Snuff - Lisa's Review

I'm not going to beat about the bush this week.  This movie is monumentally awful!!!  I usually try to come up with a positive about our movies, but this week, I'm afraid I am struggling in a big way.  The best thing about this movie is the publicity campaign which was the reason so many poor sods ended up watching it.  The possibility of viewing an actual snuff movie was obviously a big pull.  Unfortunately for them, this was a previously released and unsuccessful Argentinian movie called 'Slaughter', which the director took and made changes to (included an additional ending supposed to be a piece of snuff) and they were to be bitterly disappointed.

The movie doesn't tie together well at all.  Whats wrong with it I hear you ask?  Where do I start?  The dubbing is laughable - lips don't move at the same time as people speak, voices don't match characters, one of our main characters voices sounds like its coming through a speaker....  Then there's the editing.  Scenes end and cut away abruptly and you're left thinking  WTF?.... well I suppose I was thinking that most of the time anyway.  There are copious continuity errors that would keep error spotting nerds entertained for hours on end.  Every character in the movie is unlikable, horrid and you want to see die (a bunch of greasy, druggie hippy females who enjoy torturing each other and getting their norks out and their Manson-inspired leader Saataan.. Hmmmm great name).

The 1 main scene the movie seems to base all its advertising on, is in the last few minutes of the movie and it sooooo isn't worth sitting through the other 80 minutes just to get there.  The special effects are poor and I'm sat there spotting continuity errors rather than watching whats going on.  Also it bears no relation to what is going on in the rest of the movie, so there is no tying up and you're left wondering where the story (well, loosely speaking) went.

This is a movie I would definately never recommend to anyone, in fact I would go out of my way to tell people to avoid this one.   Wish someone would create a new 'nasties' list with something worth getting bent out of shape about.  At least with movies that contain scenes I struggle to watch, you can see how they warranted a place on the list, but with banal crap like this, its way beyond disappointing.

NEXT!!

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Late Night Train - Lisa's Review

*** Spoilers ***

If you are a regular reader (are there any?) and are reading this review, you could be forgiven for wondering if you have been here before... as in last week.  This movie IS 'Last house on the leftt' with the forest being replaced by a train.  The actual similarties are uncanny.

Here we have the same 2 naive girls Lisa and Margaret, who board a train to spend Christmas with Lisa's parents.  Its all very steady and plodding along, I'm getting rather bored and very irritated by our female stars who are doing nothing to ingratiate me to them.   Throw into the mix a couple of one dimensional thugs (who we are introduced to as they mug Santa!).  Of course the same 2 guys make their way onto the same train with Lisa and Margaret.  Initially they help the guys hide from the ticket inspector in the loo's but grow steadily more  wary of them due to their changing behaviour and aggression.

A scene which initially REALLY pissed me off was the first sign that our bad guys are scum when one of them attempts to molest a rich female passenger in the train toilets.  The reason for my disgust is the woman is about to get raped but decides she is actually quite enjoying it.  I mean COME ON!!!!   My disgust later turned to a nodded Hmmmm as this females character is uncovered.  She makes the 2 bad guys look like 'Bert & Ernie'.  This is one good thing I would say for the movie is that her character is well and truely one of the most depraved, remorseless, sick female characters on film I have ever watched.   Unusual to see this and there should be more of it to be honest.

So, our 2 girls change train when we have a stop due to a bomb scare but they find the 2 guys and their new female 'friend' onboard the same train.  They force their way into their carraige and the nastiness well and truely commences.  I'm not going to go into full detail, but needless to say its not nice and I did not enjoy watching it.  What I would say though that most of the horror is implied and left to our own minds.
The attacks are brutal, violent and obviously sexual as you can tell a mile off that is going to be the emphasis in the movie.  We have the innocent virgin (as in LHOTL) and we keep flitting back to Lisas parents preparing for the girls arrival for Christmas in high spirits (again much like the parents in LHOTL for the birthday party).

What is rather shocking is how much the attacks are pushed by the new female member of this little gang.  She seems to be the sick mind behind it all.  There is the stereotypical humiliation, stripping, rapes, abuse and violence.  Another passenger is even pulled into it all when he is caught watching some action, but he manages to run off.

One girl is so terrified, when she manages to escape into the toilets, she throws herself from the train and ultimately to her own death just to get away from them. There is also a VERY uncomfortable scene with the other young girl (a virgin) being 'broken in' with a knife.  She dies from blood loss and they throw her body and possessions out of the train.

As with last weeks movie, the gang 'coincidentally' end up in the home of one of the murdered girls parents (I won't bore you with details) and again, like last week an item worn by one of the gang members gives the game away and we have the start of the revenge of the parents.

Frustratingly AGAIN, like last week it just doesn't cut the mustard.  It isn't satisfying.  It wasn't enough for me.  This movie spends an age setting it all up and the revenge of the parents is over in a heartbeat, whats more is that the blonde nasty cow gets away with it all as she claims the guys tried to atack her too!  Wheres the justice in that?  What was the point?  We are left wondering what is going to happen to her at the end of the movie.

I wouldn't say this was a bad movie.  It is LHOTL rehashed and in my humble opinion, it doesn't do the job as well.  I wouldn't say avoid it, but I wouldn't say rush out and see this now!  If you've seen one of these, you've pretty much seen them all.  Change of subject matter please!!!!

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Forrest of Fear - Lisa's Review

I'm not going to waste much time in reviewing this movie, as I feel more than enough was wasted in the watching of it. Quite early in the review to inflict my opinion on you, but there it is. This movie is absolute pants!!!

The basic premis is a group of hippies growing marijuana in in remote forest. The FBI, aware of what they are doing set off to put a stop to it. For some reason, they see fit to dispatch one of the female hippies who got the obligatory boob shot in right at the start of the movie by shooting her rather unconvincingly in the throat. The hippies, either in revenge, or to protect their rather large plantation do away with the agents.

Wondering where their colleagues are, 2 agents decide it would be a good idea to dust the crops with a powerful herbicide which has not been fully tested and is known to have some rather odd side effects. They hire a drunken, has-been pilot to do this to keep it all hush hush. The only somewhat amusing scene in the entire movie is the hard time this guys nagging wife gives him and how she talks about him to the agents on the phone. He deserves a medal!

So, crops are sprayed, weird shit starts happening to all contaminated which include the pilot and the hippies. Thankfully the nagging wife gets her comeuppance which is something I suppose. The hippies kill a few people. Its all rather unconvincing and not in the slightest bit scary. It feels like someone is stood off camera ready to throw a bucket of blood in when any action happens.

A few more characters are introduced in the form of a married couple, their daughter and their retarded son. The parents of course meet a grizzly end and the kids are left to fend for themselves. We also have a forest ranger, his wife and his brother who decide to go fishing.

Another scene which deserves a mention is the scene in which the wife wants to go on the trip but hasn't been invited by her husband (he just doesn't want her there). When she starts to get moody with him, he reaches out and grabs her top, tearing the shoulder. Her reply is "Hey" and she rips his shirt open popping all the buttons (remember these guys are meant to be pissed at each other).... he then predictably rips her top off and they get to it. We almost got a 2nd boob count here, but not quite. Bloody awful!!

So a few people die, a few hippies become 'zombified'. Thats about the height of it.

The acting is pants, the makeup is pants, the general feel of the movie is pants. There are a couple of vaguely humorous scenes, but they weren't meant to be funny - They just are because they're so bad!

Don't waste your time with this one. There doesn't seem to be any good reason to watch it. We were due a stinker though, so not too disappointed.

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Forrest of Fear - Will's Review

Forrest of Fear

The plot outline I read for this while preparing the stats page was as follows:

“Zombies are created from hippies smoking weed that has been contaminated by pesticide. They then go on a flesh hunt.”

- From the usually excellent “Melon Farmers” Censorship watch page

That was a movie I wanted to see! Unfortunately, the real plot was

“Not-quite-zombies are created from not-really-hippies harvesting weed when they get hit by herbicide intended to kill the crop. They then shamble around killing the odd person, but only occasionally eating flesh.”

Which just isn’t as much fun! Zombie-hippies is hilarious, Killer-amateur-farmers? Not so much!

My first clue that these were not “hippies” (Although they are referred to as such once in the movie) was when they killed the 2 feds who wwre looking for them and their crop. What the hell kind of hippies shoot feds? That said, what the hell kind of feds wear blue jeans and flannel shirts!?

As you may have gathered from the above mentioned feds ‘uniforms’, low-rent isn’t the word, and lazy plotting shortly follows as another FBI agent elects to cut through the need for red-tape and approval, by paying a drunken crop duster to blanket the area with some experimental herbicide that is, for reasons we are not privy to, in a shed that the FBI agent has access to. No mention of the fact that this could kill off the entire forest is made, but he does decide that it doesn’t matter if it kills the “hippies”…

So a bunch of the dope-growers get dusted with white powder from the plain (the pilot somehow gets himself covered too) .

They then get sick and eventually start, as I said, shambling around killing the odd person, but only occasionally eating flesh.

I always think it’s a shame when a zombie movie fails to provide any enjoyment; its one of the few sub-genres where a semi-competent director can usually scrape together a film that, if not good, is at least entertaining, regardless of shonky acting, naff script and bad mak-up. Unfortunately, even against these odds, this movie managed to be dull as dishwater almost throughout.

Sadly, after a few weeks of watchable movies, this week was a return to dross.

Body Count: 21

Boob Count: 1 pair (just 2 mins in, as though to get them out of the way)

Animal Body Count: 0

Most Memorable Death: ???

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HALLOWEEN SPECIAL - Will's Pick: A Serbian Film.

NOTE: In honour of Halloween, We're taking a break from the DPP list.

This week, reviewers were given a free choice of any horror movie. 

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Year: 2010

Alternate Titles: Srpski film

DPP Status: N/A

BBFC Status: Passed with 4m11s of cuts in 2010

IMDB: A Serbian Film

Wikipedia: A Serbian Film

DVD: Cut UK version, The UK DVD is the strongest version (officially) available with English Subtitles.

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***WARNING***

Contains some mild spoilers, and descriptions of highly distasteful subject matter.


While this film is very well made, serious, and handles its subjects responsibly, it is absolutely NOT for everyone.

Bear in mind that I have described slaughter-houses, disembowelling, mutilation, self cannibalism and foetus-eating without feeling the need to issue a "taste" warning. 


"A Serbian Film" has made me issue one...

First up, full disclosure; I did not watch this film this week - I watched it, and wrote most of this review, back in late March, and it's been sat waiting for this week, so that it can be posted here, despite not being from the DPP list.

I also watched this film without the intention of reviewing it so (apart from skipping back through it for the boob / body tallies) I did not take notes - I may therefore be wrong on more details than usual. That said,  thoughts are as follows:

This is one of those films so controversial that it is impossible to discuss the film on it's own merits; one is almost forced to address the controversy too.

Anyone who follows movie news (especially Horror movie news) will already know that some of the most vile acts ever committed to celluloid appear right here (albeit simulated).

However the media, and most especially the mainstream media, have taken this (admittedly already sensational) aspect of the film and amped it up to the Nth degree.

Despite what you may have led to believe, this is not a film (even in it uncut version) that never cuts away. The vilest act happen (thankfully) off camera.

Also, as I've already mentioned, all of these acts are simulated; So as far as I'm concerned, as no-one was hurt in the making of the movie, anything goes, as long as it can be justified by context.

Which is also the rub for the BBFC who required 4m 12s of cuts before the film was awarded an 18 rating. Their justification for some of these cuts is that the film contained "images of sexual and sexualised violence which have a tendency to eroticise or endorse the behaviour. "

I cry bullshit.

At no point are any of the repugnant acts portrayed in this movie presented as good or glamorous things.

The single most vile scene in the move is the now infamous 'newborn' scene, this is shown to our hero as a film-within-a-film, and causes him to be physically sick - in what way is that "Glamorising" anything?

Despite all of the warnings above, I'm going to hide the next piece of text - highlight it with your mouse if you want to know what the 'newborn' scene is exactly... [ Milos is shown a video of a man in a lab-coat delivering (very graphically) a baby. He then proceeds to pull down his pants and have sex with the child, while it is still umbilically attached to its smiling mother. ]

The other troubling acts in the movie are all committed by our hero - after he has been kidnapped and forcibly drugged; once the drugs wear off, and he discovers what he has done, he is left a broken man!

In short NOTHING in this film is glamorised or "endorsed". I suspect that the people viewing the film for the BBFC were repelled by it's subject matter (as all right thinking people should be) and felt in their gut that they MUST remove at least some of the worst of it, however (quite rightly) the BBFC must justify their decisions and "it's just wrong" isn't on the list of acceptable reasons, and so the only excuse they could give was the "glamorises violence" one.

Several  of the cuts , I cannot agree with; They rob the film of some of its earlier, retentively minor horror, and make what follows even more of a shock to the system, and in one case makes a scene confusing, while not removing the most offensive element  - a masked character is being raped; the removal of the mask (and the lead characters discover of the identity of the victim) is pivotal, however, in the cut version we do not see the mask coming off, and we kind of have to 'figure out' who it was from the immediate aftermath. I cannot understand this cut; the same character is clearly in exactly the same predicament either-way and I can't see how the unmasking is the problem! Also, a few scenes exist (this time to demonstrate the kind of people we are dealing with) in which sex acts are inter cut with images of children IN A NON SEXUALISED CONTEXT; again, the BBFC won't have any of that!

So what if the film itself; one thing that's surprising about it is how well made it is - much of the media has made it out to be a entirely meritless piece of trash, probably out of fear of reprisals from the moral majority if they DARE to say anything remotely positive, but this couldn't be further from the truth.

It is well filmed and acted throughout, and rather than being the wall-to-wall torture-fest you may have been led to believe, a decent chunk of the film is devoted to things like plot and character development - it's about 45 mins before anything violent happens, and even after that point there is at least as much drama on screen as sex and violence.

In the first half of the movie, we meet Milo - an ex porn star, family man, and all round okay guy. He and his family are living hand to mouth and trying to eek out the savings he still has from when he was working.

He is approached (through a friend) by a director and offered an obscene amount of money to come out of retirement and star in a commissioned 'art film'. After discussing it with his wife, they agree that he should take the part.

Once he realises that he is expected to be violent towards his costars, and preform in front of children, he attempts to quit; it is at this point that the director shown him the 'newborn porn' scene in a misguided attempt to win him over (!) when this fails he is kidnapped and drugged.

Here the film takes an interesting turn, and (if you have the stomach for it) it turns into a bloody good thriller.

Milo wakes up several days later, on his own bed, covered in blood, with no recollection of what happened to him; he is left to retrace his steps and try and work out what was done to him (and what he did) from his fragmented memories, and a pile of videotapes he recovers - think memento with snuff, porn, rape and paedophilia and you're on the right track.

Much to my surprise, it's a decent film; I'm glad I saw it,but I will almost certainly never watch it again, and it certainly isn't for everyone.

If you though "Saw 2" was too violent, or if you have to cover your eyes during the first half of "I spit on your grave" this is not for you.

If the only horror you enjoy is the 'hero killer' type, where you root for the madman while he hacks his way through a line of cardboard cut outs masquerading as characters; this is not for you.

Frankly, it not really for anyone, but if you genuinely want to be horrified, not scared, not shocked (although it will undoubtedly shock you) but actually shaken to your core HORRIFIED, you could do a lot worse than to see this film.

But make sure that's genuinely what you want, because it can't be unseen.

And if you are going to see it - Track down the Uncut version, The BBFC butchered version loses much of its impact, and with it, the point of the film, and of Milos' journey...

Tim Anderson, over at Bloody Disgusting, likened watching the movie to having one's soul raped, and ended his review with this warning:

"If what I have written here is enough to turn your feelings of wonder into a burning desire to watch this monstrosity, then perhaps I haven't been clear enough. You don't want to see Serbian Film. You just think you do"

Body Count: 13*
Animal Body Count: 0
Boob Count: 9
Most memorable death: Penis to the eye socket(!)

* One of these isn't confirmed dead, but I imagine the injuries would have been fatal.

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As this is a non-cannon review, it will not carry a separate "Reader Review" page, you may add your own reviews in the comments section.