Opening with a sequence so generic it seems like it must be a fake-out - and it is, though not in the way you're probably expecting - The Retailators moves from zombie levels of gore to hard-boiled crime and back again with the kind of ease that films with five times its budget can only envy. It's a surprisingly sensitive look at grief and loss; there's also a woodchipper, and we all know what that means.
Single dad John Bishop (Michael Lombardi, from Rescue Me) is the kind of cool pastor who'd be embarrassing if he wasn't so earnest... and even then he's still pretty embarrassing, especially when he gets pushed around while buying a Christmas tree by Dante from Clerks. Time to give a sermon about forgiveness, which includes the somewhat ominous line "when man's law fails, God's law prevails".
Bishop gets the chance to practice what he preaches when his teen daughter Rebecca (Abbey Hafer) bumps into the Scariest Man Alive, aka Ram Kady (Joseph Gatt) at a service station. She's going to a party; he's a bikie gang member just back from a drug deal that involved him beating up and robbing a man in a wheelchair. But it's when the still alive (just) wheelchair man starts bumping in Kady's trunk - and she notices - that her grim fate is sealed.
The arrival of seemingly stalwart cop Jed (Marc Menchaca) puts a twist on Bishop's grief, when he reveals that not only does he share Bishop's pain, but that he's figured out a way to do something about it. Unfortunately, Jed's scheme - which is well-established, long running, and involves a cavern-like basement full of cannibal lunatics - only really works if the target of his vengeance won't be missed. And thanks to screwing up the drug deal, Kady has his brother and a whole lot of bikies out looking for him.
Directors Samuel Gonzalez Jr and Bridget Smith keep a tight grip on material that tonally moves around a lot: this is a film that features both a realistic look at heart-rending anguish and a lot of raving maniacs trapped in a dungeon. But it's this constant switching things up - on top of everything else, both Robert Knepper and Robert John Burke get show-stopping single scenes as seen-it-all bosses (ones a cop, the other's a crim) - that keeps this so engaging.
Much of this works as straightforward drama; this is a solid crime film before it turns into gonzo horror. People have competing agendas that put them in conflict, while their behaviour always makes sense in terms of who they are - nobody goes nuts simply because the plot requires them to (even the murderous Kady has his own logic). But it definitely doesn't hurt that this also racks up an extremely substantial body count in the third act as our youth pastor hero has to go into murder mode to stay alive.
The Retaliators eventually pays off the cheesy yet bloody opening without sacrificing the drama that led it to such a demented point. It's everything you could want in an exploitation flick: it's even set during Christmas so you've got no excuse not to watch it every single year.
- Anthony Morris
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