Drainiac (2000) Horror Monster

Drainiac (2000) - This film is a very low budget horror flick made in the New England area and featuring a house with a beast living in the water pipes. The acting is rough with this being a early film in the careers of many of the actors. The dialog does not help with over simplified and exaggerated interaction mostly of characters not getting along. Sure conflict drives story but much of the banter is mean and in-congruent. The Boston accents of many of the players made the film feel very similar to listening to my relatives at a family cookout. The special effects are special in the short yellow bus kind of way and include a model car sinking in water. It is amazing that the writer, director Brett Piper has done so much with so little. The final exorcism scene is worth the watching of this movie all by itself. Not because it is particularly good but because it is so much better than the parts where actors are trying to show us the storyline. The story starts as an unexplained slime creature in the pipes movie but ends as a supernatural water deity in the pipes film.
  Filmed at an old house in Pelham NH we see two homeless guys, Billy (Andrew Osborne) and Steve (Todd Poudrier) in the woods by a fire complaining about being in the woods. Their bickering leads them to the old house and they quickly decide they can be warmer inside than outside. Climbing in the cellar window they soon find slime on the pipes. When Steve touches the stuff we get some slime special effects as it spreads from his finger up his are before he is basically melted by the stuff. So here I am thinking we have a blob movie. The scene was so similar but really that is not what this film becomes. We never really get a cogent explanation for the cause of this creature except that sometimes they infest a house.

  After the credits we get the main story, Julie (Georgia Hatzis) is a girl struggling a year after the death of her Mother to deal with her feeling and nightmares. The girl is not positively supported by her Dad (Stevenn Bornstein) in any way. He is an evil selfish alcoholic who seems to be the most negative thing in her life. In fact he is the reason that Julie's Mom is dead and I think in writing the character this is the intent. Why does Julie not have a Mothers love? Because the man in her life is so horrible that the Mom could not live with him. When you see how bad this guy in all you can do is wish to kill this guy. One of the ways this loser makes money is by buying run down houses, fixes them up, and then selling them at a profit. In this case he buys the monster house and brings Julie out to help him clean it up.
  Joining Julie are three of her friends, Lisa (Alexandra Boylan), Tanya (Samara Doucette) and Jake (Ethan Krasnoo) as well as small town bully Wade (Rob Gorden) who really is only there to make trouble for everyone else. Dad having gotten tired of verbally abusing his daughter heads into town to drink beer leaving her alone before her friends arrive. Most of the movie from here until the third act is the kids splitting up in the house and almost getting eaten by the creature. Julie for her part is also having scary waking dreams. As is the case with many horror films the movie looks for a way to get the actress to take her clothes off. In this film she get dirty and tells the others she needs to wash her hands, and goes upstairs to the bathroom. There she sees suddenly the grimy dirty water filled bathtub now filled with crystal clear water. What else should Julie do in her waking dream than take off all her clothes and get in the tub. Now for people who enjoy gratuitous nudity will certainly be pleased with this development while feminism supporters will find it offensive.

  It seemed that the film probably was originally a different story than what the DVD I viewed contained. Much of the dialog and scenes did not hold continuity from one to the other and seemed to be cut and pasted to fit this latest story. Sure with a lower budget film it could be that the editing is just poor. It made for a difficult watch but since both really mean character get killed by the creature it is a bit more tolerable. Finally the third act arrives with the exorcist Plummer (Philip Barbour), he is not a plumber but his name is Plummer. He knows all about the ghosts, ghoulies and dime-gods who inhabit houses and leads the group through a ritual to get rid of the creature. The psychedelic low quality effects during this sequence makes the film almost worth renting or streaming. In the end though even the house being pulled into the center of a pit is not enough to make this film a recommend.
Rating (2.9) 5.0 and up are recommended, some films more recommended than other.