If you enjoy grindhouse, throwback, exploitation-style cinema, a new entry is coming your way next year. VFW, an Assault on Precinct 13-style action film from director Joe Begos (Almost Human, Bliss), is about a group of war veterans who take a violent stand against against a gang of encroaching street punks. The movie is currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and you can check out its blood-spattered trailer below.

VFW Trailer

I had a chance to interview Stephen Lang last year, and he’s a super-nice, engaging guy who’s light-years away from the somber, grizzly character we see here. (Acting! What a wild thing!) Even though he was the villain in Avatar, one of the biggest movies of all time, Lang is still decidedly a “that guy” actor: one of those performers audiences vaguely recognize from seeing him across the decades, but often can’t quite place him. The casting in VFW is especially great because Lang leads a whole crew of “that guy” actors: William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption), David Patrick Kelly (Twin Peaks), Fred Williamson (From Dusk Till Dawn), Martin Kove (The Karate Kid), and George Wendt (Cheers).

VFW played at this year’s Fantastic Fest, and our review calls it “vile, repugnant splatterhouse cinema” that features “head-exploding, arm-chopping, stake-skewering kills” and feels “like a combination of John Carpenter and William Lustig.” Here’s an excerpt:

VFW is a roll call of legends ready for one last ass-kicking tour of duty, with everything used as weapons from deer antlers to buzzsaws to flagpoles. It’s an allergic reaction to Reagan’s war on drugs that might as well be a dystopian rehash of The Warriors…If you’re into “Splatterhouse Cinema” that respects its elders and tenderizes human bodies without remorse, Joe Begos has a pile of discarded corpses waiting for you. It’s vile, slick with repugnance, and appropriately inhumane. A canon full of guts blasted straight into your face – the Fangoria way.

Fangoria relaunched its distribution arm recently and has so far released films like Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich and Satanic Panic. This movie, which was written by Max Brallier and Matthew McArdle, has received a much more positive reaction so far. Dallas Sonnier (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99), Amanda Presmyk (Satanic Panic), and Josh Ethier (Bliss) are credited as the film’s producers.

Here’s the official synopsis:

A typical night for a group of war veterans at the local VFW turns into an all-out battle for survival when a teenage girl runs into the bar with a bag of stolen drugs. Suddenly under attack from a gang of punk mutants looking to get back what’s theirs – at any cost – the vets use every weapon they can put together to protect the girl, and their VFW, in the biggest fight of their lives.

VFW will arrive in theaters, VOD, and Digital HD on February 14, 2020.

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