Father’s Day (2011) (DVD Review)
Directed By: Astron 6
Starring: Adam Brooks, Matt Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Mackenzie Murdock
Rated: UR/Region: 0/1:85/Number of disc: 1
Available from Troma
Father’s Day follows the classic story we all grew up with: boy watches father raped and murdered, boy grows into a vengeful one-eyed man, man teams up with a priest and a male prostitute to take down his father’s killer. Ahab is a revenge-crazed deranged psychopath/hero fresh out of prison for mistakenly slaughtering the man he thought was the ruthless monster who raped and murdered his father. But fathers are still being violated in the behind, dismembered with hacksaws, and set on fire. A chickenhawk hustler and a hot young priest search out the reclusive Ahab, determined to finish the job he started years ago and send this degenerate demon back to Hell, literally. This tape is aged on purpose to give you the rental experience. The tracking and degeneration is not your VCR but intentionally done.
To try to put into words the madness that is Astron-6′s Father’s Day isn’t at all easy. It’s rude, it’s offensive, and it’s probably the film with the biggest set of balls I’ve seen in a while. I can respect the hell out of a movie that pushes the envelope. And when all is said and done, it’s possible that Father’s Day doesn’t just push it, it crumples it up and tosses it away. What follows is a true modern day Grindhouse film, that both honors and pays tribute to such films as, Thriller, but it also packs a modern day punch that sticks with you, pulls you in, and makes it so memorable that it’ll stick with you long after viewing it for the first time. In a nutshell, it’s everything I had hoped it would be and more. Some folks could be slightly turned off a bit by the over the top nature of the film. One minute you’re seeing a massacre take place at a strip club and the next you’re seeing people tripping out on poison berries. Not that you should have expected anything less from a film about a madman that stalks, kills, and rapes fathers, but I do think their are a few brief moments when the joking nature of the script could catch a viewer off guard a bit.
It is best to keep in mind that as wild and brutal as things get at times in this film, I do believe it’s still a bit of a parody and a satire at heart. Yet, as the story takes some very weird and disturbing twists and turns that take you from the realistic plot to a bit of a spiritual one, I can’t help but think what you get is pure genius. As goofy as some characters can be, you still like them. And the story keeps you tuned in no matter how far out of left field plot turns seem to come.At the end of the day, I didn’t like some of the more blasphemous spots in the film. Things do get REALLY weird when the film hits it’s home stretch. Yet, I can’t find it in me to hate on those things that much when I think about the film as a whole. And I also can’t deny that what I saw, as crazy as it was, was perhaps one of the best things to hit film in years. Father’s Day shows that not all hope is lost when it comes to films in general. In a current world packed full of remakes, Astron-6 could be the saving grace for fans of originality and film. Things get taken on a whole other level with Father’s Day. And it’s a level that rises above about 99% of everything else that is being released to theater and DVD. When Father’s Day wraps up on the screen, you may be shocked and a little disgusted, but you’ll also KNOW you just saw something awesome.
– Trailers
– Deleted Scenes
– Teasers
– Behind the Scenes Slide Show
– Intro from Lloyd Kaufman
