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Acts of Death [2006] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


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No bad actor is safe in this disappointing slasher film
Review date: 2008-03-04 Rating: 4 out of 10

Two stars may be one star too many for this veritable showcase of poor acting, but I'm giving the film a couple of props for gore and a somewhat unpredictable ending. Make no mistake, though - Acts of Death (also known as The Final Curtain) is an amazingly bad movie. For the first hour or so, it's a movie in search of a plot, full of characters so annoying that you can hardly blame the unknown killer for wanting to kill them all, and then it shifts into standard slasher mode the rest of the way.

The film opens with a group of students sneaking into the theatre building at night in order to initiate one or more freshmen into some kind of theatre group. The group turns out to be more of a fan club for resident loverboy and actor Chase Masterson (Nathaniel Nose), who has his own huge yet supposedly secret Party Room inside the building. This is where Chase and his groupies meet to get drunk and pass out. The initiation itself seems to consist of Chase slipping the young coed a mickey and then essentially raping her - it's hard to be completely sure because Angela (Erin Scheiner) ruins all of the fun by going into convulsions and dying before Chase has the chance to get his groove on. Don't feel too bad for Chase, though, as he ends up sleeping with another girl in order to keep her from talking - this, by the way, doesn't make Chase's girlfriend Sabrina (Niki Huey) very happy. The aftermath of the Angela thing opens up a seemingly important subplot with Gus (Reggie Bannister), the building's live-in security guy, but it's best to just forget all about that because the writers apparently did.

With Angela now missing, the decision is made to lock up all of the campus buildings (and electrify the windows, as well) at 8:30 each night. This delights Campus Security Chief Liberace - I mean Jack Strong (Glenn Shadix), but it sort of puts a crimp in the whole nightly theatre rehearsal schedule, which greatly displeases the director, Yanni - I mean Eamon (Jason Carter). It begs the question of why Chase and his groupies snuck in a window the night before when the doors weren't even locked, but that's only one of many unanswered questions this film raises. Anyhoo, members of our little theatrical group ignore the rules and hang around for practice the next night - and so it is that they find themselves trapped in the building while a mystery killer begins taking them out one by one - and in pretty grisly fashion.

There's not one decent actor in this entire film. Worst of all, you have to suffer through the equivalent of bad acting squared when these bad actors rehearse their parts - badly - for their upcoming theatre production of Macbeth. Shakespeare is all but forgotten, however, by the film's mid-way point when it becomes pretty clear to one and all that someone is trying to kill them. Acts of Death basically just turns into a standard slasher at this point, but the murders themselves are rather impressively original and gory. The writers also do a good job hiding the killer's identity, throwing in at least one good red herring that threw me off-track. Maybe it does deserve those two stars after all - but certainly no more than two.

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Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Nathaniel Nose
Glenn Shadix
Reggie Bannister
Bill Vincent
Jason Carter

Creators:
Reggie Bannister (Primary Contributor)
Glenn Shadix (Primary Contributor)
John Roome (Composer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Lionsgate
Manufacturer: Lionsgate
EAN: 0031398216940
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC,
Release date: 2007-08-14
Universal product code (UPC): 031398216940
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 103 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2006
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)

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