Varied Celluloid

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good Kung Fu flick grace the front page eh? Especially one made outside of the 70′s-80′s! Today I present Donnie Yen’s latest masterpiece: Ip Man, based on the real life martial artist of legend. Okay, maybe Masterpiece is a bit strong, but it is a great kung fu flick that shows Donnie going once again in drastic directions with his martial arts cinematography. It’s a shame more martial arts filmmakers aren’t taking their cues from this man, because he’s really onto something brilliant if you ask me.

The Review: Ever since bursting onto the main stage with his amazing performance in the second film from the Once Upon A Time In China trilogy (far from his first big role, but definitely the role that caused most Kung Fu fans to take notice), Yen struggled somewhat to find his place within the industry. Although popular and starring in quite a few vehicles that took on a decent amount of success and always remaining a fan favorite it didn’t appear that his star had really grown and started to shine only until just within these past few years. With the SPL/Flash Point series making waves here in the states, his role in Guillermo Del Toro’s take on the Blade franchise and a well received re-release of Iron Monkey into theaters have all helped launch his career as a bonafide A-Lister here in the states with the martial arts community. In much the same vein as Jet Li’s Fearless or several other recent epic martial arts films in the Hong Kong industry, Ip Man is Donnie Yen’s entrance into the big budget retelling of a legend. Ip Man, the man who helped popularize Wing Chun in the early parts of the 20th century is probably best known for his role as Bruce Lee’s first mentor. Something that all but makes him godlike amongst martial arts fans such as myself.

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The Plot: Ip Man (Donnie Yen) is a very well known martial artist in pre-war China who all in town know to be the best of their best, with his particular form of Wing Chun fist, but does not take on students in order to focus on his family. However, when the Japanese invade China and take seize of his town Ip Man finds himself in the predicament of no longer being able to feed his family. After selling off their valuables, Man is forced to work in a rock mine and turns his cheek when the Japanese come to ask for sparring partner – offering a bag of rice to the winner of any fights – as he knows that fighting in such a way is not the answer nor will it end well for those who partake. However, the offer is more legitimate than it at first might seem as several men do actually walk away with a bag of rice. However, an old friend of Ip Man’s who took on the bargain after only recently joining back up with Ip Man after being lost in the initial occupation. Ip Man’s friend as well as two others take on the general in charge of these sparring sessions, who does not take it easy on them and ends up killing Man’s friend. Now with justice on his mind, Ip Man looks to take on the Japanese in the only way he knows how.

	The Review

Ever since bursting onto the main stage with his amazing performance in the second film from the Once Upon A Time In China trilogy (far from his first big role, but definitely the role that caused most Kung Fu fans to take notice), Yen struggled somewhat to find his place within the industry. Although popular and starring in quite a few vehicles that took on a decent amount of success and always remaining a fan favorite it didn’t appear that his star had really grown and started to shine only until just within these past few years. With the SPL/Flash Point series making waves here in the states, his role in Guillermo Del Toro’s take on the Blade franchise and a well received re-release of Iron Monkey into theaters have all helped launch his career as a bonafide A-Lister here in the states with the martial arts community. In much the same vein as Jet Li’s Fearless or several other recent epic martial arts films in the Hong Kong industry, Ip Man is Donnie Yen’s entrance into the big budget retelling of a legend. Ip Man, the man who helped popularize Wing Chun in the early parts of the 20th century is probably best known for his role as Bruce Lee’s first mentor. Something that all but makes him godlike amongst martial arts fans such as myself.

Although I am not familiar with Ip Man’s life story myself, aside from the basics, it becomes obvious that more than likely the film takes quite a few liberties with some of the facts in order to make a more interesting story. In the same way that Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story fabricated a lot of events in order to fill the film with many great street fights that never happened, one gets the feeling that Ip Man does much of the same. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a great film mind you! Not by a long shot. This is a Donnie Yen vehicle with the guarantee of action, a more drama oriented retelling of Ip Man’s life might be an interesting version of the story, and it has been said that Hong Kong arthouse filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai has wanted to tackle his own version of the story for a while now – although truth be told, I wouldn’t hold out for that version to be an entirely non-fiction affair either. Yen and director Wilson Yip deliver the more dazzling approach to this real life legend though, and do their best to craft a more inspirational film out of a man who has all but became a folk hero. I don’t really approve of this approach to a biographical picture, the way I see it if you’re going to cover someone’s story then you owe it to them as much as the audience to be as honest as possible and show them real events from that person’s life that ultimately formed the person they became. I still don’t approve of this particular style of creating heroes from men, but with the way Donnie crafts the Wing Chun style into such a brutally effective looking martial art that sensationalizes every fight sequence – it’s hard to stay dissapointed. Does that make me a simpleton? Maybe, but c’mon, I’m a kung fu film fan and as much drama as Yen and Yip pack into this picture at it’s heart the martial arts remains the true star.

After Yen’s incredibly impressive take on the martial arts drama with the new classics SPL and Flash Point, it seemed as if he had already made a large enough impression on martial arts cinema with his new breed of Mixed Martial Arts inspired kung fu choreography. However he does it again with Ip Man in presenting Wing Chun, a martial art usually considered more delicate but focusing upon speed and Yen does just that with his fight sequences. He brutalizes his opponents by throwing an uncountable number of punches like that of a machinegun. Although such techniques by description wouldn’t seem that effective, Yen conveys them in a manner that looks as impressively realistic as the fight scenes from his SPL films. The fight scenes in the film are simply amazing and probably THE reason to see the film, but overall it is a very solid film with a nicely plotted dramatic structure and some fine performances. It was very surprising to find Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, who many other Asian cinephiles will recognize from his work with Japanese filmmakers such as Takashi Miike and Ryuhei Kitamura – in the role as the lead villainous Japanese military leader Miura. He had a particularly great turn in Miike’s brilliant Blues Harp, but here he has a more dominating and intense role. Keeping with modern Politically Correct thinking however, his character isn’t the ruthless and morally corrupt Japanese military leader that would have been shown in film twenty years ago but is a relatively honest sportsman who respects Ip Man’s ability. Not completely unlike the Japanese karate master from Jet Li’s recent biopic Fearless, which also took a few liberties with its story. However, with Ip Man the rest of the military is shown to be as vicious as the usual assortment of character in a Hong Kong film.

	The Conclusion

Ip Man isn’t a perfect movie, there’s a lot of additional melodrama and sensational plot developments that seem to take the film away from reality but as a work of martial arts cinema I can’t deny that it is a fantastic film. Although another film could very well be made on the same issue and tackle a more realistic look at this man’s life, Donnie Yen’s Ip Man is a full on martial arts film with a fresh take on fight choreography and an epic scale in terms of story. I recommend it for all martial arts fans, as I doubt it will dissapoint.

Plot Outline: Ichi is a young man like many his age. He has a job, feels lonely and is being controlled by an older man who convinces him to murder his enemies. Well, maybe he’s not like ‘everybody’ but I think we can all relate. After Ichi kills the boss of the Anjo crime syndicate and Jiji (the aforementioned old man) cleans up the mess, Kakihara (Boss Anjo’s right hand man, played with gusto by Tadanobu Asano) is set out on a quest to find out just what happened to his boss. Being a S&M freak helps with all of the sadism he plans to inflict on anyone who might know just a tiny bit about what happened to his boss. Kakihara begins obsessing with Ichi as he finds out more about him and secretly hopes he will inflict death upon him as one last masochistic fantasy. Ichi on the other hand is going through a crisis, dumbfounded as to why he is aroused by the thought of raping women and inflicting pain while also tormented by a memory of a girl raped while trying to help him from being bullied.



  
The Review: Ichi the Killer is yet another in the long line of films that I’ve been meaning to review for the longest, but have usually lost the courage to review out of fear of disappointment. Well, disappointment and the fact that most of the films that really struck a nerve in me have been reviewed countless times on countless websites out there. By the time it comes to me getting my thoughts down on paper I begin to question the point, seeing that there will no doubt be much better reviews written detailing the exact same feelings, but I guess you have to reach a point where you just say screw it. The review may turn out crappy but at least I’ll have marked my territory. That’s what I’m doing with this Ichi review, marking my territory. I love Ichi the Killer, no film in the past five to ten years has made such an impact on the way I look at cinema I don’t believe. Ichi has actually grown into part of who I am. Strange to say about any film I’m sure, much less one so controversial. Since the film is as controversial as it is, I guess it’s only fair that I tackle that subject head on. I feel as if I’m at a disadvantage to judge the film for all audiences since my tolerance for extreme violence is probably going to be a little higher than some who might read this. I’m not tooting my own horn or anything like that, if you want to see me flee the room throw on some real life crap like Banned From Television or something, I can’t handle the real stuff, but when it comes to movie violence I’ve built up quite a high threshold. For instance, I heard a lot of hype coming out about the French film Irreversible, like people walking out of theaters shocked and vomiting but when I actually watched the film I was frustrated and angered at the fact that I had wasted my time waiting for the violence to kick in. I still despise that film to this day for disappointing me so much, and yes I even hold a grudge against Halloween III for not having Michael Myers. The point is, I can’t accurately judge what is going to disturb most audiences and I don’t want the wrong people walking in thinking it’s a cornucopia of gore and madness when it assuredly isn’t. There’s a lot of torture in the film and there are definitely moments that even made me feel quite a bit uncomfortable, but nothing that ever made me turn my head or wince. Not like in Miike’s Audition where I was just thrown back in my chair being visually assaulted. One viable complaint I could imagine would be some of the rape scenes and beatings given to women, so if that’s a sensitive area you might want to watch with someone else or just be leary of the film. The gore in the film is fairly plentiful, but nothing on the level of Dead-Alive (Braindead) or something like that. A decent amount of the on screen mayhem is actually cgi, and a number of it is done in a humorous way. The darkest of dark humor maybe, but some things I couldn’t help but smile at. Of course this is all just the way I feel about the violence, for some it might be too much, but for those who have sat through quite a few exploitation flicks in there time don’t be afraid that you can’t handle something like this. You might just walk away disappointed.

I don’t mean to pay so much attention to the violence because that’s not the only reason to watch the film, but I thought I may as well get that stuff out of the way. For those who haven’t seen the film, they might walk away shocked to find that Ichi is a lot deeper than some like to give it credit for. I don’t pretend to understand all of the underlying subtext in Ichi, just as I don’t pretend to understand all of David Lynch’s work, but I recognize the thought and work put into it. Something I bet a lot would dismiss, even Miike tries to shrug off any pretensions when it comes to his work, but at the heart of Ichi there’s a battle raging. A battle of control, which is what the film is really all about. Sado Masochism is only a shell for what the film is really about, which is the controlling of other people. Who has the power? Who controls who? It’s what makes the film revolve. The character of Jiji is the example, he controls everyone and everything, but how far does his control go and how long will it last? I don’t want to get all pretentious and snobby as I know I sound, but these are the questions that burn in my head whenever I sit down to watch Takashi Miike’s masterpiece. While preparing to review the film I watched it for my fifth or so time, and with each viewing I seem to get closer and closer to the truth. At the moment, I think I understand the ending of the film in it’s most basic forms but it’s still just a bit above my head. I can’t go into deatail about it all because I would break my own oath of no spoilers, but for those watching it, all I can say is to watch it frame by frame and pay attention to the small details. Then again I question giving any advice out, because do I even know how close I am to the truth of the film? I can’t really say, but I do know that each time I watch it I learn more and maybe some day the repeat viewings will pay off completely. It’s part of why I have such a great passion for the film. It takes many of the aspects I love of surrealist cinema and churns out something freakish, profound and generously entertaining. The film bounces around in so many different ways, and we’re just talking about the plot alone, which is surprisingly complex. Symbolism is abound and the plot hangs around dozens of miniscule little sequences throughout the film, things people say on the telephone might explain the actions of another character in the next scene. Good subtitles are a must needless to say. This last viewing of the film I just payed most of my attention to Jiji, reading his dialogue and studying his character to learn more about what is happening. It really does take paying some close attention to catch many of his actions, because he truly does make the world in which the characters live, go around. His character is the centerpiece of everything and this isn’t even a secret of the film. No spoilers, it’s clear from the beginning of the film. His character is the master and everyone is the puppet, but what is interesting is seeing Ichi not wanting to work as the pawn in his game. As Kahkihara says later in the film “You are chaos”. Ichi is the sadist at heart who doesn’t feel comfortable with his own actions, a killer who doesn’t enjoy killing. Kahkihara is both the most interesting character in the film and the character who has the most simple of motivations; he is the ultra masochist. He wants pain and that is all. He admires Ichi for being the greatest sadist, but Ichi only kills because of his sense of revenge. Everything revolves in a circle, and to those who dismiss the film as nothing but gore with no brain, I would ask you to watch again and pay closer attention to character and detail.

I find it hard to speak of Ichi the Killer without bringing up the insane amount of visual and directorial style on display. Takashi Miike is like a kid in a candy store. He delivers all the visual style one might expect, but takes the viewer into overdose mode. One of my favorite shots in the film that will always remain in my mind is where the camera flies through about three city blocks, I would imagine in the front end of a car with the fram rate on fast forward, until it stops and goes into closeup of a character’s mouth. After this the scene goes into one long take where Karen (Paulyn Sun) takes Kahkihara on a trip to a local heroin dealer. They travel up a flight of stairs and break into the woman’s apartment. This whole sequence burns vividly in my mind as something of a masterwork, it could be the crazy handheld work or it could be the amazing rock soundtrack blaring over most of Paulyn Sun’s English dialogue, but without doing much of anything this segment of the film is one of the brightest moments of the film. There are about one hundred other brilliant visuals and set pieces throughout the film to blow your mind as well. Pretty much anything even associated with the character Kahkihara is bound to knock your boots off, especially his little desk area made of nothing but red lighting, even though the rest of the room isn’t lit with anything remotely red. Like an island inferno somewhere in a Yakuza office. It doesn’t get a lot of air time but it’s just one of the things that makes you go ‘huh’ while watching things transpire. Miike always keeps his camera roaming throughout the film and never lets his audience catch a breath of air. Unlike his Dead or Alive series, there are no Kitano-esque moments of reflection. The film carries you from one scene to the next and you had best be prepared for it. A roller coaster of emotions. You can go from laughing as in the scene where Kahkihara forces one of his gangster lackeys (who wanted to leave the group because of fear of a gang war) to walk with a board nailed through his shoe. Or you can be made to feel uncomfortable as shown in the highly talked about scene where Kahkihara tortures a man by hooking his skin to chains from the roof and then pouring scalding oil over his back. The comedy doesn’t break the more harsh moments as much as you might see in an American film or even in some Japanese films really, you get the idea that Miike wanted the film to be intense but always fun. Whether this is your type of fun is a personal opinion, I still feel I get most of what he wanted to present. Of course I couldn’t review the film without going over the acting at least a little bit. Tadanobu Asano has been a favorite actor of mine ever since I was fortunate to watch Electric Dragon 80,000 V., but Ichi the Killer and the character of Kahkihara (whom I have mentioned about a dozen times in this review) really cemented himself as one of my favorite actors ever. Perhaps my favorite actor out there as of this moment. I’ve only seen four or so of his films, but everytime I catch one of his movies he puts out this persona of the coolest person ever to exist. He’s got the swagger of James Dean and the talent to boot. He doesn’t show a ton of emotion, I’ll admit that readily, but his screen prescence rivals Chow Yun-Fat or Bruce Campbell. In Ichi, he’s absolutely dynamic. A laid back performance but also a driven and lively one. He is as giddy as a child in one scene and then taking extreme delight in torturing someone in the next. He deserves mainstream notariety with the film, but being a cult phenomena would be just as well. Asano isn’t the only one on top of his game though, pretty much everyone involved gives their all. Nao Omori is an unknown to me (I think he stars in the live adaption of Perfect Blue), but I absolutely love him in the film as Ichi, the homocidal crybaby. There’s a beautiful character ark behind Ichi and Nao Omori brings it out ten fold. He could have just made the character a generic soft spoken wimp and let the fact that he’s the greatest killer who ever lived work as a gimmick, but as an actor he does so much more. He makes me realize when watching the film that this isn’t just some cartoonish gore film, this is a tragedy. The character of Ichi should evoke sympathy from the audience already, but just the teary eyes that Nao Omori aims towards the camera reads his whole life story. I don’t mean to overhype the performances and I’m confident others will assume everyone is over the top and show no attachment to real life, but I’m just going by the emotions the film wrenches from me. It’s for all of these reasons above that I can’t help but love the film with all I have.

What can I say that hasn’t been made abundantly clear already? I’m obsessed with the film, I love the director and I can never watch the film enough. Are there negative aspects of the film? I’m sure there are, but maybe I’m just not clear headed with the film and carry an obvious bias (but how can it be bias when it’s still simply an opinion?) but I can’t make myself sit around picking apart the negative pieces of the film. I would be hard pressed to find a scene in the film I felt should be cut, and I find it seriously doubtful I could find one I truly disliked. Is that wrong of me? I don’t know, you make the call, but if you haven’t seen the film and you’re at least a little interested, see it now. Find an unedited copy and order it. If you can’t handle the extreme violence, at least you’ll have something to bring up at dinner parties to brag that you seen some weird friggin’ Japanese flick that was mind bendingly bizarre, and if you on the other hand find it too tame and undeserving of it’s reputation, well I warned you. All I can say is ‘see this film’, and what you take from it could be polar opposite of myself. Just please never insult the character Kahkihara, easily the greatest villian of all time, and to deny that is to deny me… which you should never do!

Review by Prof. Aglaophotis

Plot Outline: We start our little tale in the small Northern Californian fishing town of Noyo, where much trouble is a brewing. The salmon in the area have been becoming more minuscule by the day as the town’s festival draws nearer. However, a canning company known as Can co. (oh yes, THAT’S original) plans to change that, not only to help catch more fish, but to genetically improve the size and amount of salmon in the area. In the mean time, some odd problems arrive when fishermen start catching marine life that continues to break the wires, all of the dogs in the town get slaughtered and Hank Slatery (Vic Morrow) and his inebriated posse find more reasons to pick on the local Native American Johnny Eagle (Anthony Penya). All the while, beach hopping amorous couples get violently attacked by vicious sea creatures who hack up the men and rape their dates and everyday-man Jim Hill (Doug McClure), Johnny and marine biologist Dr. Susan Drake (Ann Turkel) start playing detective after Jim’s brother gets attacked by a pack of similar inhuman marine life. Oh, and didn’t I mention the local festival was coming?

  

	The Review

Although a bit of a digression, I have encountered various unique plot twists and story ideas, one of the more popular being the further development and future of mankind, after such existence has gone so far in the line of advancing intelligence and simultaneous stupidity. Yet, I find this question to be irritatingly incessant, for it has been interpreted in one too many ways and the answers are almost always brought into a black or white category, with some good occasional imagination, but lack of originality. There is something wholly unique about Humanoids from the Deep, as it somehow brings a clever method of coming to the conclusion of that question without incessantly bringing it up through the movie. We are given scenes of social violence and local acts of racism that was made to recognize the socio-economic impacts of events in the town, as well as setting up protagonist/support roles and antagonistic categories, and keeping anyone from acting on the problem at hand, but the question regarding humankind’s future did not fully arise or show relevance until near the end of the movie as the origin of these creatures were being analyzed. It’s nothing to make too big of a deal out of, I’ll admit, but when you familiarize with different storylines, you’ll see a lot of repetition and failed good ideas. While this came close by means of diction (which I will emphasize on later), the message still delivered. Another level of importance is to show that even the antagonistic characters showed signs of heroism near the end as their eyes are opened to the relevance of the creatures, simply to remind the audience that despite their bad qualities, there’s hardly ever a black or white matter to every human being in this world (especially when they’re being attacked by murderous amphibious monsters).

The movie had a nice sized budget as it boasts with explosions here and there, shows skin being scraped off the bone and the minimal use of sets, but its limit shows in various little parts of the movie, as we see the same close up shots of humanoids getting shot with a 30.6 here and a 3.06 there, repeated continuity shots of Doug McClure firing a gun in a previous scene, as well as two ‘clever’ reverse slow motion shots and a crowd’s screams are obviously looped for more than five minutes of film (a flare gun to some gas on the deck blowing up an ENTIRE ship, or an ol’ Molotv Cocktail blowing up a one story house on direct impact being the latter). The spectacle of slimy half skeletal monsters slashing and raping shoves the movie into a different light which is beneficial for the sci-fi/horror movie genre, for it adds a new level of discouragement for audiences aside from just having bloodthirsty monsters and gory murders being the primary focus (which is why most people have found it distasteful and I was just surprised in that ‘Whoa!’ sense) and the monsters themselves were designed pretty well to look like what they evolved from. Though not particularly well acted or dictated for that matter (it’s sardonic that a marine biologist cannot even manage to pronounce the word coelacanth correctly), the characters were believable and the partial exposition amidst conversations worked in order to understand the characters a little better. Another semi-positive aspect of the film was its almost apparent lack of clichés, as mentioned earlier with the lack of 100% human antagonists, regardless of their negative aspects. There was an apparent minimum of over-used/noticeable sci-fi clichés until, surprisingly enough, the final scene in the movie where the threats of human existence increases, but in a far too predictable manner.

	The Conclusion

From the banter I have produced it’s obvious that amidst its pros and cons, I still enjoyed it, but if the latter you find distasteful (brief monster rape scenes being the bulk), then I doubt this movie would be your forte. Otherwise, Humanoids from the Deep is definitely a sit-down with-a-sophomorically-fun-social-crowd-with-pop-and-popcorn-bowl-in-hand sort of movie. The movie manages to keep your eyes on the screen and keep you involved in the unfolding events regardless of the occasional flaws.

Plot Outline: Sherry Carson who runs some kind of public access opinion show, takes in a viewing of Montag the Magnificent’s show one night with her boyfriend Jack. Montag, unlike many magicians, doesn’t rely on silly things like wooden boxes to saw his female volunteers, he does it out in the open for everyone to see! The woman whom he does this to walks away perfectly fine, but afterwards when she’s in a restaurant, the wounds suddenly appear on her and she dies. Sherry, unbeknownst to her that the woman died the same night, walks away impressed while Jack is convinced it’s all lame. Sherry even goes on to mention Montag on her tv show. She then tries to get an interview with Montag, but he isn’t interested, but does want her to view his next show. Somewhere around this time Jack is starting to piece things together when he sees the girl who was sawed in half dead in the newspaper. The same thing happens when Sherry and Jack take in the second show, Jack notifies the police, but only after Montag finally concedes to come on Sherry’s show but only to perform. Now, Sherry has no idea what to expect of Montag’s performance, or even Montag himself.

  
The Review: H.G. Lewis, a man loved by many and hated by many more. I’m not a Lewis fanboy or anything like that, but I have to admit from watching a few of his films, I definitely get a kick out of them. I’ve seen The Gore Gore Girls, Blood Feast and now this. So far, this has been the most disappointing. For those of you who haven’t experienced the works of Herschell Gordon Lewis and haven’t read up on him, this is basically what he is to me: Ed Wood with gore. That’s basically the man’s output in a nutshell. I believe (although don’t take me for my word) I read a review or an article about Lewis once where he was said to take his films very serious and doesn’t like being compared to Wood, but if the shoe fits… Sure, Lewis’ films are a bit more professional as far as production goes, but when it comes to getting a response from his actors, Wood and Lewis are on even ground. Both feature some of the most over the top acting you could ever see in a ‘serious’ film. Troma tries often to duplicate the formula, but usually adds a tongue in cheek quality that is vastly different from these two pioneers of bad cinema.

It’s hard pinpointing what really screws Wizard of Gore up, but if I were to name the thing that really got in the way of me being able to actually get into the film, it was the incredibly terrible plot. Lewis isn’t known for having Mammet-like scripts, but this was just ridiculous. For one thing, the whole story is fleshed out over 100 minutes and NEVER goes anywhere! In my review for Dead Next Door I mentioned how much I loved just sitting and watching a 80 minute horror film that pulls no punches, well Wizard of Gore is basically the opposite. It tags on twenty extra minutes and the time just crawls by because we just keep going in circles. The writer of the film must have just ran out of ideas after the first ten minutes because we spend the rest of the film going in the same loop. We somehow end up at the magicians show about four or so times, each time with him brutally killing some young woman who doesn’t seem to be able to speak. It gets tiresome after the third time or so. I had no problems sitting through Gore Gore Girls or Blood Feast, but Wizard was actually hard for me to bare. It was still fun though and I guess that’s what matters. Plenty of hilarious lines, and basically anytime the magician opens his mouth it’s completely classic. His lines about reality in the beginning had me howling. It’s just funny to see a guy in a cape yell philosophical garbage, but maybe that’s just me.

The only thing most horror fans are going to care about is the gore, and from what I can gather, this is indeed Lewis’ goriest film. The chainsaw murder and the spike to the head deaths are both equally fake looking but also quite grotesque. The spike to the head bit started out laughable but near the end where he is ripping out the girls eyes I felt slightly grossed out. Not to the verge of vomiting or turning my head, but I’ve got a thing for eye gore that bothers me. These two alone are the sole reason to see the film. They both look pretty cheesy, but this is Lewis, what do you expect? I hate when I see reviewers who talk about how cheesy the FX are in films like this, I always feel like asking ‘why are you watching something like this then?’, so if you’re bothered by obvious dummy heads being decapitated, then this obviously isn’t something you should look up. The rest of the death scenes were fairly average for me, except for the final bit of gore which I won’t spoil here. So, there’s a lot of gore yes, but it’s all tied together by a plot strand no thicker than the hair off the top of my head. They obviously just wanted something to showcase lots of gore, and although that isn’t a bad thing in my book it still could have used some work. Especially in the editing department… especially in the editing department!

Not only is the film slow as molasses, the editor also must have been taking acid with the writer (what is up with that ending?) because he was definitely out of it if he didn’t see all the obvious mistakes and just complete absurdities within. For one, it was about halfway through the film before I realized that during the murders we’re supposed to be seeing things as they’re really happening (as in the magician playing with the girl’s intestines) and from the audiences eyes where there isn’t any real violence going on. At least that’s what I think was happening. To tell the truth I’m not completely sure. I thought it would have been odd that the audience stayed in place as a girl is sawed in half and then has her intestines played with in front of them. Then there are the quick jumps in the editing process that are just plain bizarre. I’ll keep this as spoiler free as possible, but in one scene we see a dead woman lying on the ground with a man’s pants legs in front of the camera but then there’s a strange jump cut to the SAME exact shot but without the pants leg in front of the camera. It was either a complete mistake or the strangest little edit I’ve ever seen. One last little note on the writing. After the second death, don’t you think the cops would have been able to establish the fact that both girls went to the same magician right before dying? That just seems like average detective work, I don’t see why they would need this LOSER to help them out. Ahh, but these are just the obvious complaints about the film. Sure, it’s bad. In fact, it’s terrible, but it’s funny and it’s entertaining. You’ll either love it, hate it or just not care enough to even form an opinion but any which way, you’ve been forewarned.