If cinematic trainwrecks had a regional theater awards show, Shantytown Honeymoon would walk away with a gold spray-painted hubcap for “Best Use of Mosquito-Filled Locations and Questionable Theology.”
Directed—well, stapled together—by Donn Davison, with Fred Olen Ray duct-taping a few extra scenes on in 1986, this film is less a movie and more a tax write-off in desperate need of a plot. The premise sounds promising in that greasy, backwoods exploitation way: jewel thieves on the run, a creepy couple in a farmhouse, and moralistic radio sermons warning you that yes, you will go to hell for watching this. And maybe you should.
The Good (barely)
Ashley Brooks, as Reba Sue Craven, tries to wring something human out of the script, which reads like it was written during a NyQuil bender. And George Ellis (aka Atlanta’s horror host Bestoink Dooley) manages a few fun twitches as her creepy husband, Harlan. You can sense he knows the movie is garbage, but he’s showing up to work anyway—which in this context is admirable.
The rest of the cast ranges from semi-capable to local-theater-hostage. Trudy Moore and Mike Coolik, as part of the stranded criminal group, act with the intensity of people waiting to clock out. Then there’s Frank Jones as “Brother Love,” a radio preacher so unconvincing he makes televangelists look like grounded philosophers. In the 1986 re-release, he’s replaced with none other than John Carradine, who narrates as “The Judge of Hell,” probably because Satan declined the part due to scheduling conflicts with a better film.
The Bad (aka most of it)
Shot in Roswell, Georgia and then wherever else they could find a shack and a driveway, Shantytown Honeymoon can’t decide if it’s a crime thriller, a southern gothic, or a morality play. So instead it becomes all three… badly.
Scenes are padded with endless walking, long silences, and cuts to the radio preacher warning viewers not to live sinfully—which is ironic, since watching this movie feels like penance for one. The editing has all the rhythm of a kid banging pots together, and the cinematography lovingly captures every splinter and dirt clod with grimy sincerity.
And the dialogue? If the screenplay were any more wooden, termites would’ve stolen the reel.
The Ugly (literally and spiritually)
Let’s talk tone. This thing wobbles between sleazy and sanctimonious like a drunk preacher at a strip club. Davison’s attempt to moralize the audience while selling them softcore sleaze on the side is the cinematic equivalent of slapping a Bible on a Hustler magazine and calling it “balanced.” It’s not clever, it’s not subversive, and it’s definitely not consistent. The result is moralizing exploitation that fails at both morality and exploitation.
And then there’s the 1986 version, Demented Death Farm Massacre, where Fred Olen Ray tries to add coherence by inserting narration and new scenes. Instead, he adds to the confusion, like someone trying to fix a broken toaster with glitter and dental floss.
Final Verdict
Shantytown Honeymoon is a case study in regional horror gone wrong. Cheap, slow, and morally confused, it trudges toward a climax that never arrives and then collapses like a possum in heat. It’s not quite weird enough to be interesting, not quite bad enough to be fun. But it is, somehow, still a movie—with real sets, real people, and the noble ambition to sell grindhouse tickets to rural drive-ins.
It’s no wonder it ended up in the Troma bin. That’s where dreams go to ferment.
If you’re in the mood for a slow-paced, dirt-smeared morality tale with the pacing of a funeral procession and the moral complexity of a drunk uncle’s Facebook rant—this is your movie. For everyone else, proceed only if you’re looking to test your threshold for boredom.
Watch it with: A six-pack, zero expectations, and a morbid curiosity for what $50,000 bought in 1972 (hint: not much).
