A few years ago in a small rural town in West Virginia a trucker by the name of Ray Williams stopped in a local bar to have a drink before calling it a day. As Ray drank his beer a few of the more colorful locals began to taunt Ray about the color of his skin, and it didn’t take to long for things to get out of hand. After a vicious beating Ray was left for dead in an isolated cornfield and the whole incident was covered up by the local sheriff. But Ray didn’t die in that field that day and for the last few years Ray has been roaming those fields and hills of West Virginia seeking vengeance day by day.

Crystal Lake has Jason Voorhees, Haddonfield has Michael Myers, Elm Street has Freddy Kruger and now Rolling Glenn has… Plasterhead.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Ray Williams is in fact Plasterhead! If you’re asking yourself how Ray got that name, well he got beat so bad out there in that cornfield that he now wraps his face in a plaster cast in order to hide his disfiguration and to simply help hold it together. It’s taken Ray about fifteen years to exact any revenge on those that have done him wrong, but for some reason he seems to like to take it out anyone he can get his hands on, not just those that deserve it.

OK, sit back and follow the story, you’ll know it pretty well already. Bunch of kids from the big city on a road trip, get off the main route and end up in a podunk hick town for some reason or another. Said podunks of local podunk town are as stereotypical as the cliché bunch of friends and before you can blink the friends have fired up the locals and have learned of a dark town secret that they are going to wind up smack dab in the middle of. The only problem is the town secret isn’t that great. Sure it’s a nasty thing to happen to someone, but I couldn’t see why the killer kills everyone.

Now Ray, err Plasterhead, has all the right to be pissed, but he needs to focus more on who he is pissed at. In the story the entire town has just simply closed off the area where it happened and seem to just let old Plasterhead roam around up there and kill any hunter dumb enough to walk on in. I mean hell, Plasterhead has moved into a sweet house that got abandoned, it has electric and running water, so someone is paying the bills and someone is also supplying him with plaster for his masks, because he sure as hell is using enough of it. Wait, maybe back when he was Ray Williams he was hauling a truck load of plaster, hence all his plaster supplies. I don’t know for sure, but it sounds logical.

There is some blood and some brief T&A, but nothing that really stands out. Plasterhead is just good old independent horror fun, with a killer, some victims and enough of the standard B horror, goofs and laughs, to make it worth watching from start to finish. It’s not great, it’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty solid first outing for writer/director Kevin Higgins who has done what most fans of horror haven’t even come close to doing, making their own film and seeing it released.

4 of 10

Does Plasterhead have some serious potential? Yes. Does it have a simple enough story that lays a pretty solid foundation for a pretty bad ass little slasher? You bet your ass. But I'll be damned if they didnt fail miserably when attempting to make a solid horror film.

This one is just awful, plain and simple. The acting and dialog are horrible. There is one scene towards the end where one of the female main roles is attempting to get to the car while being seriously injured in the ribs. It is one of the sorriest attempts at physical acting I have ever seen. I didnt stop laughing for the duration of the scene.

Nothing happens. Not one kill is actually shown (which is a joke considering how few there were). Little to no blood. The "brief T&A" forementioned by Prime is a 4 second tit shot at the beggining. All of the female actresses weren't hot, the male roles were tools and the attempt at a racey undertone came off as immature and unnessary.

1 out of 10 songs performed by a rapper who calls himself Edgar Allan Floe. Yeah, read the credits.

I was going to give Plasterhead a lower rating because the acting in this flick is a pretty sorry affair. Then I remembered some of my all time favorite horror films have genuinely terrible performances to their credit. Anyone watched Hooper's original TCM lately? Can anyone say with a straight face that the acting in the intitial F13 outing was actually 'good"? My point is that once you get past the ability (or lack thereof) of the cast, Plasterhead actually has a really intruiging mytholgy to its credit and manages to provide some fairly creepy back woods atmosphere.

Despite GMG's statement to the contrary, the kills are actually shown, just not for the gore shots. This is more along the lines of the standard "kill them then show the bloody aftermath" sort of thing, though there is a piece of barbed wire shoved into to someones mouth and pair of bleeding eyes that are quite effective.

Straddled with uncharismatic protagonists who do little to evoke our sympathies, the real strength of this film is in the sequences where Plasterhead finally does his thing. The movie spends way too much time setting the events in motion, but when the titular baddie does finally get down to business he commands a startling presence on screen. When all was said and done, I actually found myself entertained if not overjoyed by this movie.

Considering this is a first time indie for Kevin Higgins and crew, the film looks terrific and the cinematography is spot on. Terrifc use of interiors including a spooky barn set and a house that - while looking too polished to be accepted as decrepit- at least provides mutliple locations for some decent stalking.

It's no TCM, but I definitely forsee cult film status for Plasterhead.

Six out of ten short order cooks who give a whole new meaning to the phrase "smoking on the job."

Going into this I really had to ignore the negative press the film had garnered. “Sure“, I reminded myself, “it’s a hackneyed plot, the dialogue will likely induce more squirms than the eviscerations, and I definitely don’t foresee any of the cast members attending the 79th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony. But by gum it’s a slasher, and I’ll be damned if I don’t enjoy my free movie!” With an aberrantly optimistic attitude, courtesy of the bomb-ass box cover and a trite yet intriguing backstory, I was really setting myself up for heartbreak.

First off, I’m not one to measure a movie’s worth by counting boobs. I do, however, like to know what kind of movie I’m watching. In the opening scene we get a box of Gobstoppers (not a big box, mind you, more like a Fun Packet, something quaint that‘ll tide you over until supper). That scene pretty much set my expectations for the remainder of the film. Wouldn’t luck have it, the rest of the movie was nippless. It seemed as though somebody had taped over my copy of the movie but didn’t have the foresight to rewind the whole way back first.

The set was fantastic. Gorgeous three-story farm house with four beds and three baths, polished oak floors and, undoubtedly, central air. Had a real “Field of Dreams” vibe going for it. But in a movie like “Plasterhead” that’s probably a bad thing. A home with polished oak flooring and central air doesn’t really fit the “threadbare home once abandoned, now inhabited by a homicidal madman fueled by a vengeful rage“ bill. You think that maybe the filmmakers would have saved a shaving or two from their budget by renting an older, broken down and maybe even ABANDONED home and used some of that extra cash to hire talent… Nope. Every time an actor mentioned the “poor” condition of the house I chuckled. After I died a little inside, that is.

Inconsistencies aside, the movie still sucked. The acting was a notch below sub-par. These actors were so devoid of chemistry that I sometimes wondered if they were reading from the same script. That reminds me, the writing was bad. It’s a fun plot, even if a little played out, but the dialogue was simply atrocious and the characters were hacked and clichéd beyond the realm of believability. The writers and actors really worked together to make this movie so damn unwatchable, so cheers.

Pros: A brief reference to “The Big Lebowski” and pair of tits.

Cons: Fairly certain that the aforementioned funbags belonged to a double. I could be wrong, but if you watch the opening scene for yourself…nah, just save yourself the trouble and take my word for it. This movie is bad news all around.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 10 - Fun movie to watch if you’re with a group of open-minded friends and a case of beer. Then again, that sounds like an orgy in the making. Seize the moment.