Rating: C
Dir: Dave Jackson, Jean-Luc Syndikas
Star: Donkey Punch Disco, Rob Alec, Simon J. Green, Tara Catmull
I was bracing myself for something really terrible here. There are only three reviews, one user and two external, on the IMDb, and they are uniformly scathing. “This movie starts nowhere and goes nowhere.” “A disjointed mess with no purpose or plot.” “Scraping the feces from the worms at the bottom of the barrel.” Hey, I wouldn’t say it was that bad. Cheap, sure. Amateurish, certainly. Yet it had a certain Aussie energy to it, that kept proceedings somewhat watchable, though as with all anthologies, some parts were better than others. Those did not include the host, a shrieking loon in blackface (Mr. Disco), reading the stories to his even more bizarre “pet”. Nope.
The first is less a story than a loosely-connected series of incidents at a party – the “goes nowhere” criticism is actually valid enough here. Though I did like the way the film seamlessly shifted focus from, say, a couple arriving, to an elderly woman ordering drugs from her supplier, to two young girls playing. The second segment was the most amusing. Judge (Alec) is obsessed with the idea that there’s a doppelgänger of him somewhere. His friend mocks the idea, until meeting Judge’s double in a convenience store – but there’s something “off”. They find out Judge #2 is a serial killer, and isn’t the only doppelgänger either. It’s an interesting idea, with some droll humour, such as the terrors of amateur poetry night at the local pub.
We finish with a cautionary tale, in which the hook-up of Mike (Green) with a girl (Catmull) doesn’t go as he expects. Mind you, given the name of the club at which they meet is “Snuff Machine,” I’m not certain what he was expecting. This is your basis torture-porn short, enlivened somewhat by the performances – the torturer is at least somewhat more likable than the torturee – and an off-hand reference to Boy Meets Girl, which amused me more than it probably should have. The effects here are a mixed-bag. Some finger-snipping is particularly effective, though the severed penis leaves a bit to be desired. That’s not a phrase I expected to be writing this afternoon.
An aspect which was a pleasant surprise was the soundtrack. Normally, low-budget films like this lean heavily on music from the maker’s pals (this is especially common in modern blaxploitation movies). The results are usually about as good as you would expect i.e. terrible. This instead seems to have genuine songs from proper bands here, and some are quite listenable. Right now, I am on YouTube, checking out more from German group Pzychobitch. So that’s a win. After several of these horror DVDs have had very little to offer, I’ll take what I can get. As for the movie, it’s low budget bad-taste, intent on pushing as many buttons as possible, with a heavy reliance on bodily fluids. I kinda want to pat the creators on the head and send them on their way.