Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to another exciting edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, an exciting column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way.

This time around I got a screener of a flick that hasn’t come out yet! It’s like I’m a real big time critic! But this isn’t just another horror flick, this is the horror flick that press release robots are calling “the debut of the next great masked serial killer” and the douchebag horror websites and magazines are all falling all over themselves praising and hyping to no end. FAGoria even put the killer on their cover, so you know this supposed to be a big deal.

LAID TO REST is the story of a girl (Bobbi Sue Luther) who wakes up in a casket with a traumatic head injury that makes her essentially retarded and steals her memory. As she wanders around a funeral home in a daze trying to figure out where she is, she meets the maniac that abducted her – a metal masked serial killer called ChromeSkull. ChromeSkull (Nick Principe) is armed with large knives and a mounted shoulder camera that records him in action as he rips his victims to shreds. ChromeSkull is determined to finish his latest masterpiece and will stop at nothing to kill “the girl” and those who try to help her. As the night of horror unfolds, “the girl” learns the shocking secrets of her past and gets an up close look at the killer in action.

Hype is a funny thing. The more the horror press tells me I am supposed to love a flick, the more I want to hate it. I was more than ready to dismiss LAID TO REST as yet another disappointment but I wound up really liking it. It’s hard for me to hate any horror flick with this much fucking gore! I was greatly impressed with how brutal this flick was in the blood and guts department. This flick contains lots of juicy splatter and nasty looking mutilated corpses. The kills in this flick are outrageous! ChromeSkull looks cool and does the stalk and slash routine like a champ. A lot of recent horror flicks have claimed to be throwbacks to the old school slasher flicks, but LAID TO REST is the rare exception that actually gets it right.

What I appreciated the most about this flick was the way it managed to be offbeat without being too silly. Unlike other massively hyped horror flicks like Hatchet and Behind The Mask, LAID TO REST never resorts to cheap laughs or seems to be winking at the audience. This is just a straight up modern slasher flick, not a jokey homage or a parody. Hats off to writer/director Robert Hall for creating something new that pays respect to the flicks that influenced it. I thought Robert’s first directorial effort Lightning Bug was a fucking stupid vanity piece, but he stepped up his game with this one in a big way. There’s just the right amount of black humor, and plenty of splatter and scares to keep the audience engaged.

Now that I’ve praised the film, I think it’s time to vent a little bit about some of the comments made in the bonus behind the scenes footage included on the dvd. First of all, one of the producers raves that Robert Hall “captures the essence of what makes those 80′s slasher flicks so great…” For some reason, I hate it when people say shit like that. That sort of statement reduces 80′s slashers to be nothing more than dudes in masks chasing screaming girls around. That sort of dismissive attitude pisses me off. Watch flicks like Curtains or fucking Mother’s Day and then get back to me.

The next thing that bothered me was writer/director Robert Hall saying “I wanted to take it back to MANIAC, where you only see a modicum of the killer in action.” What the fuck is he talking about? First of all he uses big words like “modicum” to try to sound smart, and second he apparently he has Maniac confused with some other flick. Maniac is all about Frank Zito in action, nothing but extreme closeups of his scalpings and shotgun shenanigans. It’s like he pulled the title out of his ass to try to sound like a big 80′s horror buff.

I saved the worst offense for last. I reached the boiling point when the DP of the film (DP obviously stands for double penetration in this case, because this guy must have at least two dicks up his ass!) said “Rob set out to make a great movie, not a horror movie PER SAY, but a great script with great characters…” Anyone who drops the per say bomb is clearly a pretentious shitstain, and this guy is a stupid fucking twat. So let me get this straight, LAID TO REST is not a horror movie? Then I guess all those horror websites and magazines shouldn’t waste their time sucking your dicks so damn hard.

The lead actress (and coincidentally enough, a co-producer and the director’s wife!) also said in a recent interview that her husband doesn’t want to do “JUST horror films.” I love how everyone who makes a horror movie these days breaks their fucking necks trying to run away from being associated with the genre they are trying to make money with. Even people like Eli Roth and Rob Zombie have said similar things. I guess as soon as you get to “live your dream” and make a couple horror flicks you immediately get the urge to say you were never a big fan of the genre and that you really want to make pg-13 sci-fi flicks or biker flicks instead.

That criticism aside, this is still a damn cool horror flick. I hate to add to the hype, but I have to admit that this is one of the best slasher flicks I’ve seen in a long time. It’s good gory fun and I think slasher fans will love it. LAID TO REST will be released on dvd April 21 by the good folks at Anchor Bay Entertainment. The bonus features will include director’s commentary, two behind the scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, bloopers, and trailers. Brain Hammer approved!

KEEP THE BLOOD FLOWING!!!