If you like your horror movies cheesy and somewhat on the bizarre side, you may want to check out The Granny, a 1995 schlock-fest from writer/director/star Luca Bercovici. But, be warned, it’s not exactly as good as that build-up sounds.The granny in question is played by Stella Stevens. She’s a rich old bag who lives with Kelly (Shannon Whirry), who is supposed to be the ugliest girl in the family. (In fact, Shannon Whirry is quite attractive, so how she’s supposed to come off as “ugly” I have no idea. I guess glasses make one look unattractive in Bercovici’s world.)
It’s Thanksgiving, and Granny’s family has come to visit. They are, as she puts it, a collection of “vultures” waiting for her to die so that they can collect their inheritance. They treat Granny and Kelly with contempt and are extremely rude and vicious towards the both of them.
They become somewhat alarmed when Granny receives a strange visitor (Luca Bercovici) who brings an elixir that promises to bring eternal life to whoever drinks it. The strange visitor tells Granny that there is a rigid procedure that must be followed before the elixir is ingested. Not following the instructions results in dire consequences and, of course, there’d be no movie if she followed them properly. So Granny gets turned into a demonic beast of some sort and begins to hack her family to pieces in some absolutely disgusting ways.
The dialogue in this film is absolutely atrocious, sounding half ad-libbed in most scenes. Some of the situations are so campy that they had to be deliberately aimed at the direct-to-video crowd. Unfortunately, more often than not, they fall flat and come off as horribly contrived and in incredibly poor taste, even for a film that features a penis decapitation scene and an oral sex scene — in that order and involving the same person.
That’s the main problem with the movie, it’s too disgusting to be considered campy and fun. It’s too dumb to appeal to those who can see through its lame script and amateurish acting. It’s just too bad to be a good bad film. It tries to be like Dead Alive or Evil Dead 2, but it simply cannot compare to those classic camp horror films.
0.5 out of 5.0 stars
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