When determining how well a film works it’s important to first understand the type of film the director is trying to make and judge accordingly. Dreaming Purple Neon wasn’t released by Troma but given the copious amounts of low budget gore, nudity and general cheesiness, it’s something that could’ve fit right into their catalog. That is to say this is not a film that seeks to astound you with mesmerizing acting or a profound storyline but instead hopes to entertain with over-the-top visuals. This is a perfectly valid position for a film to take and one that is harder to successfully achieve than you’d think. So, the real question becomes, does it pull it off?
When Dallas (Jeremy Edwards) threw on his duster and decided to roll back into town to settle some unfinished business, the last thing he expected was to become wrapped up in a crazy scheme involving demons, human sacrifice, an experimental new drug, and a dentist’s office. Now he and his unlikely group of allies may be the only thing standing between a demonic cult and the destruction of the human race.
As I said before, there’s nothing wrong with a film that’s simply over-the-top entertainment, but it’s important that it recognize what it is and commit to it. It’s this self-awareness that makes films like Hectic Knife and Father’s Day so successful as they strap the viewer in for their brand of gleeful insanity. DPN does get there, but the first third of the film drags along slowly and painfully until it does. Character development scenes are important, when they work, but in this case neither the writing or acting is up to the challenge of fleshing the characters into empathetic and believable people worth giving a damn about. Writer/director Todd Sheets would have been better served by skipping the melodrama and embracing the drug-fueled demonic mayhem sooner.
Once said mayhem does kick in, the film becomes a lot more fun and really starts to earn its Extreme Cinema stripes. The special effects may be low budget but what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity as they assault the viewer with the kind of glorious, explicit carnage you can only see in a non-Hollywood production. Gruesome disembowelments, brutal decapitations and even a graphic crotch-drilling (!) make for a lot of fucked-up fun once it hits its stride. In the end this is the kind of over-the-top B-movie that’s best enjoyed with a few friends, and more than a few drinks, by gore hounds who have the patience to make it over the initial hump.
This review originally ran on Corin Totin’s Sick Flix website. Check it out for more dark and disturbing film reviews!