SMALL TOWN FOLK

A couple looking for adventure, despite the warnings of a dwarf encountered on the side of the road, head to the village of Grockleton, a place inhabited by crazies who indulge in hunting humans. Simultaneously, Marcus, a somewhat "nerdy" teenager, also finds himself passing through Grockleton, ending up in the clutches of the crazy villagers as well. Sometimes one should be realistic and realize that if you don't have the means, certain things shouldn't be done. This doesn't concern Peter Stanley-Ward, and although forced to break the piggy bank to gather a few more coins, armed with good will and the most economical do-it-yourself special effects software available on the market, he puts together one of the most ramshackle and deeply ugly films to see among those that have arrived in our video stores in recent months. "Small Town – The City of Death" ("Small Town Folk" in the original) is comparable to the most ramshackle low-budget product that can be found on the market, a few-pound operetta that the English Stanley-Ward, in addition to directing, writes, photographs, interprets, edits, produces, decorates, films, and creates the visual effects… in short, a real "One man show"! The will of the factotum is exemplary and there is a certain talent behind the camera, seen the sometimes visionary taste and the sought-after virtuoso finds of direction, but the result leaves really perplexed. What surprises the most is the use and abuse of digital special effects absolutely not up to a film that wants to be defined as such; a pantheon of fake CGI that creates explosions, blood splatters, and landscape elements. Not to mention the bad idea of shooting over half of the film using the green screen technique, i.e., having the actors perform in front of a green screen and adding the digitally recreated scenarios in post-production: the final result, obviously, is terrible, a series of fake backgrounds with as much approximate color correction and poorly cut-outs. At this point, one wonders why, given the result, the director did not opt for real shots, which would have certainly made the extremely indie nature of the project equally evident, but at least would have avoided that annoying sense of "fake" that pervades every shot. Technically, a disaster, therefore, but artistically things do not change much. If we exclude the directorial research already mentioned, the film is a concentrate of ugliness always and everywhere. The screenplay is as if it didn't exist, the film proceeds by inertia through situations seen and reviewed a thousand times in other films - "2000 Maniacs" and "Don't Open That Door" above all - and takes on connotations of disarming repetitiveness (in practice it is always the victim who flees through the forest and the crazies who chase and/or make traps). The dialogues oscillate between the sordid and the ridiculous (sometimes intentional, though) and to make things worse there is a cast composed almost exclusively of beginners, recruited among friends and relatives of the director, who offer a performance that to say amateur is a compliment. Among the relatively numerous characters, only Howard Lew Lewis ("Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves") and Warwick Davis (the leprechaun of the "Leprechaun" series) can be recognized, who appear in a cameo. If the "normal" characters have practically no characterization but are thrown into the story as mere cannon fodder, the crazy redneck "bad guys" also leave much to be desired. Stanley-Ward has bet everything on the strangeness of grotesque characters ranging from the demented interpreted in a too emphatic manner to the squinting hunter who is nothing more than a comic character tout court. A particular mention just to the look of the two scarecrow brothers (one of them interpreted by the director himself, as usual) who seem to have come out of a metal band like Slipknot. Moderate the gory scenes and unfortunately, in line with the rest, clearly fake due to lack of adequate means. Another scolding for the choreography of the action scenes that, despite the complexity, are shot particularly badly. In short, the essence of the ugly to which the recklessness of some ideas not in tune with the meager means of the production gives an added value of avoidability. It's a mystery that "Small Town" has enjoyed so much visibility.