SKINNED DEEP

Tina and her family are on a short vacation trip, but during the journey they get a flat tire and are forced to ask for help at a gas station. The elderly owner of the place informs the tourists that there is no mechanic's shop around, but they could wait for the return of her brother, who would certainly help them; she also invites the little family to have lunch at her house. The four accept enthusiastically, but as soon as they step into the old lady's house, they find themselves prisoners of a group of freaks dedicated to cannibalism and every kind of torture. If Rob Zombie managed with "The House of 1000 Corpses" to pay homage to "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," giving life to a pleasant and affectionate pop-weird revisitation of Hooper's masterpiece, Gabriel Bartalos has instead created a trash variant of the Texas massacre. Frankly, no one felt the need for another clone of that interesting plot assembled in 1974; considering then that "Mother's Boys" positions itself very much in the realm of the grotesque, staging absurd situations and irritating characters, a bit like what happened with the terrible fourth installment of the "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" series, one can guess the poor quality of the film in question. The positive characters are unrealistic and, in many cases, irritating, starting with the fake and sugary family that first encounters the massacre, then moving on to the gang of elderly motorcyclists who seem to have come straight out of an episode of "The Simpsons." The gallery of negative characters, on the other hand, is rich in tasty freaks, all quite original and with a convincing and appealing look; in addition to the "victim-attracting" old lady, with a normal appearance, the family of freaks includes: Brain, a boy affected by gigantism who has an enormous external brain; Plates, a dwarf obsessed with cleanliness who does nothing but polish and sharpen plates that he uses as weapons (a character played by the character actor Warwik Davis, dear to the horror public for having embodied the malevolent "Lepreuchan"); The Creator, a parasite that lives in the chest of an absurd headless man with a bodybuilder's physique; but above all the General Surgeon, a fierce black-clad hunter with a bear trap instead of a jaw (a character that is very successful and would deserve a film of its own). The trashy situations are numerous, and among them it is a must to mention the scene in which the protagonist, horrified by the discovery of a rotting corpse, vomits towards the lens, dirtying the entire lens; or the delirious scene in which Brain, the giant-brained man, runs completely naked along a busy street. The level of gore and splatter is very high, featuring cut throats, disembowelments, torn heads, and even a boy cut in two vertically! Needless to say, the artistic/technical level is of very low quality, equivalent to the budget that Bartalos had at his disposal. In conclusion, "Mother's Boys" is a trashy low-budget production, poor in all respects except for a rich gallery of original villains and an abundant dose of gruesome scenes. Recommended to fans of Troma productions, to which "Mother's Boys" is very close; absolutely not recommended to anyone else.