The Butcher

How bad is bad? Pretty bad, apparently.

Shot in POV on a low-resolution camera, this grainy mess had the potential to be a convincing simu-snuff film: five victims with cameras tied to their heads await their turn to be tortured, in pairs, as evidence of the head honcho's cinematic genius.

All of the elements of good torture porn are here: the (too-long) buildup as the victims hear their companions be slaughtered (albeit rather quickly), the "do or die" session where a victim is granted his freedom if he can stand the pain, and the inevitable loss of loyalty to friends, family, and country that comes with being tortured. And a gimp^H^H^H^Hbutcher in a pig's mask whose special technique has less to do with a chainsaw and more to do with a grunting prison nightmare.

Unfortunately, the first two thirds of this movie are wasted in a POV shot of someone's feet accompanied by frantic panting noises, and the last third is wasted in a POV shot of someone driving a car. Sandwiched in between, briefly, are a couple of bloody but not terribly cringeworthy scenes involving a chainsaw (who the hell tortures with a chainsaw, anyways?), a hammer, and a knife. Nope, not even a scalpel.

Oh, and expect the usual unconvincing acting (even in Korean!) and poor subtitles.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

The Butcher (NYAFF)

Wince : [*****]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [***__]

Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [*____] (**, depending on your tastes)
Obscurity : [****_]
Explicability : [**___]

The Four of the Apocalypse

Mysteries abound. Who are the Four? What happened to the Apocalypse? Why did I rent this?

Fulci's spaghetti western is a confused, meandering film about four misfits (a gambler, a drunk, a whore, and a retard) who flee a violent western town and strike out across the desert. They meet some quakers, a peyote-loving psychopath, a town of (only) men, and all sorts of other Jodorowskyesque elements. Pretty much everyone dies, albeit not apocalyptically. And there's a standout urine scene.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

I Quattro dell'apocalisse (IMDB)

Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]

Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [**___]

Imprint

Billy Drago returns to 19th-century Japan to find the woman that he loved and abandoned years before. He has tracked her down to an island inhabited only by demons and whores, where a disfigured prostitute explains to him the (naturally horrific) fate that befell her.

This is everything you want in a Takashi Miike film. The acting is very, very poor. The torture is very, very good. The ending is very, very odd. Maestro!

* * * R A T I N G * * *

Masters of Horror: Imprint (IMDB)

Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [****_]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [****_]

Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [***__]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [**___]

Line that sticks with you: "Do I have your attention now, mister?"

Position on the Audition-Needle-O-Meter: Off the scale.

Jigoku

Two students hit-and-run a drunken yakuza on a back road in the middle of the night, leaving him dead and his mother and wife out for revenge. The students immediately become a good/bad angel pair; the good one tries to fix things but only finds himself with more and more blood on his hands, while the bad one delights in thwarting the attempts of the good one to redeem himself.

Eventually everyone dies and they end up in hell, where they witness and endure the tortures of the damned.

There's really not much more to say than that. The Hell sequences are surreal and gory enough for the time, but will not prove terribly striking to a modern audience. The demonic bad student, however, is fun to watch.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

Jigoku (IMDB)

Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]

Beerequisite : [**___]
Pornability : [*____]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [***__]

Broken

Truly the most brutal and savage wife training video on the market. Even covers how to handle trading in your wife for a younger, more attractive, and more talkative model.

This is pretty much a standard serial killer film. An opening shot gives some insight into the fate of the victims (buried alive with a razor blade sewn into their stomachs, allowed to escape, clubbed unconscious, then hung by their neck and given a second chance to escape).

Cut to the victim du jour, a single mom on a date who inexplicably awakes in a coffin the next day. After various attempts at begging and escaping, she decides to earn the trust of the killer before getting her revenge.

Well done, a must-see for any serial killer movie fans, but not very original or surprising.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

Broken (IMDB)

Wince : [*____]
Flinch : [****_]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [**___]

Beerequisite : [**___]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [**___]