Movie Review: Thanksgiving is a dish best served uh, slaughtered? “Derelicts”

As the lady once said, “What fresh Hell is this?”

For everybody who found the polish, sophistication and gentility of “The Devil’s Rejects” a turn-off, we present “Derelicts,” a little slice of holiday slaughter from the people who brought you…

Hell, I’ve never heard of any of them, and neither have you.

It’s a slasher/splatter pic about murderous drifters who dismember, shoot, skull-crush and sexually assault a seriously dysfunctional family gathering for an uneasy Thanksgiving dinner.

And as ol’ honest reviewer Abe put it, “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”

Constance (Kelly Dealyn) wakes up with a dream droplet of blood on her cheek. Testy husband Gregg (David Lee Hess) has no time for that. He’s prepping the meal for HER family. And her ob-gyn Dad (Steve Uzzell) and his new girlfriend (Lana Dieterich) woke everybody up early with their noisy love-making.

Gregg’s an out-of-work theater company director, their near-adult son Leslie (Dalton Allen) is a sex-obsessed cretin and daughter Barbara (Emily Ammon) is going through a mental health crisis that manifests itself with blackouts on the (running) track and nosebleeds.

Then this slaughterhouse gang of five led by “Cap” (Les Best) wipes out Constance’s brother and nephew, hijacks their truck and apparently follows the onboard GPS (only way to explain it) to their house.

Let the torture, murders and dress-for-dinner games begin.

“This is MY house!” the Cap lets one and all know. “I carved it outta the bones of 40 dead Chinamen in Cambodia, and I’m about to PAINT it in your blood!”

He’s got an “x” tattooed between his eyebrows, so any resemblance to Charles Manson is intentional.

The gang includes “Black Forrest” (Sam Pleasant), killer shrew Bo (Kara Mellyn) and most horrifically, “Turk” (Andre Evrenos) who never speaks. He only screams. Oh, and he’s fashioned a pink teddy bear into a mask.

The mayhem starts with another murder getting in the front door, then sexual assaults and escalates from there.

“FINGER food?”

Anyway, you get the idea. There’s nothing remotely witty about this, no real room for pathos or outrage either.

But as outraged Gregg is moved to ask, perhaps speaking to the potential audience of such movies — “Is that how you people get off?”

Don’t answer that.

MPA Rating: unrated, graphic violence, sexual assault, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Les Best, Kelly Dealyn, Sam Pleasant, David Lee Hess, Steve Uzzell, Dalton Allen, Emily Ammon, Marcela Pineda and Andre Evrenos

Credits: Directed by Brett Glassberg, script by Andre Evrenos, Brett Glassberg and Clay Shirley. A Terror Films release.

Running time: 1:13

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
This entry was posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news. Bookmark the permalink.