Don't get excited, the actual leopard people don't look half as good as the cover.
Set in South Africa, Half-Caste is about a mythological creature which is part leopard and part human. According to the official website for the movie which is brazenly displayed on screen throughout this sad flick, a half-caste is "much like a vampire" and "similar to a werewolf" but "more dangerous than any of the above". I got these quotes from the official website, which you can access here, just click on the link for "The Creature". Or don't, as its mostly a waste of time.
Other than the fact that this movie is an obvious and talentless rip on the movie "Cat People", in either incarnation; this movie falls under the Spored to Death rule of perpetually increasing awesomination. For those of you who have forgotten the rule, it states "When a concept occurs, whether in a good movie or not, and is copied and improved upon by another movie, the concept will be cheapened and craptified on a inversely proportionate scale to its so called improvement."
So to sum up, this movie is about a werewolf vampire cat person, but this monster is cooler than werewolves and vampires put together because its all psychological... and... stuff.
Rawr.
I had low expectations for this movie, but Half-Caste managed to stumble like an autistic child with tied shoelaces on every conceivable hurdle placed before it. Even the one's I buried. The first and highest hurdle I could think, was deciding the on the format. You would think that when making a low budget horror movie that this would be an easy decision, but alas Half-Caste can't decide if it wanted to be a straight horror movie, a documentary horror movie or a reality TV horror movie.
At times the film is straight out horror, when the camera is intangible to the characters. At other times the movie interviews "witnesses" who recount their experiences involving interactions with the "Half-Caste". But most of the time the movie comes off like a bad episode of "Big Brother" as the house mates sit around talking about how excited they are to be tracking a Half-Caste.
I did NOT edit this picture, this is straight from the movie.
About 10 minutes into the movie the characters hire an African guide who takes them out into the bush to see animals and learn about African wildlife. At this point, they are instructed to eat and smoke different types of animal dung.
No, I'm not making this up.
This man is eating feces.
The "documentary crew" learns that eating the poop of a giraffe is nutritious, and that smoking the poop of an elephant cures headaches. They do as they are instructed by their guide, and I would like to point out that this is the high point of the movie. After this scene there's a steep decline as the crew gets more and more involved in tracking their shoddily constructed prey.
Apodaca is about to smoke elephant dung. Anything to get high, eh?
I would like to go into the characters and actors more, but the only name that matters in this production is Sebastian Apodaca. Sebastian plays documentary director Bobby G. Cortez, and then there are some other people who's names aren't important enough to remember; which is really sad because I was taking notes. I tried, and I still can't differentiate between them. They just don't matter, except for that one scene where everyone was asking Ray if he was gay. Maybe its because the writing was shoddy. Maybe its because of the real world/documentary format that doesn't focus on creating any type of tangible story, and therefore doesn't develop any of the character's attributes.
Or maybe its because Sebastian Apodaca is also the writer, director and producer of this movie. But who can say?
Oh wait. I can.
This movie suffers and the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the writer, director, producer and star Apodaca. Anything to get your name in lights, right?
In this scene Cortez chastises his crew for trying to steal his fame. Oh, and Apodaca, someone should have pointed out to you that you're BACKLIT!
Good job sport.
There are some terrible inconsistencies, but chances are you won't notice them as the insipid crap-eating plot rots your brain. The biggest example is when they attempt to use "special documentary cameras". The movie uses "streaming webcam" shots, which is obviously the same type of 16mm film that they use for the rest of the movie, but with the words "streaming webcam" in the lower right corner. They also attempt the same thing with the label "infrared camera" on the lower right. Oh, and let's not forget the "leopard man" camera in this supposed documentary. These are just the technical errors, I haven't even touched the writing yet.
Speaking of which...
In the opening section the documentary team is lead through the bush by a professional guide, who doesn't appear in the rest of the movie. I guess you when you've got the hubris of Apodaca you don't need a guide to get through the wilds of Africa. Either that or it cost too much. The guide is captured on screen telling the crew about the dangers of the bush, and not to leave the car or stand up in it. Later in the movie the crew not only travels around the bush without their guide, they do so in the dead of night. So let's see... dangerous area, wild animals. I guess its only natural that everyone lounge around the house all day and only go out looking for monsters at night.
Yesterday was Valentine's day; and look, she got you a heart!
That being said, it should come as a shock to no one when they're attacked by a lion. Good thing they had a lion tamer on staff for all the lion scenes. For all those morons who wrote to imdb astounded that they captured footage of a real live lion attacking the car, maybe you should have stuck around for the credits. I usually don't fling my insults at the viewing audience, but I strongly suspect that some of the crew... well, probably just Apodaca, have been writing bogus imdb comments about this movie.
Can't you just see it? Apodaca, alone in his house at night rocking back and fourth on the milk crate that he's probably using for a chair in front of his laptop writing sad little comments to lure people into watching this movie all the while chanting "I didn't make a piece of SPORE, I didn't make a piece of SPORE..." over and over while eating a tin of beans.
Fake experts agree: this movie is a piece of crap!
Well, even if you couldn't picture it before, I'm sure you've got a pretty good mental image of it now. I really wish I could stop ranting about how bad this movie was, as I feel like I'm picking on an autistic child with bad acne. I really should feel bad about it... I just don't. After having subjected myself and one other person to this movie...
Oh crap, I forgot about him! Hang on a second...
(sounds of screaming) "Oh god, make it stop! The poo! No more! Ahhh!"
Yeah, he'll be fine. Anyway, I don't really recommend watching this movie. It could do really bad things to you. There's an old saying that goes "Eat SPORE and die". Apodaca is half way there. But like everything else he does, this too is half-assed.
Today's youtube is only somewhat related to the movie. Enjoy the homeless sock monkey.
