Honky Holocaust Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		2.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.0

Honky Holocaust Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf February 15, 2017

One has to be careful when approaching a movie titled “Honky Holocaust.” It’s a Troma Production, which is as brief a review as I can provide, and one that’s filled with racial hostilities, epithets, and stereotypes, with writer/director Paul M. McAlarney trying his hardest to make an offensive, hyper-violent exploitation picture that pushes every button imaginable. It’s a shame the helmer doesn’t have the budget to do something more inventive with his faintly subversive premise, instead spending pennies to achieve his vision for excess, somehow believing that creating a mess is the best way to reach closed minds. “Honky Holocaust” is expectedly awful, but not in an ideal Troma-esque way. It’s just an icky, fetishistic take on an alt-history disaster, with McAlarney flexing his anger issues instead of making a legitimate film.

After committing the Tate-Labianca murders, Charles Manson and his “family” retreat to an underground bunker, trying to wait out a race war they helped to start. As the years go by, Charles dies, leaving care of daughter Kendra (Mara Natapov) to leader Dan (Lucas Fleming), a Neo-Nazi with strong feelings about black people and the future of America. Exiting the bunker after 35 years underground, Dan and his followers decide to pay a visit to San Francisco, only to discover that while they were away, war was declared on white people, creating African-American rule. Outnumbered and outgunned, Dan elects to restart a war between the races while Kendra stumbles into her own nightmare, unsure what to do with a society she doesn’t recognize anymore, confronted by her own bigotry.

In the first ten minutes of “Honky Holocaust,” a revised history of Charles Manson’s aborted reign as the leader of his flock is breathlessly worked through, and Dan, trying to silence a dissenter, shoots a pregnant woman in the stomach and promptly urinates on her fresh wounds. And that’s the type of viewing experience awaiting those curious about “Honky Holocaust,” which goes out of its way to be grotesque and offensive, with McAlarney working up a sweat as he shares his secret desires with the world. The features only grows more wearisome from there, tracking Dan’s confrontations with the locals, while Kendra’s eyes are opened to racism, treated as garbage as cops ignore her cries for help, local restaurants subject her to segregation, and other white folk simply feed her drugs for cheap thrills. It’s all very loud and ugly, and that’s exactly what McAlarney wants, showing no concern for traditional filmmaking pursuits like focus, proper sound, competent performances, set construction, locations, special effects, scoring, and narrative drive. The production gets as a far as swapping the racial experience in America and promptly calls it a day.

Honky Holocaust Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I'm not exactly sure what the point of bringing "Honky Holocaust" to Blu-ray is, but there's an AVC encoded image (1.78:1 aspect ratio) presentation, and it must be confronted. Wrestling with minuscule budget and severe technical limitations, the viewing experience is inconsistent, with some footage looking clean, while the rest is slightly washed out, with a few sequences lost to excessive brightening. Delineation isn't strong, finding most evening sequences solidified. Detail is acceptable but rarely exciting, doing fine with facial close-ups and gore zone visits, while costuming retains mild texture. Colors are adequate, emphasizing blood reds and greenery, and skintones look accurate.

Honky Holocaust Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 2.0 LPCM sound mix also tangles with terrible production achievements, finding basic dialogue recording out of McAlarney's control. Dramatic exchanges are barely intelligible in concrete environments, while ambient noise also threatens dialogue, making it difficult to follow the story at times. Music is cranked all the way up, drowning out performances, and while instrumentation is understood, it's too loud for comfort. Atmospherics and sound effects are basic in design, with nothing memorable or complimentary to the listening experience.

Honky Holocaust Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• "BTS Honkumentary" (19:35, HD) is exactly what the title suggests, stitching together footage from the shoot captured with terrible cell phone cameras. If there's any curiosity about the daily workload behind "Honky Holocaust," it's satisfied here, showcasing the no-budget professionalism of the cast and crew, along with moments of stunt work and special effects.

• "Exterminated Scenes" (17:26, HD) submit a fairly random assortment of snipped footage.

• Slideshow collects 38 pictures from the "Honky Holocaust" shoot.

• Video (4:35, HD) features an introduction from director Paul M. McAlarney, who pledges his allegiance to Troma Films and accepts an award for "Best Honky Holocaust Film." A brief music video from Timothy Fife and Alex E. Edwards follows.

• "Troma Now Xtreme Edition" (1:43, SD) is a commercial for the company's website, sold with dark humor and graphic nudity.

• "Radiation March" (:56, SD) is a short dance piece concerning the dangers of pollution.

• And a Theatrical Trailer (2:55, HD) is included.

Honky Holocaust Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"Honky Holocaust" is the type of film where a character is shot, digs into his own intestines, and promptly strangles his assassin with goopy guts. McAlarney isn't making high art, but he's also not making a movie, as most of the effort is a grab-bag of gore and rage, trusting the Manson-branded premise is enough to act as structure for what becomes a series of random, thoroughly unpleasant encounters. There's a way to pull off the nonsense "Honky Holocaust" is submitting, but the production gets it all wrong, dropping satiric ambition to play with innards, making it more of a viewing experience for its creator than any possible audience.