Las Vegas Bloodbath (1989)

Rating: D+

Dir: David Schwartz
Star: Ari Levin, Elizabeth Anderson, Barbara Bell, Leah Luchette

If you said this was the worst film ever made, you would get little argument from me. Certainly, the middle 35 minutes, in which the women of Beautiful Ladies Oil Wrestling sit about, try on costumes, play Truth or Dare, watch their own show on TV, and have a nourishing breakfast of beer and donuts(!), could well be the biggest waste of tape in the (already grim) history of shot-on-video horror. However, the finale features a fetus being carved out of a pregnant woman, then hurled against a wall; even if the FX are a little flaky, the mere concept is one of the most appalling things imaginable, made worse by the use of a genuine mother-to-be. Indeed, the enthusiasm with which all the carnage takes place is laudable, and in sharp contrast to the apparently Valium-dosed actors.

The plot in this 1989 roughie, such as it is, has Sam (Levin) catching his wife cheating on him; this kicks off a killing-spree, starting with a prostitute, and ending at the BLOW house-party. Every scene which does not involve wholesale carnage is irredeemably awful; for example, after picking up the hooker, the journey to the love-spot selected by the working-girl apparently takes place in real time. Like a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, this one exists only for its gore; unlike H.G’s better works, the rest falls through “so bad it’s good” into near-unwatchable. Neither director nor star ever made another movie. I can see why, though Levin could have had a long career as a Seinfeld impersonator – if you ever wanted to see Jerry play with entrails, this one’s for you. The rest of us…probably not so much.