After being shot four times(!), hit over the head with a pumpkin(!!), and left for dead while his girlfriend is kidnapped(!!!), seriously unlucky guy, Brandon, prays for some help from the heavens. But with God busy, possibly disinterested, or unavailable for budgetary reasons, The Devil responds to the prayer instead, and heads to Earth to make Brandon a deal.
The deal is that he will heal Brandon, restore him back to full health, and give him some unique abilities. These abilities include short-term invulnerability, a Wolverine-like claw for his right arm, and a flaming pumpkin head.
All of these things seem a bit odd, but with Brandon on the brink of death and not in much of an emotional or physical state to bargain, he agrees. However, agreeing to all this comes with a price and within 24 hours, The Devil will own Brandon’s soul!
With the clock ticking, and his head now all flame-y and such, Brandon hops on his motorcycle in pursuit of his girlfriend. Before the night is out, he wants to rescue his love and get revenge on those who tried to bump him off, before The Devil comes calling to claim his prize.
Written and directed by Jose Prendes, and starring Nic Caruccio, Amanda Jones, Michael Paré, and Ethan Daniel Corbett, Headless Horseman is a low budget, action horror-fantasy film. The movie is new to UK video-on-demand platforms from Monday February 27th, and is essentially Ghost Rider (2007), meets The Punisher (2004), meets Spawn (1997), only filmed with a lot less money and utilising non-copyright infringing characters.
Produced by The Asylum, makers of such tosh as Ape Vs. Monster (2021) and Bullet Train Down (2022), Headless Horseman is a cheap-ass picture, which is about as lacklustre as you might expect. The film features bad acting, clichéd dialogue, piss-poor action sequences, and special effects that are worse than an Instagram filter.
Oh, and if all that wasn’t enough, the title of the film makes absolutely no sense. Not only does the lead character not ride a horse, at no point during the course of the movie is he even headless!
In fact, if you count Brandon’s human head, as well as his pumpkin flame head, he actually has two heads. As such, the film should really be called ‘Two-Headed Bike Rider’.
Of course, that title doesn’t sound cool, and presumably that’s why this film features the far snappier name of Headless Horseman. It’s just a shame then that the title really is the only cool thing about this picture.
To be fair to Headless Horseman, this is arguably one of The Asylum’s better movies, but this is in no way an endorsement. This movie is still derivative bobbins, which takes ideas from various comic book movies and horror pictures to build its story, and then fails to do anything with them.
I am in no doubt that writer/director Jose Prendes watched the likes of Ghost Rider and Spawn etc before sitting down to pen the script for Headless Horseman, and maybe he even wanted to make better movies than those two pictures – not a difficult feat, considering they are both crap. Yet, if this was his intention he failed completely, as his movie is even worse, and that’s saying something!
How anyone can make a movie weaker than Ghost Rider or Spawn is beyond me. But hey, it’s 2023, the world is in a mess, and having recently sat through such garbage as Jack (2023) and The Munsters (2022) nothing surprises me anymore.
Next week I have an endoscopy booked at the local hospital, which I’m looking forward to about as much as a hole in the head. That said, I’d much rather pick the medical procedure over watching Headless Horseman, as the former at least comes with a side order of sedation.
Headless Horseman is low-rent rubbish. It offers nothing of any real value, and worst of all, it’s not entertaining.
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