A Crack in the Floor (2000)

86 minutes worth of film for five minutes worth of good ideas. A Crack in the Floor is the first film of two directors, and one can only assume the other films they made must be better for this one is doggy diarrhea. Populated with guest appearances by bad film regulars — in order of screen time: Bo Hopkins, Tracy Scoggins, Gary Busey and (blink! — you missed him) David Naughten — any and all of them act all the victims-to-be off the screen. Way too much time on the “character development” of the slasher-fodder, but they are in general such bad actors and so broadly drawn that the more you know about them, the more you want the slaughter to begin. The film can’t seem to decide if it’s set in someplace in the backwood hills of West Virginia or the mountains outside of LA, but no matter where it should be the screenplay has so many holes in it that it obviously never went through a single rewrite. Basically, little Jeremiah gets to watch his religious fanatic mummy get raped and killed and then spends the next 33+ years living under the floorboards of the family cottage, killing all those who happen to invade his space. The best things about the film is the ease with which Bo Hopkins fits his typecasting as the sheriff, Busey’s obviously adlibbed appearance as a deranged chicken killer, one set of silicon tits that get flashed much too briefly, and a nicely downbeat ending. Amongst Jeremiah’s overly rounded-out fodder is Mario López, whose career has to date already had its highpoint in the overtly homo shower scene in Nip/Tuck in 2006 — he may have a hot ass and abs (which we don’t get to see in this film), but he sure ain’t an actor (for safety’s sake, he should really consider a second career). In any event, whatever he has to show probably ain’t half as interesting as what slasher-fodder number one (Daisy McCrackin as Heidi) probably has, but she doesn’t show anything more than her long red hair and beautiful blue eyes. We get a pitchfork in the stomach, a twisted neck, a face in a bear trap, a (laughably fake) slit throat, couple of pickaxes in the back and a lot of ketchup thrown on the wall. And, damn! Why do all slasher-fodder that have the chance to kill the killer always only strike the killer once and say something like “He’s dead, we’re safe now” instead of doing something logical like bashing his brain to pulp so as to make sure he really is dead? Idiots like that deserve to die. Yawn.