BONE SICKNESS

Produced by Brain Paulin and Rich George
Written and Directed by Brain Paulin
Edited by Brain Paulin

Kristen - Darya Zabinski
Thomas - Brain Paulin
Alex - Rich George
Andrea - Ruby LaRocca

"Cancer is a bitch," exclaimed two older gentleman as I sat near them in the park.

They were, of course, 100% correct. The disease is like a parasite that leaches your life's essence leaving your body weak, tired, and unable to fight.

Yes, cancer is a bitch. It also runs in my family, and I'm just waiting for my turn.

In the new Morbid Vision Films production, BONE SICKNESS, it's never exactly said what ailment is eating away at Alex, but it sure acts like cancer.

I hear bone cancer hurts like a bitch. Maybe I'll find out in a few years.

Alex is supported in his time of need by his wife, Kristen, and best friend, Thomas, played by director Brian Paulin. The two go out of their way, and to any extreme, to make Alex's life as comfortable as possible. Thomas even puts his job at risk by stealing medicine from the hospital where he works. When the medicine proves pointless, and Alex worsens, Thomas tries a more racial approach and MAKES his own medicine from the corpses of the recently deceased. The maggot and worm infested corpses of the recently deceased. Since Thomas works in a hospital, there's a never-ending supply of fresh bodies to dismember and eviscerate.

In all my years of reviewing micro-budget horror, I haven't seen anything as vomit-inducing as watching a man vomit a stomach full of maggots and worms. I can still feel the bile in the back of my throat making its way to the top. Just picture how I must have felt during the worm and maggot defecation scene...

Those gross-outs are just for starters. The dead quickly become angry that Thomas is thowing off the balance of life and death by keeping Alex alive, and it doesn't take long before the dead rise up from the grave and make straight for Thomas and Alex. Someone needs to pay, and the balance must be restored.

Brain Paulin and his partner Rich George have been making gore flicks up in Rhode Island for years, and I like their work. One time I took a rash of garbage from a fellow critic because I liked one of Paulin and George's productions. These guys show a real love for the genre and a natural desire to make something better than what they have the means to produce. Their work isn't polished, but it's ambitious.

BONE SICKNESS is Paulin and George's biggest production to date and contains their most elaborate make-up effects, a hallmark of their productions. Their zombie make-up is some of the best I've seen. The look is more Euro-inspired than most of the recent wave of zombie productions. Gone is the greasepaint, that curse of impotence for any micro-budget zombie flick. Instead, Paulin goes for straight prosthetics that look like dried, mumified corpses. This Fulci's ZOMBIE.

The zombie climax has to be seen to be believed. It's 30+ minutes of total zombie carnage that rivals any classic Romero gut-muncher. It's a symphony of splatter as the zombies chow down on everyone in sight. And the guts aren't the standard rolled newspaper and karo syrup sort of intestinal fair, again Paulin went all out and made guts that have the look and consistency of anything I've seen gracing the slaughterhouses found on late-nite Discovery Channel.

Despite what the gorehound in me might sound like, BONE SICKNESS isn't all effects, there's a story here containing complex relationships. For starters, Alex's dealings with his wife are strained as he grows sicker. It hurts her to watch him die, and she possibly even resents everything she had to do to make his life more comfortable. As she works with Thomas to bring Alex his medicine, there's a growing sexual tension. Perhaps these two were lovers once, even if just for one night. Thomas claims he doing everything out of friendship with Alex, but Thomas is clearly more comfortable with Kristen than either Alex or his own wife Andrea, played by the always lovely Ruby LaRocca.

I've always enjoyed ruby as an actress. With her Seduction Cinema work she always seemed to get the joke. In BONE SICKNESS she plays a character similar to herself. She's funny, warm, and sexy...very girl-next-door-ish without having to sleaze it up. Ruby is an under-rated talent that deserves more exposure.

The only real complaints about Paulin's work are purely nit-picky items dealing with technical quality. I'm not talking about the stylized lighting of the nocturnal scenes (those are beautifully lit and eerily moody), but rather the daytime scenes. A few times early on the edited was a little shakey, but I have a softspot for any more that tired to take on so much. I liked BONE SICKNESS and would rather focus on the positive aspects: the story, characters, FX, and all the hardwork that had to go into a movie this ambitious. When you like a movie you always want to focus on the positive, and BONESICKNESS has plenty of positives...enough to take my mind off my own impending doom.

Morbid Vision Films