Legend of Fall Creek opens with a description of what Grindhouse is, then a run of text going over the history of a local urban legend of Bloody Bobby. That should tell you exactly the type of film you are getting yourself into. After an awkward conversation about the sexuality of He-Man, a couple meets their end on the side of the road. We then follow Reggie (Curt Clendenin) as he gets woken up from his drunken slumber by his cousin. As the run time ticks on and Halloween night approaches, people start to die off one by one.

Legend of Fall Creek is a surprise prequel to Black Pumpkin though it doesn’t require watching that film to get enjoyment out of this one. The connections are there, and it does in fact shed some light on events of Black Pumpkin. While the same team handled both films, the feel is vastly different. Legend of Fall Creek embraces a very 80s grindhouse feel, including scratchy audio and bad film quality. In the wrong hands this choice could have been bad and eye rolling but here it only helps make it a more entertaining movie.

The acting itself is middle ground. Not downright bad but not all that good. Curt Clendenin as the lead this time around does well enough, even if his character is boring as heck. None of the other actors really are given much to do beside spout lines and maybe die. That’s not an inherently bad thing as typically you don’t come to this kind of movie looking for Oscar performances.

One of the things I praised in Black Pumpkin was some of the banter felt natural and was funny. In that respect Legend of Fall Creek does not disappoint. Some of the dialog had me legit laugh out loud. The jokes didn’t feel overly forced and mostly land.

Unfortunately, one persistent issue was the editing. Even the grindhouse feel couldn’t hide the questionable cuts. It was bad enough that you would be left guessing that someone was killed only to see them okay in the next scene or visa versa. This doesn’t look like an artistic choice either. While most of the kills were done off screen, the editing had me wishing that they would have done it all out of frame. As for the sound design, it was good. Audio levels were even and there wasn’t an over reliance on jump scares.

Legend of Fall Creek is an outlier in the sense that it is a prequel that is better that the movie that came before it. With a distinct feel of grindhouse and a surprisingly strong script, Legend of Fall Creek feels like a natural evolution of the Bloody Bobby series (if there is going to be one). Its not without its faults. Boring characters, poor editing and an over reliance of red paint keep this from being even better. Your mileage may vary with this film. Either you’ll enjoy it for its ridiculousness, and it will fall into the “So bad it’s good” category or it will just be another Halloween themed horror movie. Either way, you could do far worse.

6 out of 10