A group of teens go camping near a lake inhabited by the spirit of a demon brought to life by a Cherokee elder during the Trail of Tears.
So as the story goes, a Cherokee elder dabbled a little with black magic during the Trail of Tears and brought a demon that can only be released when someone touches a rock with a picture of a man on it and other demons mimicking certain animals if they touch the stones with the drawing of that animal on it. Well our lead actress, Mikki, and her friends go to the lakeside where the Cherokee elder did his dark deeds and before you know it someone touches of the stones and is possessed by one of the creatures, and as a chain of events, people start getting bitten, ripped apart, and turned into creatures themselves.
Now that was the short run of the story and I purposely did that so we can focus on the movie as a whole. I'll break it down so you all have an understanding of what I honestly thought of the movie.
First of all the acting was less than perfect, in fact lets go as far to say that everyone really couldn't act that well at all. With that said lets also understand that this was the first picture of everyone involved including director Eric Stanze so you have to give them all credit for improvising on their first acting job.
 
Secondly lets shoot for the story, which really wasn't that bad, in fact it was pretty damn creative how Stanze came up with a story based around a really bad event surrounding the Cherokee culture. It could possibly be almost believable that one of the tribesmen screwed up a few incantations and brought his tribes crops to stone and totally screwed them, I thought that was actually pretty cool and original.
Lastly lets rock out with what I really loved with this movie, the gore. My friends, this movie had some excellent gore scenes, some decapitations, disembowelments, lots of flesh chewing and even a puss spitting tongue spike, haha. Savage Harvest had guts, and lots of it, which made up for the lack of great acting and a better budget. I've seen movies on greater budgets that haven't come close to a few of the gore scenes in this movie and for that I give a lot of credit where it's due, not since Vampire: The Vampire Version have I seen such badass blood splatting FX.
In all, this movie is probably best watched by true horror fans for historical reasons, being that it was filmed in a time when indie horror films were starting to really lose what made them more in demand with the underground horror fans, after the 80's glory days were gone and lost forever and a new era of independent horror started to plague the 90's. I recommend you watch this at least once, it's not going to shock you or make you toss your cookies but it's definitely going to show you a side of indie horror that's rarely mimicked.
Personally I liked Savage Harvest, like I said even though the story isn't bad and the acting is, this movie has got some really badass FX scenes for it's time and I'm all for it. Give it a shot.
By
Back to Horror Review Archive
|
ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 1994
DIRECTOR: Eric Stanze
WRITING CREDITS: Eric Stanze
GENRE: Horror, Splatter
CAST: Lisa Morrison, Ramona Midgett, William Clifton
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 71 min
RATING: 7/10
Savage Harvest Website/IMDB Click here
Savage Harvest Trailer Click here
|
