A negative review I wrote on Amazon:

August 7th, 2009 ·

Okay, I watched this movie the other night with my roommate, who got it from the filmmaker requesting a review.

It was quite possibly the worst film I had seen in a long time. So bad, in fact, that (I didn’t think this was possible) that I was actually offended on some primordial level by how horrific and awful it was.

I can’t describe it well – its not just that the filmmaker was bad with a camera or wrote a crappy story – there’s more to it. There was a pervading sense of arrogance to the whole thing. As if they thought it was good because they think they’re ‘horror aficionados’ and things like acting, writing, directing, special effects, and editing are unimportant when making a movie as long as you have female nudity.

I was offended by their smug attitude. And I was offended that the filmmaker, one Jim Haggerty, calls the film Jim Haggerty’s ‘Grave Danger’. As if ‘he’ is a real director and that lends credence to the awful film. As if he ‘deserves’ to get attention for this because in his own mind he’s some kind of genius. Ugh.

THEN, I find out they’re actually CHARGING MONEY on AMAZON for this pile. I knew I had to do something. Justice called.

So I posted the following negative review in hopes that no one will be suckered into actually paying money for this arrogant, unwatchable pile.

You don’t have to judge this movie by its crappy cover art alone – one viewing will be the most excruciating cinematic experience you’ve had in a long time.

Poor dialogue, horrible cinematography of the most juvenile and hack kind, plus some obviously uncomfortable nude non-professional actresses shot in bad lighting with seemingly little or no direction are actually the highlights of the anthology.

The poorly conceived wraparound segments involve a very amateur actress being harassed via the phone by a weird crank caller who somehow convinces her to play a ‘game’ involving trading scary stories. he eventually convinces this poor girl to take her clothes off as well.

The ’segments’ are mostly boring and somewhat nonsensical little movies involving a complete rip off of the ‘Zuni warrior fetish doll’ sequence in the TV anthology trilogy of Terror (except with a cheap African statue laying around the house accompanied by Native American repetitive music); a man who believes he is being followed by someone only to discover…. he is being followed; and a really bad rip-off of the ‘killer dummy’ idea used so many times before, even as far back as the original Twilight Zone series in 1960.

There’s nothing original about this film; it’s not well made, its not well though-out, and it doesn’t offer any artistic or cinematic skill or care to the viewer;. Instead, its a cheapie made by a guy who doesn’t have any film making skill who got his ordinary friends to ‘act’ in his film for free, and somehow convinced ordinary women to take their clothes off for him (may I note, that even though there is a sex scene in the film, no men ever take off any articles of clothing).

There’s no excuse for charging people money for a copy of this film. It should be, at most, free for anyone who decides they want to see it. Unless you have a large collection of the worst films anyone has ever seen, and you are hoping to add to that collection, I highly suggest avoiding this nonsense at all costs. People making incompetent junk like this are flooding the market with their amateur crap, and its disgusting that they’d try to actually take someone else’s money for a copy of it.

Be warned!

So, you think I was harsh, maybe? To my credit the director adds this in his bio on yellowape.net:

“I hate editing,” Haggerty says. “It’s the worst. Shooting a movie is my favorite thing to do in the world. My second favorite is showing my completed film to an audience and seeing how they react to it. The bits in the middle that involve sitting and watching endless takes and re-takes and stitching them together and re-stitching them is torturous.”

About the next film he shot, and the editing process (his wife is his editor), he says this in his bio:

“After our honeymoon,” Haggerty says. “I had tons of footage of us walking around Vegas having a good time together that thought could be edited down to a fun little video. Susan went online, downloaded some really crappy free program, and even though it was hard to work with and very limiting, she came up with a really great looking vacation video we could show people. This was when I realized she had a talent for this – and a lot of patience. We ran out and bought an editing system and Susan banged out a rough edit of ‘Witchmaster General’ in three weeks!”

(mind you, this is AFTER he shot ‘Grave Danger’)

What I don’t understand is why he’s getting positive review from loooowwww-budget review sites.

Rogue Cinema says, ‘Grave Danger has it’s fair share of frights and shower scenes, but it’s also just fun, I defy you to sit and watch Grave Danger and not find something to like about this movie’.

Consider yourself defied.

Infernal dreams says, ‘The film does have a lot of substance to it and it is a very good time.’

I don’t know what opium pipe these folks or smoking, or what, but I seem to have a very different take on this film that the other reviewers.

Is it too harsh to judge a micro budget film in this way? I don’t think so. If you have a good story, well-written dialogue, a decent director, and competent use of ANY camera, you can come up with a better film than this. I truly believe that.