Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Erica Derrick
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Scotty Burke
It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
gellerche-48-851856
Summary is that this movie isn't worth watching. But the really bad thing is that it could have been good if they taken the same care throughout the whole movie. The camera-work was decent and showed that they cared enough to try. Others have said the acting was terrible, but there I disagree. I found the actors believable, it's just that their dialogue (1) didn't tell me anything to get interested in them so that they were all generic characters and (2) the script had the characters doing unbelievable things and didn't flesh out the story of Machete Joe at all. He's just sort of . . . there.If the script had been written so that the characters had something to say and were doing things that were believable it would've been interesting. As it is, it's not worth a rental.
Scott LeBrun
But then, anybody who decides to go ahead and watch this will find that out. As a devoted watcher of horror movies of all budgets, I would have liked to have enjoyed this one a little more. Overall, it's just way too routine to really work, and any moments that could conceivably be pinpointed as the highlights are few and far between. A pity, because this is the first genre film that I've seen since 1990's "Def by Temptation" that had a predominantly black cast (with a few token white guys on hand here). Written by Gordon Greene, one of its actors, it tells the story of a deformed murderer who as a child had seen his mother, a prostitute, slaughtered by a john. This same individual then makes life miserable for a film crew attempting to tell his story. Unfortunately, it's too hard to really care for many of these characters; by the end, one can start liking them a bit more, but by then it's too little, too late. The makeup effects and gore are decent enough, so if the prospective viewer is a gore junkie, they at least can get some entertainment out of this. The cast does feature some familiar faces, but they're basically just picking up a pay cheque: the great Ernie Hudson is reduced to a thankless cameo role as the local lawman, who flirts with his sexy young deputy but who doesn't do much else. One will also recognize character actor Art Evans, as the aged driver Sammy; he's been in such things as "Fright Night" and "Die Hard 2". As for the other actors, they're tolerable at best, but one good thing is that some of the ladies are quite attractive; too bad there's no sex or nudity in this thing. This is particularly tough going in its first half, which mostly consists of the characters arguing and fighting with each other. The horror quotient finally picks up in the second half, but the final body count may be too small for some tastes. The killer, played by Paul Campbell, just isn't that interesting overall. This is the kind of thing I couldn't really recommend to anybody, unless they're die hard horror fanatics willing to try out anything they see in a store, and even they might come away disappointed. Proceed at your own risk. Four out of 10.
Robert W.
I find it very hard to review movies like this. I am a huge horror fan and I watch a lot of B Movie crap and you can't really say its horribly bad and to avoid it because you have to know what you're going into. The movie is bad...its just horrible...and its mind blowing to think that at least one of the IMDb reviews was a perfect 10/10 because that's just utter stupidity. There isn't anything redeemable about this. The acting is awful, its not even acting, the special effects are ridiculous, its not even gory because the kills are done off camera so that they could spend no money on special effects. But the cast has to know what they are doing is bad, they may even act bad on purpose, hoping they will making something so bad that it'll be good...a cult classic perhaps but Machete Joe will never reach that because its just plain stupid. I won't even spend time talking cast because they are all awful. I can't even imagine why Ernie Hudson (easily the biggest name in the film) would even have a cameo in this but he does. The only redemption for this is that you might get some chuckles out of how bad it truly is and for what its worth the story isn't a complete loss. Essentially a young boy watches his mother being raped, and then out of torture has his face brutally scarred and thus becomes a serial killer. The setting is awful, looks like plastic rocks and trees. Machete Joe isn't even a movie...its literally a joke. Even fans of the truly bad horror movies won't even find this watchable. Just steer clear of it. 1/10
qisys
I've seen several films in this genre. Most of them, with the exception of this well done work, are badly lighted. In effect, in other horror films, a viewer often gets bombarded with flashing lights and dark scenes where most of the actors cannot be seen well. This film, in my opinion, is well written, the actors are fine, and the thrills are well paced, and the lighting is excellent, sometimes, even beautiful. In closing, I comment on a previous review by someone called, 'TheBeardedWonder': This person indicated "... I don't want to spend more time than I have to here..." yet their piece was relatively lengthy, and "...nothing is good about it..." using universal quantifiers, like, "nothing is good". All this seems to me to be a bit disingenuous.
