Burglar From Hell (1993)
Review By Gore Filth
In this grimy piece of shot on video trash treasure from 1993, a burglar named Frank “The Tank” who after tearing out the throat of a nosy neighborhood watchman played by director Phil Herman himself, breaks into an old woman’s house and slaps her around looking for money and jewels, but she turns the tables on Frank and blasts him in the chest with a shotgun and before he dies says, “Heaven is scared of me, hell won’t have me!” The old woman buries Frank in her backyard right before a fatal heart attack and years later, a group of friends who can’t stop fighting and bickering with each other end up renting the old woman’s house for a weekend getaway! While they are there, a rain dance/seance ends up bringing Frank “The Tank” back from the dead for some zombiefied mayhem! This is definitely my kind of movie right here! Low budget, grimy, gross, bloody, sleazy, shot on video filth that’s constantly entertaining!
First off, the character of Frank “The Tank” is great! The tough guy stature, the KOOL T-shirt, the maniacal laugh, the NY accent even thicker than mine, the cheesy and sleazy one liners! You’ve never seen a character quite like Frank in a movie, but I think everyone knows a character like Frank in real life! Bryant Sohl did a great job bringing us this ruthless and hilarious thug turned zombie killing machine! There is also a great mix of over the top characters in this movie that will keep you entertained at all times if you enjoy low budget shot on video filth like me anyway! This movie is also almost like a time capsule of early 90s New York! A lot of movies now make culture references to decades ago, but this movie made 90s culture references IN THE 90s! Very cool!! I was a freshman in high school in New York when this came out so it definitely stands out to me that’s for sure!
There’s not a ton of gore scenes, but there was still enough gore in this movie to keep me happy! There are some great low budget gore scenes like, ripped off arm gushing blood, shovel in the stomach, throat ripped out, and a few more! That with a great amount of sleaze and over the top crazy situations make this one of my favorite pieces of shot on video grime-ridden sleazy trash movies of all time for sure! If you only care about expert camera work and dazzling special effects of course you’re going to hate it! But lovers of shot on video, bloody, sleazy, edited VCR to VCR horror are going to be constantly entertained by this movie that is one of the main reasons I decided to pick up a VHS camera and make some shot on video filth of my own! HAIL FRANK THE TANK!!! Available now on DVD from The Sleazebox.
