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Dead Seven
 cast: Tanya Dempsey, Tracy Keijser, Joe Myles, Matt Emery, and Delia Copold

writer and director: Garrett Clancy

90 minutes (unrated) 2002
Brain Damage DVD Region '0' retail

RATING: 3/10
 reviewed by Ian Shutter
Dope fiend Brownley Hawkins (Joe Myles) and his junkie sidekick Franky (Matt Emery) kill a guy who cheated them and dispose of his headless corpse down a mineshaft. Nearby, three girls pursue deaf mute Harley (Brett Chukerman) into the woods in a silly yet rather menacing game of hide and seek, and as a witness to the murder, apparently retarded Harley soon becomes Hawkins' second victim of the day, thrown down the mineshaft along with the killer's lost wallet. Months later, a stalker attacks killers Brownley and Franky and the other witnesses, Julie (Tanya Dempsey) and Karen (Tracy Keijser), and here the narrative suggests that Harley's crazy sister Venus Equinox (Delia Copold) is a witch, playing sinister tea party games with grubby old stuffed toys like some weird voodoo ceremony to resurrect her dead brother as a vengeful spirit...
   The spirit of H.G. Lewis returns in Dead Seven, a cheap but efficiently produced garage horror thriller suitable for all gore-hounds. Troma fans will love it. Blankly amateurish portrayals of one-dimensional stereotypes, played with a weirdly compelling eagerness by drama school dropouts revelling in on-the-job training, and an approach to filmmaking that's wilfully unafraid to use and abuse every genre cliché known to postmodern cinema, including orange filters for POV shots. Your rational faculties and critical sensibilities are cruelly beaten to within an inch of psychic numbness, even when there's mindless fun to be had picking at the scabby layers of sexploitation and implied supernatural goings-on (not unlike The Blair Witch Project).
   DVD extras: video intro by Scott Leff, photo gallery presented in slideshow format, package of 10 trailers for other Brain Damage movies.
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