America's Deadliest Home Video (1993)

Here's a largely forgotten 'found-footage' flick that, according to record, pre-dates "Man Bites Dog" (1992) by a year based on when it was made. Both films are in relatively the same vein in being crime-comedy 'mock-docs' and neither of which being very good. Still, "America's Deadliest Home Video" is oddly interesting for the mere sake of it being a scrap of long discarded FF mediocrity - the likes of which, as we all know, became a Hollywood horror go-to a decade or so after.

 A dweeby schmo discovers his wife is cheating on him so he hits the road with his camcorder - keeping a video journal of his cross-country trip. While visiting a quarry, he's caught filming some people ditching a car over the edge and is forced into joining them in documenting their convenience store robbing crime spree. Along the way, the cameraman and the gang leader's chick start hitting it off and tensions rise...

Generally, I'm not at all a fan of the 'found-footage/mockumentary/faux snuff/etc.'-style of film-making, but I can definitely credit this one as being quite a bit ahead of its time. Hell, far weaker films of this type went on to gross unfathomable sums of box-office scratch ("Paranormal Activity"...), so this was clearly just a flick that was made at the wrong time and slipped into obscurity (until Camp Motion Pictures dredged it up). It's a pretty boring movie with mostly quick scenes of gas station hold-ups and a lot of motel room hang-outs. Strangely, Danny Bonaduce stars in this, which goes to show how far in the shitter his career was by this point. As for the plus side, a pretty sexy female character gets naked once or twice so there was that. Otherwise, there's no real noteworthy violence or gore. If you're hard-core into FF then you may want to check this out, but otherwise there's no need to pick this one up.