lee fewtrell I was actually quite looking forward to this one- sounded good, promising cover and based on true events. What more could you ask for? Well, the short answer to that is anything that wasn't this. I've seen some stinkers in my time, but this has to rate as one of the worst. A very noteworthy cast- Dennis Hopper, Michael Madson, Lyn Shaye and oh.... C. Thomas Howell and Jason Connery. If Connery Jnr is in anything, you know it's going to be cheap and BAD. The actual story is very fragmented- you don't actually know why they're killing people, least of all I couldn't make it out apart from being sadists with a pathetic little cattle prod that kept poking people in the neck. Its a very basic version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for kids- implied cannibalism, a hulking big brother with limited intelligence, and general lunacy all round. A rape for no apparent reason to the plot, people who could have escaped but decided they liked it there, a lot of rubbish about Cedar wood that was just dull, and a mentally challenged fat madman who wasn't after all. The whole thing just stunk. If you're thinking of watching this- please don't.

mbrandon111 So this Texas Slave Ranch thing all took place like 30 miles from where I live. The actual story ended with one guy doing 3 years of a 15 year sentence, another guy getting probation (for multiple counts of abducting, enslaving, torturing and possibly killing people,) and the mother went free (she's currently one of the town's homeless. Poetic justice, I guess.) I haven't seen the movie yet, I was just investigating the story. But these crazy, inbred pieces of filth made tapes of the torture sessions. Probably the only good thing to come out of the whole fiasco was the family having to put the ranch up as collateral to pay their big-shot high-profile lawyer. They were what's known as land-rich, cash-poor. The scuttlebutt is that this ranch was legendarily well-kept. Which should have raised some eyebrows. I mean, 4 people doing all of the work on a 3,500 acre ranch?

cathy-232 I am not a big fan of horror movies. Don't care for the unbelievable blood and gore. But this movie truly disturbed me. I could not stop shaking after seeing it. Knowing that most of the events in the movie really took place [1980"s]is frightening. The fact that people can hire high powered lawyers andget away with murder is sad. These people are alive and well and functioning in society right now as you read this. If you don't understand this movie, it isbecause you expect to be entertained by a typical horror/slasher and not educated by reality. Not for the weak or faint of heart. Well done!

jeffella-peters I watched this movie with my cousins when I visited England recently and was expecting your typical "based-on-a-true-story" horror film. While it delivered the goods on that front and seemed to please the kids, the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. It turns out - when I ran it by my parents - that I must vaguely remember the "actual events" from back in the eighties when the creeps that did this stuff -- a lot of it at least -- went to trial. When I went looking around on the internet (I think I searched for "Texas slave ranch" or something like that) I found some articles in the New York Times archive and the movie seemed to be accurate in a lot of ways. Who knows why the idiots didn't gang up on their captors and run away? Or why they didn't turn their axes and chain saws on the slave drivers? I guess each person probably had their own reason for being there. After that I got to thinking about why we average working stiffs let the corporations and police push us around. We'd take 'em easy if you based it on our sheer numbers yet we continue to play the game by their rules. I think it's mostly because it's easier to go with the flow than to deal with what might happen if you buck the system. Most of us don't want to be the one who dies to make an example to the rest. So the metaphor is the Broderick's are the governments and corporations that exploit us and the drifters are us! Heck, it made me want to see it again to test my theory but it's not released here yet.