Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

In director Kim Bass’ horror / thriller ‘Junkyard Dog’, a reference to our villain who runs a junkyard… I mean a wrecking yard because apparently there is a difference… and owns a big mean dog, we meet our villain Jed. Jed (Innis Casey) is not a very good person. He kidnaps random women, imprisons them in his underground hideaway, repeatedly rapes them and after he is tired of raping them he carves them up, cooks them up and eats these women and feeds what’s leftover to his dog. See what I mean? These are things that good people simply do not do.

Next we meet young Audra (Galadriel Stinemen). Young people sometimes do stupid things and this Halloween Audra thought her Beetle could make it to the Halloween party with the gauge on E. No problem, Audra justs calls the wrecker who will theoretically give her a couple gallons of petro and soon she will be on her way from this lonely, deserted, empty, dark road. Unfortunately for Audra her call is intercepted by Jed who subsequently tows the girl away to her new personal hell.

Somewhere else in this nation of ours, I’m not sure where, we are introduced to the third member of our triangle in tough FBI agent in Samantha Deatherage (Vivica A. Fox). Deatherage has been off the job for a little while since she had to pull out her Glock and flatblast a couple of child of murderers not too long ago and her boss (John Kapelos) is worried about her mental fitness. He’s afraid that Agent Deatherage will hesitate the next time a situation pops up requiring her to effectively use her steel. Samantha assures bossman that this will be no problem and then heads on over to the firing range to let us all know that she is pretty damned handy with her steel. Anyway, Audra has been missing for a while and Samantha has landed the unpleasant job of finding out where she might be or at least tracking down the body.

Audra’s first order of business upon driving into Hickville is taking a page out '48 Hours’ and going all Eddie Murphy on a bar full of Honky Tonkers. I don’t know why she felt the need to do this but she’s the agent in the charge and we’re not questioning her methods. Jed happens to be at this establishment at that time and Jed is liking what

he sees. Damn if the next morning Samantha’s car won’t start. Damn if Jed isn’t there, simply by chance, to give Samantha a ride to his wrecking yard to get the part Jed claims she needs. Samantha’s no idiot and knows that something isn’t right but she plays along. But while Samantha might be pretty a good shot, she’s looking like a damn lousy FBI agent. A series of unfortunate but completely avoidable events get Samantha thrown in the same underground hideout as Audra, but Samantha assures Audra that she’s not going to allow the evil Jed to hurt her anymore. Samantha has misspoke.

Still, Agent Deatherage has a plan. Uh, that plan didn’t work. Rest easy, she has another plan. Fail. Don’t fret because she has another plan. Agent Samantha Deatherage…Worst FBI Agent Ever. Eventually though we know that Agent Deatherage has to somehow get out of this hole and Rage Death on our crazed cannibalistic rapist. But can she save Audra from tomorrows dinner? If you were to ask Audra this question, from what the poor girl has seen from Agent Deatherage so far, her answer would probably be ‘hell no she can’t’.

Now you may think from my description of ‘Junkyard Dog’ that I didn’t care for this movie all that much, but that would not be the case. Yes, the movie does have its issues, but as a horror / thriller it was pretty effective. More as a thriller than a horror movie, but it did have its moments. For starters the movie is loaded up with eerie uncomfortable atmosphere. Initially, at least based on appearances, Innis Casey looked as if he’d more comfortable on ‘The O.C.’ than the main heavy in a horror movie, but thanks to way Kim Bass wrote the character and also to the young man’s credit he did manage to create one of the more hateful characters in recent horror movie memory. Despite the fact we thought Samantha Deatherage was a fairly lousy FBI agent, at no point, due to the talent of Vivica A. Fox, did we doubt she was indeed a FBI agent. The movie has its lulls here and there but overall it was a reasonably entertaining low bud horror / thriller.

That being said… should highly trained FBI agents run off with suspected serial killers without letting somebody know where they are? You would think considering Jed’s Junkyard was the last known location for many a missing person that eventually somebody would start to connect these incredibly simple dots. Note to serial killers: I get that it’s cool to have a hidden camera in the shower so you can get your perv on, but you should probably have a camera outside the shower to see what other types of stuff your potential victims might be cooking up for you. Also you might want to avoid kidnapping FBI agents, even if they are women, particularly if this woman is bigger than you. Plus, if your victim is missing an obnoxiously large hoop earring and you take great pains in undressing them so you can rape them later you should know she’s missing this earring and you might want to search for that missing earring. Just trying to help the cannibalistic raping serial killers out there.

This next thing is more of a personal approach but if I have my gun on a serial killer and this killer was holding crowbar, despite the fact the situation seems under control and he’s starting to cooperate, I’m still blowing off his kneecap. He can cry about his civil rights being violated all he wants, but I think my lie is going trump his truth. This could be one of the reasons they wouldn’t let me out of the Police Academy. More importantly is that this would’ve solved a lot of Agent Deatherage’s problems in this movie.

Sure enough ‘Junkyard Dog’ is no work of art, like we know what art is anyway, and sometimes its budgetary limitations overrides its cinematic aspirations, but I can tell you in all honesty that I was consistently entertained it. And lastly, if by some odd accidental occurrence Kim Bass is reading this… please tell me what I have to do to get a hold of a copy of ‘Ballistic’. I’m desperate over here.