Director Terrence Williams shows real promise on occasion, especially with films like “The Hood Has Eyez,” and with his newest film entitled “Horno,” he has an interesting concept but one that doesn’t pan out to an interesting movie. I wish I could have loved the shameless disgusting tripe that was doled out as something Troma angled, but in the end it’s just a good concept with a pretty faulty delivery. Williams has the right idea by inventing a concept within a concept, almost like a meta-movie, but the fact remains that hornos are a relatively established concept. Joe D’Amato infamously did it with films like “Sexy Erotic Nights of the Living Dead.”
And the grindhouse sub-genre boomed in the seventies and eighties with the sexploitation subset that included gems like “The Cheerleaders.” So while Williams has a name for it, it’s basically already been done. It’s almost like saying “I have new way of writing where you rhyme, while telling a story! It’s never been done before!” Nevertheless, Williams ambition is admirable as he directs a movie within a movie (sometimes within that movie) that’s cleverly introduced and conveyed for the audience. Ron is a porno director who wants to direct his first horno. A guaranteed money maker, he wants to create a movie that’s half porno and half horror movie. The problem is, his concept becomes a reality when a mysterious new drug gets in to the hands of a local drug dealer who smokes it with his girlfriend turning her in to a ravenous nut munching monster.
The reaction when the dealer gets his penis gnawed off makes for a comical eye roll inducing moment, and it only gets worse from there as most of the film is reduced to actors sitting around a living room and yapping at one another while dick monsters and hungry zombies stand outside waiting to get in. Williams has his finger on the pulse with satirizing of porno and using the porno concept to squeeze in as much obligatory nude scenes and tit shots as humanly possible, but beyond that, he forgets that part of his concept is a horror film. And where “Horno” fails in is being a horror film where it bows to the porn medium and them strictly the darkly comic form, while never really managing to creep us out.
Even when director Williams is explaining his concept through main character Ron, we’re still patiently awaiting the horror element, and it never really comes since the situation is so abundantly absurd it’s more humorous than anything else. I appreciate director Terrence Williams ambition and his concept that works in theory, but “Horno” falls apart from the beginning when it establishes an already pre-established sub-genre, and fails to deliver in one part of the hybrid genre that is supposed to be horror. The women are hot, and the intention is well meaning, but the film is generally forgettable.