It's also never been more fitting as I come to review a movie that was sold entirely on it's final scene.
I'll get to that all important final scene in a moment; first, I'll quickly address the rest of the movie.
The rest of the movie had previously enjoyed a (very) limited release as "Slaughter", and follows a Manson-Family style cult, who's female members kill for fun, torture each other for the mildest of infractions, and swear undying allegiance to their leader, Satan (pronounced with the empasis on the second vowel, so it sounds like "sat-anne". Satan want's some rich dude's baby as a sacrifice, and has stationed one of his women to live with him to bear said child; however when rich-dude's (married) lover, an actress, is in town, Satan decides to have her husband killed, in order to pave the way for rich-dud to impregnate her instead.
Every time we see the hippy-chicks on their bikes we are regaled with the first 2 bars of "Born to be Wild" over and over again,
This literally goes on for 2 minutes, and it's not even the only
time in the film that it's used.
there's a carnival that uses the same 4 pieces of stock footage on a loop,
"...at hypnotising people"
and the "acting" is, well... this:
It is honestly one of the worst scripted, most incompetently made, and horrendiouslty dubbed movies I have EVER seen. At times it would qualify for a so-bad-it's-good mention, but sadly for every unintentionally hilarious minute, there are 5 that are just plain dull.
Eventually (This technically counts as a spoiler, but given the nature of the film, it really doesn't spoil anything) the actress does fall pregnant, and when she's 7 months gone, one of the cut enters her home and stabs her in her pregnant belly.
That is where the footage from "slaughter" ends. You see, the entire rest of the film really has been an excuse to get to this point - the camera pulls back, and we see the stabbing that we have just witnessed is on a movie set - someone yells "Cut" and the "dead" actress walks away, along with the "hippy" who stabbed her.
"It was all a movie" is right up there with "It was all a dream" when it comes to crappy ways to end a story - and even the shittiest film deserves to be told all the way through. But no. "Slaughter" lost it's ending to become this new abomination "Snuff" and with the fourth wall broken, the new scene is tacked on.
The marketing at the time of film's release was engineered to imply that, at the end of the film, a crew member is killed, for real, on tape. The film's tagline boasted that it was a film "that could only be made in South America; where life is cheap!", feminist groups picketed the movie (although the rumour is that, at least to start with, they were paid to do so by the distributor/producer, Allan Shackleton), and Shackleton himself refused to be drawn on the validity of the final scene, claiming that "If it is real I'd be a fool to admit it. If it isn't real, I'd be a fool to admit it"
You would have though that, having gone to so much effort, the film makers would have pulled out all the stops to make the "snuff" portion of the film realistic.
They did not.
It is vertually impossible to believe that anyone could watch the final scene of this movie with a remotliy critical mind and believe for even one second that it is anything more that a (rather poory staged) effect piece; Herschell Gordon Lewis has staged more convincing gore-scenes!
At one point the victims finger is cut off, BUT YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE IT CURLED UNDER HER HAND!!!
Later, while her (obviously fake) body is being cut into - the blood is gone... and the finger is back!!!
In summery - Shackleton took an already shitty movie... an managed to ruin it!
Body Count: 13
Boob Count: 6 Pairs
Most memorable death: The fake snuff one - and that was shit!
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