Lawbolisted Powerful

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Woodyanders Simone (Manuela Thiess), Sheri (Sherry Alberoni), and Corrine (Gyl Roland) are three showgirls en route to Las Vegas who find themselves stranded when their car breaks down in the middle of the remote Nevada desert. They run afoul of Andre (a truly inspired portrayal of full-tilt intense insanity by the one and only Andrew Prine), a severely deranged Oedipal wreck misogynistic psycho who abducts lovely young stray ladies so he can use them in a menagerie for his own personal circus. Meanwhile, Andre's grotesquely disfigured mutant father occasionally gets loose and murders folks. Director Alan Rudolph, who went on to helm such acclaimed art-house hits as "Welcome to L.A.," "Remember My Name," "Choose Me," and "The Moderns," does an expert job of creating and maintaining a grim, sordid, and unpleasant tone of seething madness and depravity. The raw, unflinching violence against women is genuinely brutal and ugly stuff; this picture reaches its skin-crawling nasty peak when Andre has a large boa constrictor wrap itself around one hapless lass. Moreover, we also get a decent smattering of tasty nudity and a handy helping of grisly gore. E. Lynn's rough, but fairly accomplished cinematography astutely captures the dingy, dusty, and desolate aura of the isolated desert location. Tommy Vig's wonky, spacey, droning score likewise adds considerably to the overall harsh and unnerving quality of this resolutely foul-minded trash. Jennifer Ashley pops up as a traumatized mute hippie chick; she was mistreated by Prine some more in the even sleazier and hence better "The Centerfold Girls." The groovy theme song "Evil Eyes" and the nihilistic bummer ending totally hit the slimy spot as well. A satisfyingly mean'n'grungy serving of vintage 70's grindhouse junk.

The_Void Well, I actually thought that this film would be about zombies, but instead the lacklustre plot follows a deranged young man who keeps women locked up in his barn in order to use them for some kind of circus trick. The film is yet another entry in the already full to the brim seventies exploitation cannon, and while a lot of these sorts of films are very good - this one has very little going for it. The film is, frankly, boring, and since the plot has very little in the way of originality; this film makes for very miserable viewing because you know that nothing is going to come of it. There's another sub-plot involving the young man's father who has been mutated by radiation. This is potentially interesting, but it's not handled well at all and not even that manages to change the tedium of the rest of the film. The acting is horrible as well, and director Alan Rudolph isn't able to get anything out of his cast. Films like this really need to be rather 'nasty' to succeed, and that's one of the most annoying things about this film; it all feels very tame, and therefore its pointless watching. Overall, Barn of the Naked Dead is a film that fully deserves its terrible reputation, and I recommend not watching it.

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) Weird, Disturbing GarbageOne axiom is true about any given art form: It did not exist before a person made it. One of my primary interests in evaluating art forms in a critical manner is to contemplate the motivation behind the decision to execute the work. I have no idea why anyone would have made a movie like BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD, though after seeing it I can understand why folks want to see it: Great title.Existing these days as scummy old rental tapes [including a preposterous version called NIGHTMARE CIRCUS, that is worse if possible] and the occaisional underground re-record, I managed to snag one of the original rental tapes by Ariel Entertainment, whoever they were, and was able to assess an "uncut" 87 minute print of the film. I was not prepared for what it had to offer.I love low rent "B" grade horror, especially European 1970's stuff, and have just begun delving into some of the American made examples beyond DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT or COUNT YORGA. I was enticed by the name Andrew Prine, a magnetic veteran actor of many a B exploitation movie romp -- his role in SIMON KING OF THE WITCHES might be one of the great overlooked performances of the 1970's. His role in BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD is one that I hope he eventually got over, because films like this can wreck a career especially when an actor throws himself into the role, something that he was not apparently able to resist. I wonder if he got to view his daily rushes, or even if there were any daily rushes -- My thought is that the entire film was shot in about a week & a half, and exposed/edited only afterwards when nobody could stop the cinematic car wreck that unfolds onscreen.THE PLOT: Man has lived in near isolation on former Army nuclear testing grounds in Nevada [interesting premise], family having long since deserted or otherwise been rendered ioperable. Prine compensates his lack of company by sitting up in a duck tower with a rifle and putting a bullet through unsuspecting car engines.These cars are all driven by skanky looking 70's B supporting actresses, whom he cons into coming back to his farm. There they are taken prisoner and chained inside of a large barn. The majority of the film consists of footage of the girls chained up to these little posts and cowering with fear, trembling with cold, and discussing their situation. Between conversations Prine lurches in [sometimes dressed as a big top circus M.C.] and drags one of them off to be abused -- verbally, psychologically, physically, and in the movies sole moment of true interest [though the outcome was cut], by a snake. Ahem. He also talks to himself and plays with a toy windup bigtop. He is not a person but a mannerism -- weird behavior for a movie plot with legs attached. I doubt if he was allowed a single 2nd take.At the end of the film a not too secret horrifying secret is revealed, and everyone dies except the two girls that went crazy during their ordeal, which I guess is to make you think, "Gee ...". The End. How they all die I will leave to be a discovery for those stupid enough to seek it out: Don't let my description of a thirty second clip of Snake Sleaze tempt you: BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD just plain sucks.The "cinemetography", on all levels of considerations, sucks. The script sucks, apparently an attempt to adapt the Ed Gein story to a contemporary "issue", though just what that issue would be remains undefined ... Be angry at the Army for atmospheric atom testing, maybe. Don't take the long scenic route when you can fly, perhaps. Watch out for maniacs that have been exposed to nuclear fallout? Nahh -- too easy. Maybe it will come to me at some point, but like I said this film seems to have been made without any real intent, unless that intention is to disturb.And rest assured, BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD is disturbing. Folks may have some bondage romp in mind but BE WARNED: this film lacks even the slightest touch of erotic charm. There is sleaze, but it is not arousing sleaze, unless wondering how the girls go to the bathroom when chained up gives you a rise -- that was the only thing that the film made me wonder about. Then again I guess they didn't need to, since all of the barn scenes could have been shot in one afternoon, so maybe nobody had to go before they were finished.Avoid this film. Avoid it like you would a burning car at a gas pump.Avoid it like you would avoid an open cesspit. Avoid it like you would avoid someone with a bad case of bubonic plague. Don't be suckered in by a kinky box cover or descriptions of unspeakable horrors. They are unspeakable, allright -- so awful that I can't manage one more word.

byght This movie. Wow. This movie."Worst Movie of All Time" is a pretty tough thing to decide. Do you give it to the greatest of all "worst" movies? ("Plan 9 From Outer Space") Do you give it to the most poorly put-together movie ever? ("Red Zone Cuba") Or do you control for budget differences and give it to the artistically worst movie ever? ("Batman and Robin")At the end of the day, I think you have to give it to the most unwatchable movie ever, for what are movies if not...um...things for watching? Anyway, this is it.I remember a barn and some girls. I remember a tool with a whip saying "raise them, lower them." I remember an outhouse with a jacked-up wookie living in it, and maybe something about a cougar, but I might be making that up. The rest of the movie is basically unintelligible because the dialogue was recorded by a microphone buried 30 miles into the earth's crust. Even if you could hear it, there are no words that could soothe this awful pain as it emanates from the bleak landscape of Midwestern scrub-brush. Here's a fun game: have a competition with your friends to see how long you can go without looking at the clock. The longest we got was about five minutes, and that was only through concentrated willpower. Okay, I lied, it's not a fun game at all, but it's a way to help get through the movie. Other possible solutions: heroin, suicide, blindness or a lobotomy. I normally love bad movies and recommend them to my friends, but this is an exception. I am not kidding here. To you bad-movie amateurs out there, take it from someone who has been to film hell and back more than once: this is not "so bad it's funny," it's just bad. In fact, it's the worst. DO NOT SEE THIS.