Originally known as Honey Britches, Donn Davidson’s Shantytown Honeymoon is best known under the name Troma slapped on it in the VHS heyday: Demented Death Farm Massacre. Even with Troma’s appended John Carradine prologue, the retitling is misleading for what more or less plays as a feature-length version of a dirty joke.
After a high-profile jewel heist, four criminals — whose erudite leader, Philip (Jim Peck, Pet Sematary II), resembles early SNL fixture Michael O’Donoghue — need to lay low. One downed plane and stolen Jeep later, they stand at the stoop of the rural ramshackle home of age-disparate spouses Reba Sue and Horlan, respectively played by porn actress Ashley Brooks and horror host George Ellis. She’s a real cutie patootie in her sexual prime, whereas he looks like he placed fourth in a Sid Haig lookalike contest he didn’t even enter.
Philip’s got his hands full trying to keep the hands of a fellow felon (Mike Coolick, Can’t Stop the Music) off Reba Sue’s full bosom, plus the hands of horny ol’ Horlan off their own lovely ladies (one-timers Pepper Thurston and Trudy Moore). This being a sexploitation confection, Philip fails marvelously. This also being a hicksploitation effort, the opening and closing credits are chalked on a wooden fence.
Davison (Blood Beast of Monster Mountain) gives this cheapo Honeymoon doses of crude gore à la H.G. Lewis: a bear trap to a leg, a pitchfork to a neck, a corn liquor jug to a forehead, and so on. Its best effects are the chest objects, but you’d be surprised how Shantytown is more about teasing the T&A than showing ’em — hardly an issue when the redneck romp’s lackluster acting, bathroom-wall scripting and scene-to-scene discrepant pacing amount to a good time, despite your better judgment.
Granted, the movie is about half as much fun as it is stupid. But, folks, this one’s mighty stupid. —Rod Lott