HOLD THE FORT

3 stars

Signature Entertainment. Digital. 29th June

At only 76 minutes long – including credits – HOLD THE FORT doesn’t waste your time.

It opens with an old couple defending their property. He is determined to keep hold of his house. His wife is desperate to sell to the property developers as they offered them $1.8 million. A hell mouth is open… Next morning, there is evidence of the previous nights goings on… including the wife coming out to tell the developer they’ll sell… with blood on her and a dripping stake!

Cut to some time later and it is now a seemingly nice suburban neighbourhood — Lucas (Chris Mayers) and Jenny (Haley Leary) have just moved there from the city. He seems more enthusiastic about things than she is. Especially after she finds out there is a Home Owners Association (which costs money each month), as she didn’t want to live in a place that had one, due to the restrictions they often apply. An HOA is an American thing, which look after communities but can also demand you keep your front lawn to a certain length and other often frivolous rules and regs.

That being said they get an invite to the annual party at the clubhouse which is bizarrely called Fort Gruber. They are greeted with an odd banner. Welcome to the Equinox. Please Don’t Die! All rather strange.

They have no idea just how strange – as they soon find out that this gathering is because once a year the portal we saw at the start of the movie, opens up and belches out all sorts of monsters – witches, werewolves, kamikaze bats and the like and the community use the ‘fort’, now the clubhouse, to fight back against the various creatures that are out to kill them!

Unfortunately for them their local action hero McScruffy (Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson) is incapacitated when he has a hole blown in his leg when Lucas accidentally fires the shotgun he has just won in the raffle.

I quite enjoyed this silly but humorous, if somewhat manic horror comedy which doesn’t mess about – filling the short running time with plenty of blood splattered – usually on Lucas, who ends up like Ash in the EVIL DEAD movies. The monster make up is good, even if it is on the low budget side. Fun but throwaway.

Steve Kirkham