Mother Lode Reviews

"It's the MOTHER LOOOOODE!!!" Hey, want to see a maniac Charlton Heston in dual roles mumbling his way through a half ass Irish accent? Want to see a young, statuesque Kim Basinger scream and scream some more? Want to see Nick Mancuso get pissed off and then get pissed off some more? Lassie, you've come to the right place. Mother Lode is a typical backwoods baddies flick that can't decide whether it wants to be a rough and tumble survival adventure or a cat and mouse type slasher horror flick. The result is that it's never as compelling as either of those, the suspense and scares suffer greatly at the expense of poor pacing, and worse of all the leads are not very likeable. Nick Mancuso's Jean is kind of a dick and Kim Basinger's Andrea is your typical boring blond. So when they get into trouble we don't really care what happens to them.

The few high points:
1) There's a hilarious plane crash during a water landing that looked too real to be planned (turns out it was!).
2) Charlton Heston is actually pretty darn scary and menacing as Silas McGee even if we can't understand what the hell he is saying.
3) The scares are unexpected and very effective which gave it that slasher feel at times.

Bottom line:
Mother Lode is bottom shelf backwoods baddies fair (see Southern Comfort, Deliverance, etc to see how it's done right) that's only worth seeing for Charlton Heston, playing such an awesomely effective villain. Now stay outta my mine!!!