I’m not sure how I missed this one but on December 27, 2011, Bloody Disgusting Selects released Trent Haaga’s ridiculous horror comedy, Chop, on DVD. It stars Will Keenan, Timothy Muskatell, Mark Irvingsen and a slew of other B-rated actors and actresses that I don’t know.
Lance Reed, a seemingly innocent man, is forced by a psychotic stranger to confront his duplicitous past. The mysterious stranger, seeking retribution for a past crime, forces Lance to reveal his inner most secrets by systematically removing his limbs! As time runs out and Lance’s limb count dwindles, he must recall what he’s done to the stranger before he doesn’t have a head to remember with.
The first half of the film is about Lance trying to stay alive by not telling anybody about the disappearance of his brother or the fact that his wife is a cheating whore (his words, not mine). The second half is pretty much what they synopsis tells you, Lance is strapped down until he apologizes for what he did to this to stranger otherwise he will continue to lose his body parts.
Like most films like this, it is impossible to take it seriously and if you don’t you might end up finding that you actually like some of it. With a runtime of 84 minutes, Chop wastes absolutely no time in getting to the point by shedding blood within the first five minutes and explaining how psychotic and sadistic our villain plans on being. Director Trent Haaga manages to even throw us a few curveballs, giving us a few surprises that I personally didn’t see coming even if the rest of the film is very predictable.
The acting is really overt the top for a majority of the feature and, while it bothered me at first, it actually worked out much better than I thought now that I’m reflecting on it. If anybody tried to be somewhat serious it would have made the film pathetic, but because every interaction Lance had with someone was either painfully awkward or resulted in trouble it made it more interesting. I did find Timothy Muskatell’s performance, the guy who played the revenge driven stranger, rather tiresome because the way he played his game of cat and mouse was just really annoying and felt fake. Actually, his entire demeanor and personality was annoying which is why I constantly rooted for Lance, especially when he told the stranger that he didn’t give a shit about what he did to him in the past.
As for the rest of the DVD content, the package comes with a few outtakes, most of which aren’t funny, and some deleted scenes that were rightfully excluded from the film. Other than that, the feature is the only other item on the disc.
While I’m kind of surprised that Bloody Disgusting decided to pick up this film out of all the horror comedies available right now (like Rabies), it did need a silly comedy on their release slate and this easily filled that void. Chop may be nowhere near as funny as it could have been but it does have a few moments where it becomes impossible not to chuckle at Lance’s misfortune. This ridiculous movie is definitely the kind of fodder that B-rated horror fans would eat up but it is also one that they could easily forget a week after seeing it.
Rating: A stupidly fun Friday night rental for when you horror fans run out of other options (5/10)
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