Dear God No!

Published March 22, 2015 | By The Blue Took

- By Zombie Rob

The synopsis of this indicated I might have just stumbled upon a wee nugget of the purest cinematic gold: biker gang, rape, murder, home invasion, strippers, SASQUATCH - I was SO in, I was trembling with the very essence of my in-ness.

Biker gang ‘The Impalers’ (leaving anyone that crosses their path in no doubt whatsoever that they’re just MASSIVE psycho-bastards from the basement dungeon of a shit-washed asylum located in the darkest corner of hell that even satan himself avoids, sorta thing) wake up on a field from what was obviously a pretty debauched night as there’s cans and bottles and roaches littering the place. Oh, and several corpses of brutalised & violated nuns are strewn about like fag-ends and trodden-into-the-carpet canapes. They spark up another spliff, inhale unfeasibly large lines of nosebag, leap aboard their mechanical steeds, do a casual burnout on the stomach of a dead nun and hit the road - thus embarking on a roadtrip that can only bring chaos and carnage whichever way they choose to ride. Quick stop at a roadside gas station (massacre all concerned), before arriving at a biker bar where they’re told to tone their behaviour down a bit by some sort of Hell’s Angel headmaster, as their murdering and raping is drawing unwelcome attention from the authorities. The Impalers make a snap decision, and instead of toning things down, they decide to ramp things up. Considerably. So they kill everyone at the bar before getting run outta there by a few remaining strippers wearing Richard Nixon masks with shotguns and fully automatic machine guns. They realise that perhaps they’ve gone a little over the top so hole up in a cabin in the woods (because nothing bad ever happens in cabins in woods) regardless of the fact that the cabin is already occupied by an anthropologist, his miserable daughter, a pregnant colleague & her husband, and whatever is locked behind the obligatory reinforced door in the cellar. And there’s something dreadful out in the woods. And the anthropologist is a nazi, dunno why. Then it, like, properly kicks off…..

I’ve left loads out of this synopsis as the makers have ensured something awful happens, seemingly, every six seconds and this is where things start to come unstuck as far as I’m concerned. It’s like the makers got together with 4 crates of ale, a pound of weed and about 40 hours worth of low-end exploitation & grindhouse films from the late 70s and early 80s. They pulled the curtains, all sat round the TV and ingested EVERYTHING while making a list of each moment & scene that caught their attention, times’d these by 1000 and then included them all in “Dear God No!”, regardless of whether they make any sense or not.

Grindhouse has been revisited any number of times since it’s hey-day by among others Tarantino, Rodriguez and the horror demi-god Rob Zombie and these reimaginings have been largely triumphant in tipping a deferential nod to the past but still evolving and updating the genre. However, these appear to have pissed the director & creator James Bickert right off and he’s reverted back to the originals in all their glory with truly shit acting, poor camera work, a dreadful script, a story that is essentially pointless and many many boobs. Now, these things are largely to Bickert’s credit and please don’t get me wrong here - there’s a LOT to like about “Dear God No!” but the film as a whole is a classic example of although you may love something, this doesn’t mean you should do it.

From the outset it is indeed difficult to tell that it’s a modern film because it is shot on a camera from the time, used non-actors and real strippers and consequently feels wonderfully authentic but the content is conceived more from today’s paradigm - meaning that the scenes are more extreme, more unpleasant and more gratuitous than would have been found in the source material. During the aforementioned opening scene for instance, the female victims of the gangs excesses were made into nuns because this would be considered a worse scenario than mere civilian women - and while the gang members make plans for the rest of the day, one of their number is in the background casually kicking one of the dead nuns right up the genitals. This could have been a perfect set-up scene within a traditionally grindhouse context but these two details are too extreme and anachronistic, and make it feel very modern and therefore inaccurate. In the old grindhouse films, if a visit was made to a strip-joint (as it invariably was) a glimpse of boob was inevitably thrown in and felt risque and titillating and undoubtedly erotic. The five minute uncomfortably upclose scene of the topless stripper’s bored gyrations felt uncomfortable and, dare I say it, boring (after the first awesome minute obviously). I found myself thinking about what to have for my tea. Gammon & two fried eggs, incidentally.

I’ve no doubt of James Bickert’s affection & respect for the films he’s trying to emulate & recreate but he tries FAR too hard, overwhelmingly so. It all feels like an upper middle-class public schoolboy called Hugo or Ollie who REALLY loves Eminem suddenly announcing that he totally grew up in, like, ya know, the ghetto, referring to his parents Berkshire estate as his ‘hood, calling mummy & daddy his homeys and describing their summer home on the south coast as his crib. Or a 15 year-old knobhead that takes a break from watching Russ Meyer movies on loop and wanking over Porky’s and decides he can do one of these, then films his mates pissing about with cap-guns and ketchup sachets on his ‘phone for a school project. I love what Bickert has attempted here and there is almost a good film in there somewhere but it’s muffled and lost by over-enthusiasm and, at times, stupidity - and this is what I’m struggling to forgive. I know for a fact that the fans of this film will say that I don’t get it but I do, I really fucking do and it’s just not good enough. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was made with a similar criteria to “Dear God No!” and Tobe Hooper produced a film of such cohesive & intelligent resonance, it’s impact is still being felt today.