IWC Films Double Feature: Die and Let Live & Raising the Stakes
Actors: Joshua Lively, Zane Crosby, Lloyd Kaufman, Trent Haaga, Count Gore de Vol
Directors: Justin Channell
Released: May 17 2011
Buy the Movies:
Pre-Order on Amazon.com
The Review(S!):
I love me a double feature. Especially when popcorn was just on sale, and I have enough snickers bars to cause a hypoglycemic episode. I’m going to go play by play and write this while I watch, so pardon me if I ramble, cut myself off or do anything else strange. Lets do this!
Die and let Live
If you are a fan of horror comedies, this one is probably going to work out for you. You could tell throughout the feature that the film was made by a bunch of kids who really didn’t know what they were up to, but that was part of the glory. The audio is unbalanced, actors occasionally shout lines when they shouldn’t have to, the gore effects are terribly campy, and they love to swear. Beyond your usual F-Bomb dropper, they LOVE to swear. It almost felt like they’d never been allowed before and were making up for lost time. All of that added to my giggle fits throughout the movie.
They open with the shambling, bloody dead and the song “I like your Girlfriend” by The Planet Smashers. Seems like a strange choice, but lets see where it ends up. The plot was pretty straight forward, two high school guys trying to get laid, come up with a plot to have a party, one’s love interest is invited, ect. But there are ZOMBIES! And an evil guy in a dark room with a giant button telephone. The humor is… actually quite humorous. It felt like I was sitting around with some of my friends cracking Star Wars jokes. This style of comedy isn’t for everyone of course…
I won’t give any direct details, but I will tell you that in the very end of the film I laughed so hard I cried. Maybe it was the pizza.
Raising The Stakes
Hahaha. Okay, another campy, low budget, off balance, unsteady camera… bad makeup… Now off the subject of how low budget this was. “These are not the droids you are looking for…” again. I just heard that line in the other film. I think it might be funnier the second time around.
Unique plot. Two guys, wanting to become vampires to become “cool” and “bad ass” visit a snake oil salesman with an evil plan. They become the creatures of the night they so desperately wanted to be, with just one problem, it didn’t make them any more bad ass. As a matter of fact, if they don’t land some vamp-kills, they are going to end up dying. Ooops!
One of the editorial comments says that this movie takes a stab at Twilight, which it doesn’t really. A stab at the current vampire fad that had a lot to do with Twilight? Maybe. A stab at everything it can get its fangs into is more like it.
With love of low budget in mind, I really enjoyed these two films. I will say that they are not for every audience, but if you are a lot like me and like to speculate what that bad looking blood might be, watch people fall down, get tazed, and poke fun at everything, then give it a shot.
