Review: Flesh, TX (2009)

I should have known better. I should have seen the cool box art, known the movie would be total crap, and passed it up. Of course, I'm a glutton for punishment, and in the interest of saving innocent Horror fans everywhere from the pain, I bit the bullet and watched Flesh, TX.

This is another "Inbred backwoods hillbilly family that kills people and eats them" flick... which is a totally new and fresh idea. Wait, it's not new and fresh, so I'm sure there will at least be some interesting or fresh twist on the tired old formula to keep me interested, right? Nope. Not that either. Why am I watching this again?

She is really hot.

The chick is hot, but everything else about this movie is about as pleasing as having a root canal done on you with a rusty ice pick... by an ill-tempered monkey. (I wanted to say Llama, but with no opposeable thumbs, it just seemed too far-fetched.) There is so much story here that no one will care about, so much talking that does nothing for the movie, and so many cringe-inducing moments in the first 15 minutes alone, that I think a person deserves some sort of prize for sitting through the rest of this steaming prairie pile. A smack in the mouth and a nice "what's wrong with you!" should do nicely.

Do low budget Horror filmmakers even try anymore? Do they all have to try an be clever by giving us cartoonish and "wacky" characters in an attempt to be artistic? I blame Rob Zombie for this, because ever since Devil's Rejects, Horror filmmakers seem hell-bent on trying to create their own Otis, Capt. Spaulding or Baby, and 99.9% of the time they fail and end up giving us a painful parody rather than off-kilter or interesting characters.

Painful like this.

Which brings me to my next point; I can't remember the last time I saw a movie this poorly acted. Aside from Kathleen Benner, who shows some promise despite the fact that she had nothing to work with script or dialogue wise, I think everyone else in this movie was just recruited at the bus stop, and told to act. The script definitely made it worse, but the actors just didn't have it in them to rise above it, or even make it back to par. It's always sad to see Joe Estevez (you know Martin Sheen's brother, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez's uncle) even doing this kind of tripe. He's no master thespian by a long shot, but come on, his brother is Martin Sheen! He has nothing more in him than this? Even Charlie doesn't suck this bad anymore, and he hasn't been relevant since what... Major League 2?

Flesh, TX is mostly full of dialogue and character development scenes that we can't care about, and when the blood does flow, it looks like runny pink Karo Syrup and kinda sucks. If you're gonna do it on the cheap, and with limited talent, at least pack it to the rafters with the bloody stuff. I could go on and on, but you get the point by now I'm sure. There was at least one thing, and one thing only in and about this movie that was good, and if you look closely in the following pictures, you should be able to figure out what it is. Look close!:


If you guessed "scenic locations/set design," that's not really right, but we will accept that answer. We will also accept "The slutty hot chick in the whore get-up" as well. There is nothing left to say on this matter.

Kathleen Benner is alright with us.