What do you get when you cross a military trained lesbian and her gang of outlaws with a family of body part stealing suburbanites? Frustrated men, a large body count, and a lot of Styrofoam coolers. Hey, either way it's not a bad way to spend a day or two!

Two U.S marshals have been chasing an outlaw gang led by Frankie Falzone. She's a gulf war vet who was dishonorably discharged from the armed forces. She's also an angry lesbian with an urge to kill and she's definitely nothing but trouble. Her gang has been on the run and the marshals are right on their heels. Frankie's gang runs into trouble when their car breaks down and they car jack a young teen beauty. They force her to take them to her family's home in hopes of hiding out until things quiet down and they can make their escape. It seems like the perfect plan, besides how much trouble can one little suburban family be?

Mean while, our brave U.S. Marshals are digging up clues and hot on the gangs trail. These are not exactly the criminals of the century as they've left a trail that even a blind man could follow and it's only a matter of time until they get caught. They get to the Peelman's modest home to find Mom and Dad waiting patiently for their two daughters to return. Mom is the picture of perfection and Dad is everything a loving father should beÉunless, of course you count the family business as normal. They chop people up for their body parts and sell them off. Hey, it's a living! Plus think of the exercise you get burying the bodies! The marshals find the gang at the Peelman's home and they also find the coolers the family have been using to transport the body parts. It's been a full day for these guys and the night isn't even half through. Now they have twice as many people to deal with and I'm pretty sure they're both wishing they called in sick today. Now the fight is on. Who will come out the victor in this mess? The Peelmans, The Marshals, or our hot blooded gang of coldhearted killers?

Harvesters certainly had some great potential with a great theme to work from. You have your nice normal family that turns out to be more closely related to the Manson's than the Cleaver's (pun intended) and a horror movie is born. I liked the idea for the story but they didn't keep the movie running at such a great pace. Certain scenes seemed to drag on and take forever to get to where they were going.

There were a few things that I did like about the film however. I liked that the movie relied on the characters and the story structure more then they relied on special effects. Special effects are great for monster movies but there really was no real place for them in this type of film. There was however some great make up and gore effects that really went a long way and definitely helped Harvesters to be a better film. You can really tell that there was some effort put into making the body parts et al, very realistic.

I also like the fact that Joe Ripple works with a lot of the same actors in his movies. It's fun to see theses actors try on different characters. If you watch the behind the scenes of any of these films, you can tell that they're really having a great time. There are certainly much worse ways to make a living.

The audio was pretty decent, all things considered. Sound held up well and stayed pretty consistent. The picture was really clear and the lighting was pretty decent throughout the movie. The darker scenes were easy enough to see which is all the more impressive for an indie horror flick. Even the outdoor nighttime shots were pretty good. It just goes to show that there isn't a great need to complicate things, if simple will work and not diminish the effect of the story, I say go for it.

The special features include: A 30-minute featurette with commentary by the producer, director, and director of effects and the original trailer. Behind the scenes of an indie production is almost always a cool extra, it can be interesting to see what actually went into making the movie and the props.

All told, Harvesters wasn't a bad flick. It wasn't really my thing but it could have been a lot worse (as far as indie productions go). It was just good enough even though it was a bit slow at times. I'm actually looking forward to seeing what else Joe Ripple and Don Dohler put out in the future.

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