“Nuclear Neighborhood” is a film that looks & feels like it came from graduates of Troma University; a sci-fi/horror film made with little budget but plenty of fun and creativity. Within no time, Matthew J Oliver’s film jumps right into the meat & bones of the story.
Dan’s girlfriend is kidnapped by a strange man in a creeper van, and Dan’s friends conclude that she’s being kept in the weird apartment building up the road. Weird because all kinds of unexplained activity and an assortment of trippy, deformed people that seem to inhabit the building. As it turns out, radioactivity is the root cause of the eerie phenomenon, but this info isn’t enough to keep Dan and crew from breaking in to save his girl. As the team splits up, they encounter monsters, booby traps, and misunderstood freaks of nature as they get deeper into the madness and closer to the villain who took Dan’s woman.
There are not likely to be any acting awards handed out to the cast on this film. It’s hard to tell whether some of the talent were purposefully bad, or if the director just happened to catch that lucky blend of “so bad it’s good” with non-actors reading cue cards and delivering some of the most clichéd lines that Oliver could have written. Bonus points should go to Steve Renouf who played Eugene, as the most ironic casting (easily the most athletic in real life cast member, playing the timid nerd of the group). After some head-shaking and serious groaning at the dialogue in the first few minutes of the film, I finally just let myself succumb to the film for what it was, and the groans soon turned to head-shaking chuckles.
With good humor, punk rock homages, and homemade special effects, this movie is pure B-grade celluloid. This is the kind of film that’s a joy to watch with good-natured friends over a few cold ones (and possibly while burning some recreational medicine).
“Nuclear Neighbordhood” will be screening at the Art Theatre of Long Beach on Thursday August 6th @ 9pm, The Dark Room Theatre in San Francisco on Sunday Aug 9th @ 7pm, and Movie at LoBot Gallery in Oakland, Ca on Sat August 8th @ 9pm.
Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/4uNr7UxRPDg
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/NuclearNeighbourhoodOfficialMovie
IMDB Page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4526874/