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Released by: Troma
Released on: 11/30/2004
Director: Christopher Burgard
Cast: Wings Hauser, Natalie Hays, Michael Lawler, James Mitchell, Robert Silverman, David Turley, Rachel Wagner, Patrick Warburton
Year: 2004
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The Movie:
The Ruining is, like recent seventies throw backs such as House Of 1,000 Corpses and Cabin Fever, an attempt to recreate the maniacal mayhem that that decade brought to the horror genre with such malicious glee. It's painfully low budget, and makes no prententions in trying to hide that fact, it has more than a few major logic gaps and plotholes, and it at times seems to be going out of its way to be nasty, even when it doesn't really need to be.
The story takes place in the backwoods hills of California where thirty years ago the government inadvertantly poisoned the water supply that fed a small town. A whole lot of people died (or so we're told) and those that were lucky enough to survive are not only inbred but also addicted to some odd halicinogenic eggs.
Two couples decide to get away from it all and escape for a nice relaxing camping trip - Cody and Sandra, and David and his wife Megan. Unfortunately for the crew, they cross some hillbillys when they stop at a bar. The rednecks give chase and Cody ends up killing one of them by accident. When David manages to shoot the truck, the four find themselves stranded in Deliverence country and so they start walking, looking for help.
Eventually they come across a run down old farm habitated by Henry Behrens and his seventeen year old daughter Becky. Though Becky is fully developed in the physical sense, for some reason she thinks she's a dog and she acts just like one. The more time the four campers spend at the farm the stranger things get. Cody and Megan have an affair, David becomes drawn to Becky (letting her lick peanut butter off of his fingers and his…ummm….yeah) and munching on some of those wacky eggs that the farmer harvests, and Sandra is caught in the middle of it all and just wants to go home.
The Ruining is an odd one. It's certainly got its moments - there are a couple of decent kill scenes and while the movie is never really scary, it does get pretty tense towads the end. The sets are perfect for the story - they look run down and dilapedated in all the right places, overgrown with brown grass, and constructed of wood that has obviously spent far too much time in the sun as it's all bleached and aged. If it weren't for the fact that Cody drives an early nineties model Toyata, that a character name drops David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson, and the fact that both Primus and The Reverend Horton Heat were featured on the soundtrack, one might actually beliece this one was filmed in the age of disco and pet rocks.
Performances are okay all around - no one is exceptionally good, but no one stinks to high heaven either. Look for Wings Hauser of way too many b-movies and TV shows to list getting top billing in the picture (though his part is limited to a cameo role that lasts all of two minutes) as well as Patrick Warburton of The Tick and Seinfeld in another role.
Video: 2/5
Okay, this being a Troma release and all, I'm not entirely sure if The Ruining is supposed to look as bad as it does or not. I realize it's a throw back to the backwoods/hillbilly horror films of the seventies and it was hot on an ultra low budget over a decade but quite honestly the movie looks pretty rough here. There's print damage all over the place, the colors are pretty faded for almost the entire running time, and the entire movie is way too dark.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix is a slight improvement over the video presentation. There's some hiss in more than a couple of spots that you'll pick up as the movie plays out, and every once in a while a line or two of dialogue is slightly muffled. The majority of the mix sounds okay for what it is though. The strange soundtrack comes through without overshadowing the dialogue for the most part and although there are a couple of minor issues with it, they're just that - minor issues, and they work in the context of what the film is trying to be.
The only extra related to the film itself are the film's original trailer, and a decent seven and a half minute interview with director Christopher Burgard and his two producers who discuss why the film took so long to complete, what they were going for with it, and how much work went into getting the finished product actually finished.
Aside from that, the usual Troma oddities can be found here as well - a Lunachicks video directed by Lloyd Kaufman, and introduction to the film by Lloyd Kaufman (who apologizes for the battered and beaten state that the film appears in), trailers for Trailer Town, Citizen Toxie, and Tales From The Crapper, a Troma public service announcement entitled Why Children Shouldn't Play With Hamsters, a few Troma commercials and a plug for one of Kaufman's books.
The Final Word:
Well, the movie looks like crap and it's low budget is painfully obvious. It also doesn't do a particularly convincing job at staying true to its seventies grindhouse roots. Even with those two factors working against it though, The Ruining is still a pretty interesting movie with enough going for it to warrant a look for those who aren't put off by budgetary issues and minor things like plot holes and logic gaps.