Nazi Basterds & Bombshells

Check out the trailers here: http://www.fullmoondirect.com/Nazi-Basterds-Bombshells-5-Disc-DVD-Set_p_923.html

Buy it from Amazon: Nazi Basterds & Bombshells

Embrace of the Vampire (2013)

"Sharon Hinnendael stars as Charlotte, a timid and sheltered teen who has just left an all-girls Catholic school for a new life at a co-ed university. But an ancient evil has followed her here, tormenting her with disturbing nightmares and tempting her with forbidden desires."

Not so much a remake of "Embrace of the Vampire" (1995) as it is a remix of scenes from "The Initiation of Sarah" (1978), "Carrie" (1976), and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1992) with more boobs, at least this version has a better plot and some decent horror moments. It's still mainly an excuse to be sexy as Hell though, and it plays out as a typical exploitation movie, so trust me, you won't be disappointed!

Sharon Hinnendael does a fantastic job in the lead role and is certainly not ashamed to be kissed and fondled by nearly everyone she meets, no matter what their gender, age, or state of monsterdom might be. In this way, "Embrace of the Vampire" stays true to the original in terms of its softcore porn elements. The usual clique of hypocritical prudes will probably hate the female nudity because nothing is toned-down, and the infamous lesbian sex scene is even more explicit and engorging, but the target audience will be grabbing their box of tissues in delight!

For those who care about the story, many details have been added and fleshed-out (no pun intended) including Charlotte's convent school upbringing, the courses she's taking at University, her part-time job in a coffee shop, and a genetic blood disorder which causes her to have hallucinations. Although this Charlotte is more modern and less of an easy lay than Alyssa Milano's version, Sharon Hinnendael repeats some of her predecessor's annoying mannerisms such as avoiding eye-contact and looking at something more interesting on the ground either through shyness or a mild case of Asperger's Syndrome. Obviously, that's just the character and a homage because there's no way that Sharon Hinnendael is shy about anything!

Further plot changes include a creepy fortune-teller type who seems to have escaped from a Val Lewton movie, a ton of bitchiness from the snobby/jealous members of the fencing club, a sorority-style hazing, and a camping trip in the woods which ends badly for Charlotte's friends. Fortunately, these clichés aren't as annoying as you might think, and there are no bizarre orgies in nightclubs or gender-changing shenanigans to spoil things either.

I am not Buffy! I just look like her and do Buffy things.

The vampiric moments are beautifully violent and gory, and to give credit where it's most certainly due, Victor Webster (channelling a mixture of Chris Sarandon and Billy Zane) is a much better vampire than Martin "Spandau Ballet" Kemp. His cover as a University professor isn't a million miles away from the new Gerri Dandridge in "Fright Night 2: New Blood" however, but as the latter's desire for a virgin victim also borrows from the original "Embrace of the Vampire", it's only fair. Nothing is ever original in the vampire genre anyway, but it does make you wonder what awful experiences the filmmakers must have had with their teachers to perpetuate this trend of undead academics.

As with most Canadian movies, there's some obvious typecasting to compete with American productions. Kaniehtiio Horn (yes, that really is her name) looks and sounds a lot like Tiffany Shepis (complete with horrible L.A. affectations), and I've always thought that Ryan Kennedy (the new Chris) looks amazingly like a younger version of fellow Canadian Joshua Jackson (from "Fringe"). Somebody really needs to put Ryan Kennedy in a movie as Joshua Jackson's younger brother or earlier self one day! Other lookalikes such as Robert Moloney who plays the University's bursar as a Bob Newhart type, and Olivia Cheng who reminds me of one of the "Star Trek" girls whose name I can't remember, are surrounded by further stereotypical characters for padding.

Maybe it was because I was tired and easily pleased when I watched it, but I actually enjoyed "Embrace of the Vampire" considerably more than I thought I would. It's nicely filmed and paced, but it loses points for the rushed ending which goes in a different direction than the more interesting and happier one that I expected. Thus, I'm going to rate it as "average" for a horror movie, but the sexiness makes it worth purchasing for purely sinister reasons.

I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013)

"Katie is trying to make it in the cutthroat world of modeling. When she innocently accepts an offer to have new photos taken for her portfolio, the experience quickly turns into an unthinkable nightmare of rape, torture, and kidnapping. When a twist of fate finally frees her from her captors - beaten, battered, bruised, and broken, she will have to tap into the darkest places of the human psyche to not only survive her ordeal, but to ultimately find the strength to exact her brutal revenge."

Starring Jemma Dallender (from "Hollyoaks") doing an American accent, Joe Absolom (from "Eastenders") with an Eastern European accent, Mary Stockley (from "The Woman in Black" remake), and a load of Bulgarians who you've never heard of, Steven R. Monroe's "I Spit on Your Grave 2" is not only the underwhelming sequel in name only that you would expect, but also the rape-revenge clone that nobody asked for or needs.

Annoying handheld camerawork which refuses to stay still, more screaming than is strictly necessary, multiple black screens to show the passage of time, and bucketloads of mean-spiritedness don't add up to anything remotely enjoyable. "I Spit on Your Grave 2" is just a time-wasting mess of predictable tropes, bad acting, and generic torture porn.

As someone who makes no secret of loving "extreme horror", even I have my limits when it comes to poor quality dreck like this. I was, by turns, bored, disappointed and thoroughly dissatisfied. All the criticisms of the first "I Spit on Your Grave" remake which I defended are now totally applicable to this movie instead. It's gratuitous for the sake of being gratuitous, soulless, and not even as entertaining as "Hostel" with its clichéd xenophobia.

Although things start off realistically enough, the whole raping, drugging and kidnapping shenanigans progress into being more ridiculous than harrowing. I'm sure that there are certain "Women in Horror" bloggers who will have a field day with the rape scenes because, let's face it, they've got puritanical sticks up their asses about this kind of thing, and their whole pointless lives are dedicated to seeking out the controversial so that they can pretend to be morally superior. As it's all they have to attract readers to their hypocritical blogs anyway, I'll let them have at it this time because nothing here was able to float my boat.

"Tell me how much you want to watch my showreel from Hollyoaks!"

Jemma Dallender isn't as attractive as Sarah Butler, her vain character is instantly dislikeable, and her change from being a haughty, prudish model to a semi-feral sewer-dweller has to be some of the laziest storytelling that I've ever had the misfortune to see. Aside from dozens of lapses in logic, her incredible character changes are unintentionally comical unless this movie is supposed to be a comedy. Given that the 1978 original is one of my top ten horror-comedies, maybe this isn't meant to be taken too seriously either, but how someone frail enough to be described as weighing about as much as a "leaf dripping wet" can develop superhuman strength after only eating half of a spit-roasted pigeon and three cans of beans is still absolutely mindboggling!

Despite being extremely graphic, the gory revenge elements are equally uninventive and lack the poetic justice which would make them memorable. All the background noise and screaming which obliterates the payoff lines is beyond irritating, especially as there's no way on Earth that anyone could decipher the most important one. I replayed it ten times before giving up!

I hate to say it, but after looking forward to "I Spit on Your Grave 2" ever since I first heard about it, I can't recommend this movie to anyone.

Nazithon: Decadence and Destruction (2013)

If you're anything like me (and I sincerely hope that you aren't), your knowledge of Naziploitation probably begins and ends with "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" (1975). Give or take the sequels, there's not much in these movies for horror fans.

To say that Naziploitation has a niche audience of sado-masochists, perverts, and people who just like looking at sexy women dressed in Hugo Boss uniforms may be over-generalising, but there's definitely a stigma attached to this subgenre for all the right reasons. However, just out of curiosity, I decided to try out the new GrindhouseFlix site from Full Moon to see what this stuff was all about.

GrindhouseFlix is a nicely designed site with some truly weird and wonderful movies on it (with more due to be added every month). I found the navigation and sign-up process very easy indeed, but the best bit is that the video streaming software which they use behind the scenes works on Linux. Unlike Netflix (which is unusable on Ubuntu even though there's now an unofficial way of getting it to work using WINE), GrindhouseFlix works on any modern operating system.

I used a promo code to watch "Nazithon" for free so it would be churlish of me to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have to say that the collection of trailers and clips is hardly an in-depth documentary. Basically, it's a collection of most of the nudie bits from the Naziploitation movies. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but I wish that I'd used my freebie on a full length movie instead.

Being my usual cynical self, I'd guess that "Nazithon" is really meant to be a taster (or teaser) for some of the movies which are eventually going to be available on the site, but I still got something out of it. I made a list of anything which looked interesting including "SS Hell Camp", "Salon Kitty", and "The Damned" so that I can watch them later. I'm sorry to say that clips of "Zombie Lake" didn't impress me, but that's because I've had a gutful of zombies anyway.

The hosts of this excursion into "Decadence and Destruction" aren't natural comperes, and I couldn't tell you who either of them are in the entertainment industry without looking them up. There's nothing she can do about it now, but Michelle McGee has far too much ink for an SS officer and looks a bit silly. The fact that the real SS had no female officers anyway (as far as I know) is neither here nor there. This is a Full Moon production after all.

A brief cameo by a certain female puppet from "Puppet Master: Axis of Evil" (2010) is a treat for fans of the series, but I haven't got that far through them yet and have no idea who she is either.

If you want to watch "Nazithon" for free, just click on the banner below, sign up, and use one of the promo codes from Full Moon's Facebook page. It's only 80 minutes long and you might enjoy some of it.

Hidden in the Woods (2012)

(AKA "En las afueras de la ciudad")



"After their abusive father is jailed, two sisters being raised in a remote area of Chile find they have to answer to their uncle, a drug kingpin who wants his missing product back."

Yeah, I'm back again but only briefly. I've had another non-eventful birthday (apart from James Herbert dying on it!) last week, finally figured out how to turn off all the annoying random characters that were being added to the names of the images I uploaded to Photobucket, and I've been spending way too long playing on Twitter. Let's face it, as much fun as Twitter is, I'm primarily a blogger so I can't be confined to 140 character limits forever.

Anyway, I missed out on Patricio Valladares' "Hidden in the Woods" last year so I watched it yesterday. I can't say that I was overly impressed although it's certainly gory enough for most people and has a couple of nice-looking Chilean girls in it.

Thanks to "Hidden in the Woods", I had to look up where Chile was on the map. I always thought that Chile was an island somewhere near Portugal rather than a long, straggly country in South America so I learnt something. Geography has never been my strong point, but I had to Google where Chile was after watching this film so that I never accidentally go there. It's probably a great country, but this film makes it look like a horribly uncivilised place to be. There are too many trees and violently insane people living among them for my liking.

Siboney Lo as Ana

The real trouble with "Hidden in the Woods" though is that despite all the shock scenes and gore, it isn't so much a horror movie as just another rape-revenge, "faux-grindhouse", exploitation movie with a ludicrous crime story forced into the mix. I'm not a big fan of this subgenre and always fail to see the joke. That's assuming that this was put together as a bit of fun and not meant to be a serious drama. "Inspired by true events" doesn't seem that likely unless Chile really does contain so many rapists in its sylvan areas or have police even more useless than the ones in "Inside".

Paradoxically, acting and filming wise, "Hidden in the Woods" isn't a bad movie as such. It's obviously ragged in places, but it doesn't reek of someone trying to intentionally make a "so bad, it's good" abomination (although a few comic touches particularly during Ana's short career as a prostitute may make you wonder). I liked the gore effects and almost got into what Patricio Valladares was trying to do about two-thirds of the way through, but by then, it was too late. Homaging dozens of better horror movies (including "Spider Baby", "The Hills Have Eyes", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Frontier(s)" and even "The Woman") isn't so clever when there's hardly any originality used elsewhere.

Having willingly suspended my disbelief during the schizophrenic tonal changes and poorly realised plot, I can't easily put my finger on why the story didn't work for me except that the lead female characters were either too flat or too inconsistent and didn't really evoke any kind of sympathy. It's pretty hard to sympathise with an inbred family of hillbilly cannibals anyway even if you imagine that the girls might clean up rather nicely. The men in this film are all one-dimensional and despicably vile as well.

Carolina Escobar as Anny

Basically, "Hidden in the Woods" is a misogynistic tale of murder, rape, incest, prostitution, cannibalism, drug dealers, torture, and even more rape and murder. If any of those combined elements interest you then knock yourself out. If you want to actually feel something for the victims in a mean-spirited movie then I recommend watching something else such as "I Spit on Your Grave" or "The Last House on the Left" (either the originals or the remakes). Even "A Serbian Film" has more pathos than "Hidden in the Woods".

The "Reservoir Dogs" ending just ruins any time invested in trying to get involved with the characters, thus leaving the experience unsatisfying and forgettable. In fairness, the characters are such damaged goods that no happy ending is possible, but it still feels like a cop-out especially with the clunky twist during the end credits.

Inevitably, there is already an American remake planned which will, surprisingly, also be directed by Patricio Valladares. With a few changes, it might be okay, but I highly doubt it.

The Entity (1982)

"Supposedly based partially on a true story, a woman is tormented and sexually molested by an invisible demon."

We're on the vinegar strokes now with only two days left until Hallowe'en (although it's really three if you include the final daytime) so here's another supernatural '80s classic to get you in the mood.

Unlike most '80s movies which I've reviewed, I didn't see "The Entity" when it first came out. I'd heard about it and seen the advertisements for it in the newspaper, but it didn't really appeal to me. I think it must have been overshadowed by "Poltergeist" which had similar subject matter, and I made the wrong decision by only seeing the latter theatrically. I don't think I even saw "The Entity" for the first time until the mid-1990s when it was shown on TV.

I've made up for youthful lack of judgement now that I've seen "The Entity" half a dozen times since (including rewatching it only a couple of hours ago), but I have to say that I've never found it particularly scary. The trouble is that I enjoy "The Entity" far more as a means to ogle Barbara Hershey than for any reason. I'm sure I'm not alone in this as the exploitation aspects of "The Entity", and the manipulation of Barbara Hershey's fun bits with jets of air to resemble fingers, are likely to induce even more lecherousness from a modern audience.

Let's be honest here, most people who went to see "The Entity" at the cinema also only did so because they wanted to see Barbara Hershey naked. I can't blame them for it because she was very sexy back then. Although she's started to look as scary as Karen Black nowadays, there was something very attractive about Barbara Hershey in her prime which had very little to do with her otherwise average looks. Depending on the angle and the lighting, Barbara Hershey can appear 10 years younger or 10 years older in "The Entity" which makes her appeal a large range of the horny male population although not without some obvious confusion being caused for MILF fanatics.

Of course, Barbara Hershey used her gifts to full advantage in her role as Carla Moran with facial expressions which either make her look like a vulnerable little girl or an empowered warrior princess depending on the scene. I'm still not sure how much of Barbara Hershey's performance in "The Entity" is actually good acting rather than just the fact that I fancy her, but I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not going to write a thorough review of "The Entity" since it's over two hours long (some would say overlong), and I'm sure you are very familiar with it anyway. I will just say that I never realised until fairly recently that "The Entity" was directed by the same Sidney J. Furie who directed "Doctor Blood's Coffin" and "The Ipcress File" (1965). Neither of them are particularly great movies, but both have a cult following especially by me.

I'm sure you also know that "The Entity" was based on the book of the same name by Frank DeFelitta which, in turn, was based on the true story of Doris Bither. Obviously, quite a few dramatic liberties were taken in both the novel and the movie, but the story itself is certainly very scary if it's really true. If you want to know more, Google is your friend.

"The Entity" adds a few suggestions about incestuous thoughts and their manifestation into poltergeist activity which have no part of the "true story", but they work fairly well dramatically despite being a red herring. Just look at the way Carla touches her son as she's talking to him at the beginning of the film as it's all very icky. Is the boy's later broken arm a metaphorical warning against Oedipal masturbation? Probably not, but I'm sure somebody would think so.

90% of the male characters in "The Entity" aren't very likeable and they all represent "types". I would love to see someone write an article on the subject. Maybe I'll write one eventually since it's on my list of things to do along with one about the relationships in "Stir of Echoes". Suffice it to say that Ron Silver comes across as a bit creepy as the psychiatrist Phil Sneiderman, and Alex Rocco as Jerry Anderson (nothing to do with the late creator of "Thunderbirds") is very sketchy too.

Although I have no problem with recommending "The Entity" to all lovers of the supernatural and paranormal, it isn't without some massive flaws. Not only are the blue, lightning-like, electrical effects (as also used in "Prom Night II") quite dated, but the thumping guitar chords and drums whenever anything spooky happens gets annoying pretty fast. The last 20 minutes are way too far-fetched and do their best to ruin the atmosphere of the rest of the film plus there's no real resolution at the end. Listen carefully to the last words the entity itself speaks for a quick chuckle.

For an '80s "horror" movie, "The Entity" can seem far more like a '70s exploitation flick in places if you are in the right (or wrong) frame of mind. I'm not sure how polarising the experience will be if you watch it in company so be prepared to watch this on your own as a kind of guilty pleasure. If you want to have the willies put up you or just want to see Barbara Hershey get several invisible willies put up her, "The Entity" is the film for you.

Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)

"Ilsa is an evil Nazi warden at a death camp that conducts medical experiments. Ilsa's goal is to prove that woman can withstand more pain and suffering than men and therefore should be allowed to fight on the front lines."

Although "women in prison" dramas aren't really my thing, I had nothing better to watch so I went through all four "Ilsa" exploitation movies back to back.

Obviously the first one, "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS", is the best one and it gained some notoriety during the "video nasty" era in Britain. I'm still not completely sure if an uncut version is legally available in the UK especially as the short run of the Anchor Bay DVD release is now stupidly expensive.

For what it was, which was basically a softcore porn movie with some torture scenes, "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" kept my interest all the way through. I wouldn't say that any of the acting was particularly good but Dyanne Thorne, in spite of not being that attractive facially to me, was quite sexy in other ways.

The story itself was a bit of a boy's adventure in spite of the emphasis really being on the girls in the film. It was juvenile and exploitative but some of the effects held up well for a film made 38 years ago. The make-up was very good indeed but the hirsuteness of the women tended to take away a lot of the eroticism from their scenes as did all the screaming in agony which also accompanied most of them.

As we all know, the Nazis did far worse things in their stalags than anything depicted in this film but, if you are a little bit delicate, you might still find the torture and gore scenes shocking. Some people find films like this funny, but they have something mentally wrong with them anyway.

I'm not sure if I actually enjoyed my time with "Ilsa" as much as I was fascinated by what the filmmakers got away with back in the 1970s. The sequels ("Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks", "The Wicked Warden" and "The Tigress of Siberia") completely ignored the ending of "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS" and were just more of the same in different settings except weaker and more toned down.

Since the "Ilsa" movies are really cult exploitation fodder rather than horror per se, I'm dubious about recommending them to horror fans, but with the current dearth of any new horror releases, they are something to pass the time with instead of rewatching the classics over and over again.

Piranha 3D (2010)

"After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area's new razor-toothed residents."

There's been a lot of hatred towards "Piranha" from various online critics some of which was deserved, but, mostly, it has all been due to over reverence of Joe Dante's 1978 original. Yes, this is yet another remake unfortunately but it was far more exciting and adult than I expected.

The two things that everybody seems bent out of shape over are the use of CGI and the amount of nudity. Personally, I'm getting pretty bored with all the CGI bashing that goes on especially when, in the case of a film like this, you really have to ask what method other than computer effects could you possibly use to create shoals of predatory fish? The CGI in "Piranha" is actually pretty good and is mixed with enough gory practical effects to satisfy any of those "stuck in the 80s" fanboys. Also the sheer amount of gratuitous nudity is a bonus as far as I'm concerned. I see nothing wrong with that at all.

There are some very beautiful women in this film although most of them don't survive in that condition. With a cast that includes Elisabeth Shue, Kelly Brook, Riley Steele and Dina Meyer (briefly) among many others, there's something very wrong with anyone who doesn't enjoy the eyecandy. When I say "anyone", I do of course mean red blooded heterosexual males as I can't really comment on all the shirtless boys in this film. This probably isn't as good as "Leeches" if you are gay, but I'll leave the assessment of male eyecandy to other reviewers in the Horror Blogger Alliance before I dig myself a hole here. I think Steven R. McQueen may be quite appealing to the female and/or gay audience even though I found his character to be quite irritating.

If you don't already know that Alexandre Aja also directed "High Tension", "The Hills Have Eyes" remake and the pretty awful "Mirrors" then it won't really harm your enjoyment of "Piranha" at all. I will admit that all of his movies have been flawed, have continuity errors and seem to be increasingly weaker as his career continues but when it comes to action and gore he still knows how to put a good scene together. "Piranha" is quite exciting in places but derivative of much better films about killer fish (yes, you know the ones!). I don't really see that as a bad thing though. No horror film is without its formulaic components and action films even less so. The usual things such as a disposable black character, pointless self-sacrifice, kids disobeying authority and all that other good stuff is here and it's none the worse for it.

The actual plot of "Piranha" is also not very original and there are various homage scenes to "Jaws" and the original "Piranha". They aren't done very subtly but they are done with a newer and more exploitative eye. I've always thought of the original "Piranha" as being little more than a ripoff of "Jaws" but with smaller fish so I really didn't expect a remake to be anything else. I wasn't disappointed because I think this is a better film than anything Joe Dante has done other than "Gremlins". Rumour has it that Alexandre Aja wanted this to be something like "Gremlins for adults" anyway and he pretty much succeeded. It's not going to be thought of as a classic by any stretch of the imagination because the characterisation was far too weak and the pace was a little bit too fast overall, but it's still a damn fine "Creature Feature" all the same.

I'm tempted to say that you probably shouldn't watch "Piranha" if you are expecting it to be a 100% serious horror film but I did exactly that and really enjoyed it. You could definitely compare it unfavourably to "Tremors" even though it has much more of an "Eight Legged Freaks" feel to it. I'm not sure if the comedic moments really work as I don't have any sense of humour whatsoever but seeing hoards of annoying teenagers getting eaten by prehistoric piranhas did satisfy that dark part of my soul. I wish it had been knocked up a few levels to include small children and frail old people being eaten as well but you can never have everything you want especially when it comes to mainstream theatrical releases. At least Eli Roth and Jerry O'Connell both get their just desserts or rather the piranha do at their expense.

Anyway, "Piranha" is showing at your local cinemas right now so I recommend that you all go and see it for yourselves. You'll notice that, in spite of the full title, I didn't mention the 3D. The bottom line is that the 3D is just a gimmick which neither adds or subtracts anything from this film at all. It's well done in the few places where it occurs, but it isn't very important, and I can't even mention the best 3D scene anyway because it would spoil it for you.

"Piranha" is a fun movie, a not too bad way to waste an hour and a half of your life, and it's one of the most entertaining things I've seen this Summer. There have been some outstanding movies this year and it's not over yet but so far I would definitely put this in my top ten of 2010. I also saw "The Expendables" this week and, to be blunt, I enjoyed "Piranha" a hell of lot more.

A Serbian Film (2010)

"A former porn star accepts a role of a lifetime, not realizing that the director has murderous intentions."

Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for because you may just get it. Only a couple of days ago, I was ranting on this very blog about wanting to see a real ADULT horror movie and now director Srdjan Spasojevic has given me one with "A Serbian Film".

If you haven't heard the rumours about this uber brutal "torture porn" (never has the term been more appropriate!) then I'm not going to spoil it for you. I have deliberately not posted the trailer either though I'm sure you'll find it yourselves on YouTube without too much trouble.

But if you do know what I'm talking about then rest assured that "A Serbian Film" is everything you think it is and more. It's one of the most well made horror films that I have ever seen and makes even "Martyrs" look tame. If you are easily offended by ANYTHING then don't watch it... EVER!

The funny thing is, as a hardcore horror buff, I was able to sit through this and enjoy it without feeling the slightest twinge or any compassion for the characters whatsoever. Perhaps it's because I know that "IT'S ONLY A MOVIE!" and anything on screen is only as real as you want it to be. But maybe, just maybe, what I watched was distancing enough for me to not even care. Technically it was superb. Emotionally? Well, I didn't find it sick, scary or anything but I'm sure other people probably will.

I have noticed on various horror forums that there are so-called horror fans protesting that they are never going to watch "A Serbian Film" because it's so "disgusting". What a bunch of hypocritical wimps! They moan continuously that there is nothing new in the genre and when something does come out that will possibly "horrify" them, they all want to boycott it. What do they want? Another "Nightmare on Elm Street" remake? If you love horror then you absolutely have to see this film!

The last taboos of the torture porn subgenre have finally been broken and this is the result. In fact EVERY taboo gets broken in this movie apart from cruelty to animals and nobody wants to ever see that anyway. Even bestiality gets "an honourable mention"! I actually have a kind of empty anti-climactic feeling that now there is nowhere left to go. "A Serbian Film" has finally fulfilled every true horror fan's dream and killed it stone dead at the same time.

What next? What could possibly top this? Maybe it's time to get back into the more supernatural storylines again and away from these physical and realistic looking shocks. There's nothing to think about with movies like this. You just sit back and enjoy the ride. On the highest levels, I can see what Srdjan Spasojevic was getting at and understand the political message of Vukmir's "film within a film" but I just don't care about it. I liked it for what it was at its most superficial level and I also don't even care about how that makes me look.

I even liked the characters in this yet strangely felt not one iota of sympathy for any of them apart from almost a moment with Lejla, the porn actress who brought Milos to Vukmir in the first place. Did she get what she deserved I wonder? Yes, I think she did. There are no innocents in this film but there are some damn fine actors.

Is this the most perverse exploitation film I've ever watched though? I've seen them all - "Mum & Dad", "Salo", "Irreversible", "Murder Set Pieces", the list could go on and on right back to "I Spit on your Grave" or the banned video nasties of the 1980s. I'd say it was actually on a level with "Baise-Moi" but slicker even though the subject matter went into a much darker place. It's not the most disturbing thing I've ever seen either. "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" or the end of "Last Exit to Brooklyn" affected me much more than anything here. Not that anything I ever see on screen affects me at all once the end credits come up.

I really did enjoy "A Serbian Film". The story was good, the camerawork was good, and even the techno music pumping through it was good. I used the same word a lot there but that's the only way to describe the 104 minutes that I spent watching realistic yet still completely fake special effects, blood, gore, screaming, violence, murder, rape, paedophilia, incest, necrophilia, brutal rough sex and death. It was GOOD!