Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill (2004)

Let's be realistic.

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

Blistering performances.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I just want to say the picture in this article for this movie is the picture for the other death valley movie that has Eric Christian Olsen, Dash Mihok, Rider Strong. I hope you catch on to this and change it. It is an embarrassment to the movie the picture actually is related too. Speaking of, if anyone knows where to find an online copy of Death Valley with Eric Christian Olsen, Dash Mihok, Rider Strong. Please let me know because I can't seem to find it anywhere.I haven't seen it since it came out and I really want to see it again. I don't understand why this review has to be 10 lines. I'ts kind of ridiculous. I just want IMDb to know they have the wrong picture on here. Please fix this. I hope this is enough lines. I'm just trying to help.

While traveling in a van with their teacher for a contest, a group of college friends are abducted in a lonely road by the criminal Earl (Gregory Bastien), who forces them to go to the ghost town of Sunset Valley to meet his partner that was transporting drugs and money of their own. Once in the town, they realize that the dwellers are zombies and their leader is the evil Bloody Bill (Jeremy Bouvet), a Confederate soldier seeking revenge for the execution of his sister that was hanged by the population that was cursed by Bloody Bill for the eternity."Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill" could have funny lines and situations but it is too serious for a zombie movie. Further, the zombies move very fast, breaking the style originally adopted by George Romero in "Night of the Living Dead" and followed in other films of this genre. The story is predictable and the characters are forgettable, but the worst is the total lack of humor. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "Vale da Morte: A Vingança de Bloody Bill" ("Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill")

Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill starts as five college kids, Gwen (Chelsea Jean), Mandy (Denise Boutte), Sondra (Kandis Erickson), Jerry (Matt Marraccini) & Buck (Steve Glinn) plus they're teacher Avery (Scott Carson) set off across country to Phoenix. En-route they are taken hostage by a drug dealer named Earl (Gregory Bastien) who is looking for his fellow drug dealer Darrel (Dean N. Arevalo) whom he thinks has ripped him off. They find Darrel's car & follow the road to a old town called Sunset Valley where they find Darrel injured & covered in blood, he warns them to leave but before they can they are all attacked by a horde of flesh eating zombies lead by evil Confederate soldier William Anderson AKA Bloody Bill (Jeremy Bouvet) who has placed a curse on the town & it's residents for his & his sister's executions centuries ago. It's either the flesh eating zombies or the kids & it's a fight to the death...Photographed & directed by Byron Werner I thought Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill was an OK low budget zombie film. The script moves along at a fair pace & entertains on a basic level. It isn't anywhere near the likes of Night of the Living dead (1968) or Dawn of the Dead (1978) in terms of quality but it does it's best. The character's are the typical bunch of stranded would-be victims as they eventually start to argue & bicker at each other as the situation becomes ever worse & their number begins to dwindle. Of course you don't really go into a film such as this expecting high art or a meaningful story which is just as well because this definitely isn't high art & certainly doesn't have a meaningful story. Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill is one of those films that if you turn your brain off, can ignore a few rough edges & don't set your expectations too high can be enjoyed in a dumb mindless sort of way. It ain't exactly brilliant but it ain't too bad either.Director Werner tries all the flashy & somewhat annoying editing tricks there is, bleached colours, slow-mo, fast-mo, frame skipping & quick cuts. The special effects aren't that great but I've seen worse, there's no real scares, tension or atmosphere probably because it's set entirely during the day which doesn't help the ambiance, does it? One aspect of Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill that I hated was the music, it was absolutely awful & there were times that I pressed mute on my TV remote control because it was giving me a headache. There is also a stupid bit with a grenade, I mean that grenade would have done more damage than cause a bit of smoke, I mean it was a wooden house it would have set in on fire at least, wouldn't it? The gore is tame & lacking, there's a couple of flesh eating scenes, there's a decapitated zombie head & a few gun shot wounds, I was pretty disappointed with the gore levels here to be honest.Technically Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill is OK, it's nothing special but considering the low budget it could have been worse. It looks like it was shot on a digital camcorder like a lot of low budget horror films are these days, personally I really don't like how these digitally shot films look & I much prefer proper good old fashioned film. The acting sucked, but then what did you expect?Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill is an average low budget horror film that isn't exactly spectacular but it's sort of watchable in it's own crap way, I doubt I'll ever want to see it again though. Worth a watch if your bored & have lots (& I mean lots) of love for the horror genre.

Bloody Bill (pardon me if I drop the rest of the ludicrously long title) is pretty good fun. The cast are enjoyably OTT, the premise is utterly ridiculous and there's zombies present in vast numbers. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and some effort has obviously been made to give it some original touches, whether cosmetic or within the storyline. In its field, it's pretty impressive.That said, it's field is straight-to-video horror, where the field varies from the 'really should have been in the theatre but wasn't' titles like Madhouse and Ginger Snaps right down to the 'if I'd paid more than rental for that I would have gone Mr T on somebody' output like Death Tunnel and Killjoy. Rest assured, Bloody Bill is thankfully in the top quarter of that spectrum, largely thanks to a dose of warped humour and the sheer volume of zombies it spits out, but it has some holes in it's jacket.Firstly, the storyline is borderline stupidity. A college debate team (yes, I said DEBATE TEAM) are carjacked by a young black guy (*cough* cliché *cough*) who drives them out to where he was meant to pick up his partner, who it turns out has been assimilated somehow into the zombie army of Bloody Bill, an undead confederate raider who's sworn vengeance on humanity. I'll give you a second while you regain your composure after the inevitable laughing fit. You will need your best suspension of disbelief hat on for this one, and possibly the matching underwear to go with it.Ignoring the stupidity of the plot (which actually it has to be said, is so stupid, it's amazing) the acting is not awful but not great either. The main characters, aforementioned young black guy aside (who steals the show with his catchphrase 'man, that ain't right!' and other scenes of daring-do) are either so annoying or so ineffectual that within split seconds of their mouth opening you're praying for a zombie attack to start up so you don't have to listen to them. The lead in particular is nails-down-chalkboard annoying, refusing to believe anything bad is happening seemingly until 50 minutes in, obviously going for the Scully dollar, even saying 'there has to be a rational explanation for this' several times throughout.Still, where it counts, on the zombie front, Bloody Bill delivers in spades, with an impressive 20-30 zombies on screen at once, charging about and causing lots of mayhem. Bloody Bill himself is cool, a little like John Carl Buechler's Forty-Niner but more decomposed and not quite such a bad-ass. Also, the movie is spiced up with some great moments of bad-taste humour and some pretty sick gore effects.As horror goes, Bloody Bill is a solid success, not exactly a film that'll blow you away, but unpretentious fun all the same, and worth a rent or a cheap buy if you see it somewhere.