We've
discussed the problems with faux-grindhouse movies before here
on Strange Things – the cookie-cutter computer-generated
'film damage' that long ago stopped being original, the ham-fisted
production values and the bizarre lack of understanding that these
alleged fans who put these movies together actually have of the
films they are pastiching. Dear God No! suffers
from all these problems to a greater extent than I've
ever seen, and compounds them with a film that shares the retarded,
crass and pathetically desperate need to shock as the worst shot
on video trailer trash home made horror.
The film opens with a biker gang who have slaughtered a bunch
of nuns (you know, because...) and who then go on to shoot up
a titty bar and eventually carry out a home invasion against a
mad doctor who is experimenting on something or other and is also
a Nazi. Along the way, we have a lot of bare breasts, a lot of
gore and the knowing bad taste that you suspect writer/director
James Birkert thinks is really subversive. So there's rape –
lots of rape – and mutilation, a pregnant woman repeatedly
stabbed in the belly, child killing, crotch kicking, cock crushing
and plenty of random murder.
I'm sure this will have the desired effect for some viewers, shocking
them into outrage – because what says 'fuck you' to The
man better than manufactured offence, eh? But frankly, I've seen
much grimmer stuff than this, and I've seen it in films that meant
it – movies that pushed the envelope because they wanted
to test limits or because they simply didn't care, not
because they wanted to get the whooping approval of rednecks in
backwards baseball caps. Remarkably, themanages to take all this
gross-out material, along with lengthy topless dancing
scenes, and make it incredibly dull. Which I guess is some sort
of achievement, but presumably not the intended one. The film
is too lousy to be effectively repellent.
Perhaps
the bad taste might have had more impact if the film wasn't so
utterly incompetent on every level. But this is so shoddy, you
have to marvel at the fact that they managed to shoot it on super
16mm without every frame being out of focus. The editing is dismal,
reducing what should be fast-paced action to a series of stilted
moments that stay on screen far too long, the direction feels
pretty much non-existent and the dialogue is atrocious. Performances
are uniformly crap too. And here's the thing – if you think
that piss poor production values and lousy actors represent an
'authentic' grindhouse experience, then you are an idiot. Those
films may have been cheap, they may have been crass and they may
have been flat-out insane, but most of them were surprisingly
competent within their own limited abilities. Apparently, Birkert
wanted this to feel like a movie that could've been made in the
Seventies. He's failed miserably. It looks like what it is –
a smug, cynical mockery that manages to insult the much
superior films it is riffing on.
Dear God No! Throws in elements from popular
chunkblowers like I Drink Your Blood, Sleazy
Rider, Last House on the Left, Night
of the Demon and others that I've thankfully forgotten
(one saving grace of this film – it's entirely unmemorable),
including the appearance of Bigfoot, and so managing to continue
the long and unbroken line of Sasquatch films that are utterly
dreadful. That it is several notches below even the worst of those
movies should come as warning enough. I can't imagine what the
usually reliable Monster Pictures thought when they picked up
this, but I'd advise you not to make the same mistake.
We've
discussed the problems with faux-grindhouse movies before here
on Strange Things – the cookie-cutter computer-generated
'film damage' that long ago stopped being original, the ham-fisted
production values and the bizarre lack of understanding that these
alleged fans who put these movies together actually have of the
films they are pastiching. Dear God No! suffers
from all these problems to a greater extent than I've
ever seen, and compounds them with a film that shares the retarded,
crass and pathetically desperate need to shock as the worst shot
on video trailer trash home made horror. 
Perhaps
the bad taste might have had more impact if the film wasn't so
utterly incompetent on every level. But this is so shoddy, you
have to marvel at the fact that they managed to shoot it on super
16mm without every frame being out of focus. The editing is dismal,
reducing what should be fast-paced action to a series of stilted
moments that stay on screen far too long, the direction feels
pretty much non-existent and the dialogue is atrocious. Performances
are uniformly crap too. And here's the thing – if you think
that piss poor production values and lousy actors represent an
'authentic' grindhouse experience, then you are an idiot. Those
films may have been cheap, they may have been crass and they may
have been flat-out insane, but most of them were surprisingly
competent within their own limited abilities. Apparently, Birkert
wanted this to feel like a movie that could've been made in the
Seventies. He's failed miserably. It looks like what it is –
a smug, cynical mockery that manages to insult the much
superior films it is riffing on.
