Amateur #7 We’ve seen a lot of low-budget movies, and some of them were so low-budget that I made a separate category for them. Amateur horror and thrillers we have already checked out, but what if I told you that we have an amateur adventure film, which takes place in the XVIII century? Adding to the interest is the fact that the film was officially released on DVD in Russia (and, it seems, only in Russia, since even on IMDb flaunts the cover of our edition from Lizard). Even more interesting is that the film was originally released as a short film, but on the disc the duration of the film is neither — 66 minutes. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.
So, before us is an adventure film Chris Stone "Bandit". On the back of the disc again flaunts the logo of York Entertainment, so we expect only amateur level of production and everything else. In Russia, the film, of course, releases Lizard, and interestingly – I really in 2011 often saw it on the shelves with discs, the movie really sold as an adventure novelty. However, an understanding viewer takes a couple of seconds to understand what is wrong here.
The plot of the film revolves around a real robber named Dick Turpin. In fact, there is nothing more to say about the plot, since we just show the everyday work of this character - here is the robbery, here is the showdown inside the gang, and here is the robbery again. There is no clear plot here - Turpin robs rich people, and everyone wants to catch him. That's the point.
A little more interesting is the manner of shooting this video - the action (if it can be called that) is shot in an incredibly cheap and clip-like manner, and the ridiculous soundtrack, which was created in the course in the GarageBand program, only adds fun to everything that is happening. Plus, the authors of the film clearly could not agree among themselves, so the movie looks like a glue of works of different people – here we have an action for drama, here a robbery, and there are absolutely oak dialogues. It’s as if everyone was a different person.
Of course, we will not consider this video as a full-fledged movie, which is why I put this video under the number seven in the Amateur folder. It's more like a student job, or just a video made by friends just for a hobby. How it turned out on the shelves with DVDs is completely unclear. Besides, I think I can guess why IMDb has 42 minutes of film duration, while IMDb has 66. The fact is that there are two scenes in the film that seem incredibly superfluous even for such a movie - this is when a sepia filter is applied to the image, and we begin to show the events of the past 7-8 minutes, but from different angles. I also noticed that the final credits are incredibly slow and take almost 10 minutes. It seems to me that the real length of the film is 42 minutes, but it was impossible to release such a format to the people, so they began to somehow finish up to an acceptable 66 minutes. And in vain, in the format of a short film, it would really look like an interesting student work.
To sum up, it’s not a movie, either a typical “cinema for friends” or students filmed for a contest or defense. However, it is worth noting that unlike other amateur videos, it is done with a soul - a suitable prop was found, even the scene of a fall from a horse was filmed. Naturally, the low ratings of the film due to the fact that it was sold on licensed DVDs under the guise of a historical blockbuster. In fact, for amateur work shot very, very well. It just didn't have to go mass-market, that's all.
Thank you for your attention