source: Effects

I searched this long lost & forgotten Thriller because I'm a Joe Pilato fan (R.I.P) & also i like Tom Savini, so had to check this out. "Effects" is above a small film crew working up at a cabin & a house near some woods, where they are shooting a low-budget Horror movie. Here you do get a look at what it was like to be on the set of a crew making a low-budget film back in the day & i liked the Pittsburgh setting during Autumn & the Atmosphere is very creepy & unsettling. Horror great, Joe Pilato (Day of the Dead) is the special fx guy & also a camera man, named Dominic. Now, Pilato does give a good solid performance as Don & comes accross as a nice & chilled-out type of blue collar guy whose just doing his job the best he can. Pilato here is nothing like his Iconic performance as the unhinged "Captain Rhodes" from George Romero's Zombie Masterpiece "Day of the Dead" but his performances here is still very good & easily the best performance in this film. Horror legend & special fx wizard, Tom Savini (From Dusk Till Dawn) stars as a weird creep who is apart of the film crew & is just a weirdo, so no real great performance as his role is just being strange & abit cocky as Nicky. The Director of the movie within a movie is Lacey Bickel, played by John Harrison & "Lacey" is another really weird guy, infact everyone in this film is really weird except for Joe Pilato's Don!!! There's also the main star of their Horror film, called Caleste & a few other's of their small crew. Now, this is a gritty & very dark & moody Mystery Thriller with some Slasher elements but it's more a "Thriller" & is about a Snuff film actually being made & not their Horror possession flick & Dominic doesn't realise this but most of the crew are secretly in on it. There's a very creepy & disturbing scene where the main guys of the film crew are all "Coked-up" & watching a real Snuff film late at night that the director (Lacey) wanted to show his crew as inspiration for the kind of "Realism" he wants for his movie!!! It's a very uneasy scene & Pilato looks so uncomfortable & reacts how a normal person would. That scene is a standout part to this flick & also a hunted scene near the end where Dominic is aware of his deadly situation & must fight to survive before he becomes a victim of the secret Snuff film. It's got some good tension & a very dark & sinister look & mood but there's also a few too many of very boring, dull & just weird scenes where nothing happens & the cast talk & sit around & it's very weird, intentional or not? This also had a nice cold Autumn setting & definitely a dark & raw feel to the whole thing. "Effects" is a good solid little gritty Thriller & i felt that the 90's Nicolas Cage Snuff Thriller "8MM" was a distant cousin to this film as both are very similar but this is a little Sub genre anyway & before these films there was the disturbing 70's "HardCore" that fits into this sub genre too. "Effects" is a good film & i liked it even though i didn't get the ending i wanted, it's still a solid forgotten Thriller "gem" with a great performance from Horror legend Joe Pilato. I wish Pilato made it bigger & had much more roles, especially lead roles because here he's the main role & he's great.

The director just filmed scenes. They obviously forgot to write a script. It's just a bunch a long, boring scenes of people hanging out, doing drugs, and arguing in very few locations. What even was the point? I could only make it 30 minutes because my time is valuable. Too bad, cause the premise (at least what the description promised) was interesting. The movie couldn't have been less interested in it, however.

AND NOT ENOUGH GORE TO PAY OFF FOR THE UNIQUE PLOT TWIST AT THE END TOM SAVINI IS IN THIS ALSO A FAKE SNUFF FILM AS WELL, THAT ISN'T REALLY GOOD.

Effects (1980) * (out of 4) The film takes place in Pittsburg as a crew of low-budget filmmakers are making a horror film. Before long some members start to think that it's not a fake movie but instead a snuff movie. EFFECTS is a rather interesting film. It was shot by people in Pittsburg who were in one shape or another connected to George A. Romero. This film appears to have been in production around the same time as DAWN OF THE DEAD but it would never get an official release. It played a few showings back when it was completed and then basically disappeared. Seeing that Tom Savini and Joseph Pilato (DAY OF THE DEAD) were in the cast, it kept fans guessing at the movie and then it would eventually get an official release thanks to Synapse. For the most part I really didn't like this movie. I will say that the story itself was quite interesting and especially how the film bounced back and forth as to if what you were watching was real or fake. The "movie within a movie" was an interesting take on the subject and there's no question that the story is years ahead of its time and especially when you consider where reality TV is today. I think the filmmakers deserves a lot of credit for the interesting story and that they didn't just try to go for gory violence. With that said, perhaps some gory violence would have helped matters because in the end the film just didn't work for me and I honestly thought the 84-minute running time dragged quite badly. For starters, the film just had a very hard time getting me interested in anything going on. The first forty-five minutes or so are basically us just watching this film crew shoot a movie. After a while we finally get to a snuff movie being shown and this sequence was actually very well done. It was creatively shot and there's no question that it's the highlight of the picture. The finale also works well enough and leads to an ending that you really wouldn't expect. The cast and crew are full of Pittsburg natives and it's certainly fun see Savini and Pilato here. The film has a couple gore effects but one shouldn't see Savini's name and think you're getting something like DAWN OF THE DEAD or MANIAC. I really think this is one film that could benefit from a remake and especially in this day and age.

I bought this movie because I am a fan of Joe Pilato. When I bought it, I actually expected him to be a little like Capt. Rhodes (DAY OF THE DEAD). I was very wrong. This movie and his performance blew me away. Joe Pilato plays Dom, a very likable cameraman. He's basically an every day guy. He is even funny at times. And he falls in love with his gaffer, Celeste (Susan Chapek). He is just an average guy. He wasn't the ***hole he was in DAY OF THE DEAD. Instead, the ***hole of the movie is Nicky (Tom Savini). He is also the only one in this movie who is completely innocent. After watching a home-made murder movie from the director, Lacey (John Harrison), he suspects the murder was real. Even after Lacey tells him it isn't. He gets very suspicious. It turns out Lacey is directing two movies. The low-budget horror movie with the set of actors. And a real horror movie with real horror and murder. It is all up to Dom to make sure that it doesn't happen.

A low-budget horror film is being shot in a secluded mountain area by a hard-working crew and a cast of bewildered actors.However it soon becomes apparent that another crew is shooting the making of the horror film and their intentions are evil.They intend to make the ultimate horror film with real victims,real blood and real death-a genuine snuff movie."Effects" is pretty hard movie to recommend.There are plenty of dull moments where nothing interesting happens.The acting is fairly decent and there are some memorable moments including the director showing 8mm snuff film to his crew,the hunt for Dominic in the woods and startling final twist.It's a shame that the pace of the film is so sluggish.Worth a look for fans of snuff phenomenon.

With the exception of "Peeping Tom", this was one the first films to address the subject of snuff movies. Produced in Pittsburgh, it has a few surprises up its sleeve and is reasonably well photographed, but it also has too many slow spots and the actors are unappealing. It takes a film-within-a-film approach and focuses on a bunch of low budget filmmakers who are struggling to make their horror film "realistic". There is a sting in the screenplay's tail and the last twenty minutes really hit a horrific stride. Not great by any means, but certainly a worthy attempt to make something different with limited resources. A black and white snuff film watched by several characters in the movie is potent.

you guys need to change the name to: "Cocaine Snuff." That's pretty much the whole movie in a nutshell. Dominic is a special effects artist working on a low budget horror film. The rest of the crew are doing blow and getting hammered, especially Nicky, played by Tom Savini. The other cast members sit around playing poker and, you guessed it, snorting drugs. In one scene, Dominic, Lacy The Director, the two comic reliefs Lobo & Scratch, are doing some lines when Lacy plays them a short snuff film. The snuff film is by far the best part of this film and is the reason I gave this piece of trash 3 stars. A lady is tied up to a chair and is sliced and diced by a fat bastard wearing an executioners mask. To the rest of the crew this is all too real so be careful what you wish for as the film within a film slowly becomes a snuff thanks to Nicky being whacked out of his skull on crack he agrees to kill the cast and I've said to much so.....you be the judge.

Effects is based on quite a clever idea - maybe even too clever for a slasher flick. The title, of course, refers to special effects - and that's essentially what the film is about. Effects is a slasher flick based on a bunch of people making a slasher film. The director seems obsessed with blood and gore and a cast member starts hallucinating - although that particular cast member had just been smoking weed. The director later shows his crew a film that may or not be a snuff film, and then the cast start getting picked off, though there's doubt over whether it's real or 'effects'. It really does seem that this idea was too clever for this film because it doesn't pull it off. A potentially interesting idea is turned into a snooze fest thanks to far too much talking by dull characters and a plot line that really doesn't ever get to the point. This film was apparently lost before someone resurrected it for DVD. The last 'lost' slasher film that I saw was A Night to Dismember, and like that film; this one shows that lost slashers really needn't be brought back. The most notable thing about 'effects' the fact that Tom Savini appears and does the effects, although he has had better days in both departments. We don't really get what we came for until the final third of the film and by then I was pretty bored of it. Overall, Effects is a pretty dismal slasher and I definitely don't recommend it.