NUTBAG
Directed & Written by Nick Palumbo
Produced by Danyel Makenna
Music by Eric Galligan
Fx by Andrienne Houlé & Christopher Burgoyne
Cast: Mack Hail, Renee Sloan, Aurora Cornwall, Davia Ardell, Jenesse Kenny &
Sally Graham
2001/80 mins/Color/Stereo
1.33:1/English/US/NTSC Region 1
Review from the Fright Flix DVD
Mack Hail is appropriately named Nutbag, an Henry Lee Lucas for the new millienium. He wanders around the streets of Las Vegas searching for his next victims to satisfy his frustration againts the world. Besides death, his only friend is a tarantula... talk about weird.
Like in William Lustig's MANIAC and John McNaughton's HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, Nutbag's mother is the main reason as to why he became what he is today. She cheated on her husband making her a hooker at the eyes of Nutbag (thus began his hate against women) and was killed by a black man (thus began his hate againts "niggers", as he calls them). This film might be too much for the mainstream horror audience. According to director Nick Palumbo, NUTBAG was shot with a JVC-DV500 Digital Camcorder and the budget was $56,000 dollars. Post-Production was done in Los Angeles. It's nicely shot, the musical score from Eric Galligan is pretty effective, it's got plenty of blood and has the most stunning cast of women i have ever seen!
Trust me guys, the girls in NUTBAG are simply amazing! Some of you should recognize Davia (lollipop hooker) Ardell who has now become a huge porn star. Wait till you see her sucking that... lollipop. My fav has to be the bar/elevator girl, Aurora Cornwall, she is simply fuckalicious.
While i liked NUTBAG to a certain extend but there's some points that bugged me, first Mack Hail is over playing his character. He's trying to much to be raw and ruthless but most of the time it didn't work out for me. I have nothing against the guy but i think someone else could have done a better job. And lastly, the whole racist angle is something that i simply can't approved. This shocked me more then anything else in the film. I believe that it's a dangerous subject and that it shouldn't be taken lightly but NUTBAG is a dangerous film so i guess it fits in. I've talked to writer/director Nick Palumbo quite a few time and he's not racist or anything.
Not surprisingly, Nick's next film will be NUTBAG 2. It will have a much larger budget. It will star Mack Hail reprising his role and will feature spectacular gruesome FX. Nick told me that he really want to push the envelope this time and make the original NUTBAG look like a Walt Disney film.
The DVD present the film in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The image looks good, with little to no compression or artifacts. The audio track is in stereo and sounds good. This is a surprisingly good transfer for a low budget flick. The only extras are two versions of the trailer, the menus are static but with some background music, the film is separated in 13 chapters. The DVD comes with an inlay card with the chapter stops and in a keep case. I really don't like the way the disc is holding itself in the case though.
There is one major problem though, maybe its only the DVD i received which was part of the screener batch and this might no happen to anyone else but starting at chapter 8 the film is unwatchable as the image jumps, there's lots of pixelations and image distortion. Hopefully this problem was fixed. So my review is based on the fact that this doesn't happen or the disc would have received a much lower score.
NUTBAG was also released on DVD in the UK but i haven't seen this edition so i can't make any comments about it.
Thanks to Nick Palumbo
Image:
Audio:
Extras:
Packaging:
This Film Features:
Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2003. ©