LAND OF COLLEGE PROPHETS (2005)

Land of College Prophets is an off-beat zero-budget movie about some violent bar-brawling thugs who inadvertently releases a supernatural force (called The Well That Ate Children).

It is surprisingly literate for this type of movie: it kicks off with a quote by Albert Einstein ("Force always attracts men of low morality").

The rest of the movie is interspersed with literary quotes as well:

"It looked as if dark intent was coming, and not only night, an age. Someone had better be prepared for rage. There would be more than ocean-water broken before God's last 'Put out the light' was spoken."
- Robert Frost

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
. . . Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
- Dylan Thomas

Using the quotes isn't particularly pretentious though since a large portion of the movie still consists of club bouncer types beating the crap out of one another while trying to stop the evil force they have unleashed (somehow stopping it involves planting tiny trees on the college grounds while getting beaten up by campus security, go figure).

The dialogue itself is surprisingly literate at times and some of it is laugh-out funny (my favourite line is "irony is fucking stupid") while others will only make you smirk. As can be expected the acting isn't particularly good and anyone expecting professional production values would be disappointed. For this sort of amateur production though the sound, editing and photography is actually quite good.

After a snappy start (it takes one a while to absorb all the film's eccentricities), The Land of College Prophets begins to lose some energy though at the two thirds mark. Still, nice try and someone should give the Hale Manor Collective (who is credited with directing the film) some serious money to remake it.