Teen #2: Hey, look! Some hillbillies! They look friendly and not at all like they’d try to gang rape us! Let’s ask them for help!

Hillbilly #1: Sure boy. We’ll help. But first, can you squeal like a pig? Bubba, JimmyJo-Bob, go fetch me my ‘pig squealing’ pants...

In the audience, the ghosts of old horror film directors both dead and alive walk out in disgust, sickened by the way director Eli Roth has shamelessly ripped off their films.

Director Eli Roth: It’s not rip off, man, it’s homage.

Vince: Bullshit. You’re ripping them off, okay?

To make his point, Vince beats director Eli Roth to death with Jason Voorhees’ mask, then decapitates him with Leatherface’s chainsaw, then ties him to a bench to do a blood test and stores the corpse in the basement then snacks on his crispy fried fingers while watching Night of the Living Dead on DVD.

THE END.

Or is it just the beginning...?

  Video
Contract

For a low budget small time splat fest this looks pretty good. Colours are decent, starting off strong and gradually fading, mimicking the slightly faded look of the films it rips off, sorry, I mean ‘references’, with a contracted dynamic range in the shadows pulling the darkness in tightly to create a picture steeped in shadows and gloom the further it progresses.

  Audio
Contract

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Ever wondered how the 'Philips Head' screw driver got its name? Ask Philip.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 and stereo tracks are also quite good, naturally the 5.1 being the pick of the two. But, I have to say that the effects are a little over the top at times for my tastes. For example, when the girl shaves the infected leg, the noise of the razor as it glides over the wounds is a little too overcooked. Ditto some of the other effects of people sticking their fingers in wounds. Deliberate or not, they tend to sound too cartoonish, highlighting the problem Roth has in knowing where to draw the line before things become farcical. Quality generally is fine overall, handling effects, score, soundtrack and dialogue with equal assuredness but not doing anything too exciting. There are a few quick moments where all the channels are pulled in to explode in sound, and this works well, but more often the film sits heavily in the front channels.

  Extras
Contract

For this region's release we have a single commentary from director Eli Roth (whereas Region 1 gets five!). He’s joined in places by Jordan Ladd and Cerina Vincent and even his parents by phone at the very end, but it is a self indulgent, repetitive and shallow commentary for far too much of the time. I wouldn’t bother listening to this again, as anything worth learning is covered far better in other features, such as the Popcorn Taxi Q&A Session. Here Roth discusses in a non-stop gabfest most things related to the film, such as reasons for picking the horror genre, his inspirations, financing and may other aspects. This is given a healthy running time of 36 minutes, and isn’t available on the Region 1 release. This is definitely worth revisiting.

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"Hi. I live in this review. Wanna smell my shoes?"

The Beneath Skin – Making Of featurette is also interesting and covers the usual ground, up to the Toronto Film Festival which is where the film scored big at the last moment thanks to word of mouth from man-slug Harry Knowles.

Roth’s work as an animator is also on show with three short animated films based around a fruit band known as Rotten Fruit. Good for a laugh. Looks like the band was based on a mix of the Sex Pistols, Spinal Tap and a bowl of fruit.

There’s an audition tape of Pancake Boy (the redneck inbred biting kid at the store) doing karate to the song Gay Bar. Bizarre. But he looks like he could kill a horse with his feet, so who am I to judge?

Lastly, there are two trailers, one theatrical and a superior teaser trailer. The theatrical trailer features a quote from Peter Jackson stating “Hollywood has forgotten how to make movies like this...” which seems like an odd comment considering where he started and what he does now.

There's a bunch of Easter Eggs scattered throughout the menu system as well, not that they're worth the effort of playing. Off to the Easter Egg Department you go for info on how to find them. Go on. Shoo!

And that’s it. Not a bad lot, maybe you could argue that it’s lacking a little substance, but the Popcorn Q&A lifts the quality overall, even if we do miss out on a few comms.

  Overall  
Contract

Forget the surrounding hype, this film has a hard time living up to it, more often than not failing. Scary? No. Funny? Barely. Gory? Yeah, if throwing a bucket of blood on everyone is what you call gory. This is devoid of frights, tension, drama and real shocks, basically playing out like a fanboy's reasonably well-made home movie version of all the video nasties he watched in his youth. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it good. Its intentions might be in the right place, but it too often goes off the rails with pointless padding and blatant ‘borrowing’ from the films it references.

Ultimately, the concept of the enemy/monster/killer in the woods being an unseen flesh eating virus is the only decent idea in a film devoid of originality. Don't believe the hype.


  • LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=3763
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      And I quote...
    "Ultimately, the concept of the enemy/monster/killer in the woods being an unseen flesh eating virus is the only decent idea in a film devoid of originality. Don't believe the hype. "
    - Vince Carrozza
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Sony DVP-NS730P
    • TV:
          Philips 55PP8620
    • Receiver:
          Sony STR-DB1070
    • Speakers:
          Wharfedale s500
    • Centre Speaker:
          Polk Audio CS245
    • Surrounds:
          Wharfedale WH-2
    • Subwoofer:
          DB Dynamics TITAN
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          Standard Component RCA
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