Welcome to the Scream Factory Crypt! In this binge series I will be watching all my Scream Factory titles I own alphabetically! Scream Factory is my favorite imprint of Blu-Rays because they take movies that studios and the public might not adore but have fans and deserve to be given respect. This will take a long time as I have over 120(!) titles and counting, I know I will have more before I finish, so stay tuned! Not only will I talk about them on the podcast but I will review them here as well so you can see how I feel about aspects of each release. Part 10 is Bite!
A bachelorette party gone wrong! Casey (Elma Begovic) and her friends are on a trip to Central America when Casey gets bit by an unknown bug. Casey is also having doubts about marrying her fiancé. But soon all of that seems insignificant as Casey’s bite turns her into something monstrous.
For a low budget film that Scream Factory picked up, Bite will surprise you with its practical make-up effects. They are gross and horrific, with some gore to spare. Bite follows a lot of transformation tropes, something happens, victim is in denial, victim accepts what’s happening to them, victim becomes a monster and eventually kills other people. Bite does suffer from being a low budget film as well. Some of the acting is not very good. A couple of points in the film I was rolling my eyes on how some of the dialogue was delivered. Not always the actors fault as some of the dialogue is clunky and just plain silly. Elma Begovic is pretty solid as Casey, her transformation is awesome. Too bad her fiancé played by Jordan Gray is awful, in character and in acting ability. He should angrily drink more whiskey from a glass, oh wait he does that like five times in the film.
The make-up truly shines. Casey’s transformation is pretty wicked. She is scary, and menacing with a great help from the make-up. The set design is pretty solid as well. As Casey changes, so too does her apartment. It slowly changes into an insect hive complete with goopy eggs and slime.
The video isn’t too solid. It might be the limit of the production but a lot of it looks muted and washed out. It is the first time I haven’t been too impressed with a Scream Factory Blu-Ray. Not terrible, not great.
The audio is good. The drips and rips come through extremely clear. Dialogue isn’t too important in a movie like this, but it sounds a little washed out.
For a movie that came out of nowhere it is cool that Scream Factory gave it some nice features. There are five featurettes about the production. Especially cool if you like the make-up effects as there is a featurette that focuses on it. The other feature is a pretty solid commentary track by Writer/Producer/Director Chad Archibald.
Bite is a fun, gooey, gory B-Movie. It doesn’t do anything new with the transformation horror sub-genre, but it delivers solid make-up effects, which is the most important aspect of these films.
Film: C+
Video: C+
Audio: B-
Extras: B
Overall: C+