Bea Swanson
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Hayden Kane
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
Ezmae Chang
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
toyman1967
I haven't written a review for a film in quite a while but after watching this movie I feel compelled to do so!! I have NOTHING good to say about this movie at all!! The big stars of this film are Art Evans and Ernie Hudson but they only appear in this film a TOTAL of about 5 minutes COMBINED. The acting is horrendous, some of the worst I've EVER seen and I've seen MANY bad-acted movies. I would even put the movie "The Room" above this one in terms of better acted bad movies. There are NO redeeming qualities about this movie so I'm going to stop now because I just realized that I'm wasting my time reviewing a film that ALREADY wasted my time!!! Just stay away from Machete Joe!!!!
Robert W.
I find it very hard to review movies like this. I am a huge horror fan and I watch a lot of B Movie crap and you can't really say its horribly bad and to avoid it because you have to know what you're going into. The movie is bad...its just horrible...and its mind blowing to think that at least one of the IMDb reviews was a perfect 10/10 because that's just utter stupidity. There isn't anything redeemable about this. The acting is awful, its not even acting, the special effects are ridiculous, its not even gory because the kills are done off camera so that they could spend no money on special effects. But the cast has to know what they are doing is bad, they may even act bad on purpose, hoping they will making something so bad that it'll be good...a cult classic perhaps but Machete Joe will never reach that because its just plain stupid. I won't even spend time talking cast because they are all awful. I can't even imagine why Ernie Hudson (easily the biggest name in the film) would even have a cameo in this but he does. The only redemption for this is that you might get some chuckles out of how bad it truly is and for what its worth the story isn't a complete loss. Essentially a young boy watches his mother being raped, and then out of torture has his face brutally scarred and thus becomes a serial killer. The setting is awful, looks like plastic rocks and trees. Machete Joe isn't even a movie...its literally a joke. Even fans of the truly bad horror movies won't even find this watchable. Just steer clear of it. 1/10
TONYWATT3000
I saw this movie on Netflix Canada and very much enjoyed the stylish great opening scene and the movie-making-within-a-movie theme.As a fellow low-budget horror b-filmmaker, I enjoyed the scenes of a sleazy Caucasian filmmaker character bringing his bimbo-type girlfriend for a horror movie role, and witnessing the discussion of of his worries (to a fellow producer) of the white Mid-west USA audience not buying tickets to see a black person chopping up white folks...gold! The actors know how to act. Great Sets. Great music fx and filmic visual fx. I very much enjoyed the fact that the cast was ethnically diverse, as it's impossible to believe that all white casts exist in the real world. The art vs. commercialism battles were real smooth. Oh, and there is also a good, suspenseful gory horror movie there too...but I just wanted to make my point; as a fellow artist. Also, I enjoyed the fact that although this movie is shot very professional; that these aware (real-life) Canadian filmmakers also make fun of their amateur roots cinematography-wise with film some film shots (by the filmmaker characters' biographer w/ a mini-cam), to show we cinephiles that they (the real filmmakers) know what audience expectations are up against ( since b-movie usually look very amateur) & that they know how to make a great looking film (that looks 3 times the budget) & the problems actors and filmmakers have with each other....Oh, did I also mention this is a good horror film?... Machete Joe is one gruesome mutha-shut-yo-mouth!
qisys
I've seen several films in this genre. Most of them, with the exception of this well done work, are badly lighted. In effect, in other horror films, a viewer often gets bombarded with flashing lights and dark scenes where most of the actors cannot be seen well. This film, in my opinion, is well written, the actors are fine, and the thrills are well paced, and the lighting is excellent, sometimes, even beautiful. In closing, I comment on a previous review by someone called, 'TheBeardedWonder': This person indicated "... I don't want to spend more time than I have to here..." yet their piece was relatively lengthy, and "...nothing is good about it..." using universal quantifiers, like, "nothing is good". All this seems to me to be a bit disingenuous.
