By Dan Skip Allen

Kurt Deimer is a bit of a local legend in Central Florida. He’s already released one film here in Sanford, about a half hour north of Orlando, “Scar3d to Death” and now he’s releasing another film here called “Hellbilly Hollow” in the same fashion. An exclusive event at the West End Trading Company, a bar and concert venue. If that’s not cool enough, his band’s last single “In Deep” played on local radio station wjrr 101.1 for five months and eleven days. That’s pretty impressive for a band most people haven’t heard of. If it seems like I’m building him up, there is a reason for that. I have had the opportunity to see “Hellbilly Hollow” and it was a lot of fun for a horror movie.

If this title sounds familiar, it’s because there is a real haunted farm in Vincent, Alabama, that the movie was filmed at and took its name. That’s pretty meta, but it’s not the only meta thing about this film. It originally premiered in December of 2022 at the New York City Horror Film Festival. It’s finally getting its wide theatrical release on September 25th. As aforementioned, I have seen the movie about ten days early, and I’ll tell you there is a reason this movie took so long to be released. There was a lot of post-production on this film. I didn’t see the original cut, but I imagine this version is much better than the original cut of the movie. I noticed the things that were done to improve it and let me tell you it was worth the wait.

There is an opening credits sequence that gets the viewer right into the movie, but that comes after a cold opening that introduces younger versions of the main characters. I won’t spoil what happens, but that cold opening is very important to the overall plot of the film. It’s the opening credits sequence that had me entertained from the very beginning. It’s a spit scene of these two people getting ready for their day. One is a young man who is getting prepared to go to work. Going through his morning ritual before driving to the location where he’s going to work. The other man is a big hulking individual with a clown mask covering his own face, and he wears blue overalls. The two men meet for a very funny encounter at a place that is the site of an old circus but is currently a pig farm and Halloween hayride horror attraction called, you guessed it, “Hellbilly Hollow”. After this funny yet bloody encounter, the rest of the story of the movie starts to unfold.

The main two antagonists are Tickles the Clown (Kevin Wayne) , also the director of the movie, and Bull (Kurt Deimer), who runs the attraction “Hellbilly Hollow”. Tickles does all the dirty work for Bull while he’s crewing his tobacco, laughs, and lures in his unsuspecting guests to their impending doom. Some of the victims are a group of called “The Paranormal Scream Team” investigators who have suspected the place of having ghost activity, including a woman who thinks her grandmother died there and her ghost still exists on the premises. Another group are teens who are just trying to enjoy the attraction. Little do they know they are being watched by Tickles, who enjoys the act of swinging his club and slicing and dicing his prey to death. He gets off on it.

That’s one of the best and funniest parts of the movie. The carnival games that Bull and Tickles use are a bit more dangerous and life-threatening than the usual ones you see at your average fair or carnival experience. A few are, instead of Wack a Moll, it’s Wack a Troll with heads bobbing up and down in the holes. Car Dunk, a car is attached to a crane and if you hit the target in goes further and further into a pond, Aside Darts, where a person is tied to a spinning board and you have to try and hit them with the darts, and High Stryker, where it’s the typical mallet hitting the strike and the ball goes up but it comes down on the person using the mallet instead of on the game. These were hilarious to watch, especially when the victims died in such terrible ways. They were so creative.

One thing I was looking forward to seeing in this film was the kills and all the blood and guts. Wayne and Deimer did a great job of bringing a lot of creative ways to kill people to this movie. From a scare house with people popping out of the walls to the haunted hayride where people get selected to be part of various acts. They had no idea what they were in for, but Halloween approaching this is the perfect movie for people who are looking for scares and plenty of blood and gore. I loved all of it and listening to the reactions from the crowd who were watching with me. That’s what a good horror movie should do.

The cast in this film was fine. They weren’t all giving Oscar caliber performances, but they were serviceable. The two standouts were Deimer himself as Bull and Tickles the Clown played by Wayne. If they weren’t so believable, the story as a whole wouldn’t have worked so well. In any horror movie, the antagonists have to be realistic regarding the story they’re in. I can totally believe these two would be running a backwater hillbilly attraction like this one in the middle of nowhere, Alabama. Even the ghost characters had a believability to them. The cast wasn’t great, but they were decent considering the movie they were in.

Some of the technical aspects of this film were very surprising to me. The aforementioned ghosts were done in a fantastic way. The visual effects, which were probably on a limited budget, looked pretty cool involving the ghosts. There were a few other effects involving fire and so forth that looked great. I can tell the filmmakers did a lot of post-production on this movie to get it up to par with other horror movies in theaters. The makeup and hairstyling were terrific as well. Also, the production design looked fantastic, especially involving all of the twisted attractions. Also, the music from Deimer himself and other artists added to my overall enjoyment of this low-budget campy horror film. 

“Hellbilly Hollow” is a fun horror movie that you can’t take very seriously. If you do, you’ll lose the point of what Wayne and Diemer and  company are trying to accomplish. It’s meant to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s a mix of “Halloween Horror Nights” and “The Blair Witch Project “. There are plenty of elements of both in this movie. I enjoyed what these guys were going for because I didn’t take it too seriously. Is it the best horror movie? No, but it’s not the worst either. It was a fun time, which is what I was hoping for. Hopefully, others will feel the same way I do.

🌟 🌟 🌟 stars