FORMAT: BLU-RAY
Donald (Dave Castiglione) is a traveling businessman who gets lost in the backwoods of New Jersey. He takes his eyes off the road just long enough to hit a trashy redneck woman named Marcy (Dawn Murphy) with his car. She doesn’t die though, and she pursues him into the woods with her trusty machete. When Marcy finally catches up to him, she forces herself on him and keeps him captive in a dog pen. Donald then makes a desperate plan to escape the clutches of the sex-hungry redneck cannibal babe.
Backwoods Marcy was produced by a low-budget New Jersey based company called Sharkey Video. It features many of the same cast and crew from several W.A.V.E. Productions. (Even W.A.V.E. head honcho Gary Whitson has a small role.) Unlike W.A.V.E., Sharkey seems to be trying to make a “real” movie with limited means instead of embracing its limitations and reveling in the grungy aesthetic.
Murphy is quite memorable as the toothless, horny, machete-wielding crone. Castiglione also puts in a strong turn as the put-upon victim. Murphy also co-wrote and directed the film, and she does a solid job behind the camera for the most part, especially in the early scenes.
While it’s not exactly a classic, I do give the film props for cleverly turning the backwoods “Rape and Revenge” genre on its ear by swapping the genders of the protagonist and the antagonist. We’ve seen beautiful women being manhandled by ugly redneck guys countless times in horror movies. It was only a matter of time before the shoe was on the other foot.
The running time is a scant sixty-five minutes, and the pacing is fluid enough so that it moves along in a brisk fashion. I will say that despite the fine set-up, the film plays all its cards a bit too soon. Because of that, the third act isn’t quite as sharp or as focused as everything that came before. Had the flick ended with the Friday the 13th-inspired gag, it might’ve skated by with a *** rating. However, the coda with an FBI agent (Pamela Sutch) poking around the woods feels tacked on and goes on far too long to boot.
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