BREADCRUMBS is yet ANOTHER slasher-in-the-woods low budget horror flick made with a paucity of imagination or style. It's dull beyond belief, and I'm not going to give the film-makers a break just because they didn't have any money to shoot; the British film-makers behind HAROLD'S GOING STIFF had nothing to work with either and they made a funny, genuinely heartwarming zombie film.

The cartoon credits are the best thing about BREADCRUMBS and it all goes downhill from there. The storyline sees a modern-day Hansel and Gretel lurking in the woods, where they encounter the cast and crew of a porn shoot taking place in an EVIL DEAD-style cabin. What follows is a mildly gruesome slasher flick, with the deaths all happening in the most predictable way imaginable.

The characters are poorly written and unlikeable and most of the plotting in the second half evolves around the most obvious and unworkable twist ever, so I don't know why they even bothered. Needless to say the cast and crew are all sub-par as well, making this a virtually worthless viewing experience.

The movie starts out with a girl tied up (vertically). There is a pan frying oil. She screams as she is being tormented with a cake spatula! She wears a deputy star on her waist which then goes into the oil. More screams! The opening credits give us a Hansel and Gretel theme background. A porno film crew is traveling along the road. They make a quick rest stop in the woods and meet a weird couple.

They make it to a cabin where they party the night. Angie (Marianne Hagan) is trying to stop smoking and drinking. This will be her last film. By 80's slasher film standards she should be the lone survivor. Sexy Zoe Sloane plays Skylar, our first nude porn star. The crew is spied upon and visited by 2 young adults who are extremely creepy. Mike Nichols is the director, producer, co-writer, editor, and he plays Eddie. Two of the producers also starred in the movie. One funny moment was when the new kid was trying to learn his lines as a pizza delivery boy in a porno film.

The kids who kill and torture the group have somehow been influenced by Hansel and Gretel.

Also available in 4-pack called "Backwoods Butchers" in the Walmart $5.00 bin.

Good Old Fashion 80's style film. Sex, nudity, blood.

A film crew making a porn flick at a cabin in the remote woods run afoul of a couple of deranged and dangerous children. Director Mike Nichols, working from a twisted script by Charles Black and Sam Freeman, relates the gripping story at a brisk pace, does an expert job of creating and sustaining a spooky atmosphere, builds a good deal of tension (the last third in particular is quite harrowing),keeps the tone grimly serious throughout, and caps everything off with a nerve-shredding bummer ending. Moreover, the startling outbursts of brutal and grisly violence pack a pretty nasty punch and the plot about the abandoned psycho kids has a genuinely unsettling warped modern-day Grimm Brothers fairytale aspect to it. The secluded sylvan setting projects a potently upsetting feeling of stark isolation and vulnerability. The sound and credible acting from the able cast rates as another substantial plus, with praiseworthy contributions from Marianne Hagan as weary, aging veteran porn actress Angie, Steve Carey as the brave Billy, Jim J. Barnes as geeky camera dude Chuck, Alana Curry as the catty Vanity, Zoe Sloane as hot young starlet Skylar, Douglas Nyback as nervous novice Dominic, and director Nichols as mean jerk director Eddie. Pretty redhead Amy Crowdis and scrawny beanpole Dan Shaked are truly creepy and unnerving as sicko siblings Patti and Henry. Ian Dudley's slick'n'shadowy cinematography and Matt Sorenson's ominous score are both up to par. A neat little chiller.