Lack of good storyline.

An absolute waste of money

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

PARTS OF THE FAMILY is a Belgian horror flick made on a very low budget. The plot twists and turns are over-obvious and the story is simplistic, beginning with a massacre before moving on to a hostage situation with a twist or two. It's basically an exercise in grubby gore, with a big set-piece involving gut-munching which is sure to delight horror fans. The rest is trashy in the extreme, featuring an unconvincing lead actress and a cheap filming style which means it's never disturbing despite the content. I have to admit that the bandaged zombies do look pretty cool, however.

If you're like the me from a couple of days ago, you're wondering what the deal is with there being two different versions of this movie on the DVD. You're wondering what the difference is between the two versions, which is better, and if either are worth watching. And you're also wondering why no one else on IMDb has commented on this yet, and why not even Troma.com has much info on it. Well I can answer all of those for you!The two versions on the DVD are the original version and the Tromatic version. The original version is awful. The bad reviews on this website so far all describe the original version, and they're all correct. There's almost nothing worthwhile in the original version. It's clichéd, slow-paced, nonsensical, and just generally an abomination of film-making. And this is coming from a fan of low budget horror films.Now, the Tromatic version is a brilliant piece of work and is highly recommended. But what is it? It's *not* an entirely new film -- it's a re-cut version of the original with newly filmed scenes added in. And, I must stress this point heavily, all of these changes are made specifically to make fun of the original version. The Tromatic version is a *parody of the original*, and a damn good one at that.After sitting through the original film, I was miserable. I was thinking, I need some way to vent my frustrations after sitting through an hour and a half of such junk. It turned out that the Tromatic version filled that role perfectly. It adeptly (and hilariously) points out all of the (many) flaws of the original film. And it even adds additional comedy not related to anything. The Tromatic reedit of this movie is truly a brilliant piece of work, salvaging what seemed at first to be a completely unredeemable film. Lloyd Kaufman is a genius.

This is Troma film-making at his purest: an amateurish splatter-movie with an ultra-thin and ridiculous storyline but with twisted characters and nasty make-up effects everywhere. When watching "Parts of the Family", you pretty much get the idea that this was filmed without a script (coincidentally or not, nobody actually is credited as the writer) and the absurd plot-twists seem to be improved on the set. The movie opens with a bank robber who flees from the police. The chase ends in front of an old mansion where he takes a yummy young girl hostage and entrenches himself in the house. The hostage turns out crazier than the robber as flashbacks illustrate that she once was the mansion's housekeeper who butchered the entire family that lived there. Things get even more messed up near the end, when zombies start to appear from the cellar and the girl transforms into a blood-drinking, corpse-licking witch. "Parts of the Family" was entirely made by Troma's loyal Belgian department that previously delivered "Rabbit Grannies" (a guilty pleasure of mine) and "Maniac Nurses". The film is not dubbed and all the Belgian actors speak their lines in English. They do a reasonably good job although you can clearly hear that English isn't their native tongue. Especially in the second half, the gore and sleaze is really outrageous! Zombies (wrapped up like mummies) break out and still their hunger on the police forces that surrounded the house. The legendary Lloyd "Keeper of Crap" Kaufman has a supportive role as police commissioner and he too has his eyeballs ripped out by severely decomposing zombies! I bet his fan – and enemies – will love to see this happen. Overall, this isn't exactly a film you HAVE TO see before you die but it's good entertainment. Definitely better than "Maniac Nurses".

I bought this movie direct from Troma at a convention, I'd wanted to see it since Troma first ran previews on their dvds for it years ago. It has taken a while to come out, and was available at this convention, but still not released to regular outlets. Lloyd Kaufman's appearance in it made it even better. The DVD contains two different versions of the movie by two different director. I just watched the "original" version and have yet to watch the "tromatic" version, so maybe I'll comment again after that. I have 7 other Troma movies to watch though from that convention. I'd recommend this one though, especially if you are familiar with Troma releases. Otherwise, what are you waiting for? Get familiar. I'd suggest starting with Tromeo and Juliet, The Toxic Anvenger (parts I and IV), and Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, those are all Troma in-house productions though, where Parts of the Family is simply distributed by them. As far as distributions, I'd say check out Cannibal: The Musical.