Ruptured Review: The Coma-Brutal Duel (Das komabrutale Duell)

Country of origin- Germany

Year of release- 1999   

Director- Heiko Fipper                

Stars- Heiko Fipper, Mike Hoffman, Stefan Hoft  


 

Normally it is customary for me to begin a review with a short synopsis of the films basic plot and structure, however this will not be possible in the case of this film. The Coma-Brutal Duel is a feature film that was made up of several short films made between 1984 and 1999, the film makers make little attempt to try and string them together using such unnecessary adages as a story, so the whole film plays out as a series of barley connected gore scenes. Considering this is a German shot-on-video splatter film of the kind that stained the back gardens of Germanic Europe red during the 80’s and 90’s, the story isn’t that important, as directors such as Olaf Ittenbach or Andreas Schnaas have proven in the past. But there is so little effort put into even creating the illusion of a plot in this one that it does slowly but steadily begin to drag. This ultimately this is the films downfall, but the film is certainly not without its good points.

I don’t think I can recall watching a film with as much ultra-violent mutilation, torture and dismemberment as The Coma-Brutal Duel, in terms of shire amount of blood splatter, this film is only rivalled by Adam Chaplin. It is actually difficult to remember parts of this film that didn’t have blood and gore in them in some way. Some of the gore we see includes foetus crushing, limb lopping and dick shooting. The film actually features a large amount of gory gun violence as well, which is actually a nice surprise as we get to see people killed by multiple headshots, and have their appendages nearly blown clean off in some cases.

This brings me on to the most bizarre feature of the film, considering the huge amount of blood gore and general bodily destruction that we see on screen you would easily assume that it has a high body count, you would be wrong. This is because everyone in this film seems to be utterly indestructible. The films attitude to its characters being maimed is basically loose an arm, bolt it back on, bleed to death, just kick your friend in the face and walk it off. Characters in this film survive multiple dismemberments, beheadings and headshots, only to get back up out of a pool of blood and just keep on going. Weather this was due to a constraint on the amount of available actors the film makers had, or they simply decided to fuck reality and just do their own thing I will never know, but I like to assume it is the latter.

The gore and splatter effects themselves vary throughout the film, likely due to the varying budgets of the shot films The Coma-Brutal Duel is made of, we see brown blood one minute, and orange blood the next. The same variation in quality can be said for the cinematography, one minute it looks like filming was being done using a broken toaster, the next it’s not nearly as bad. If you looking for some no budget, extremely gory shot-on-video German splatter along the lines of Violent Shit or Blutnacht this is a fine watch. The makers clearly had a blast filming this (as can be heard by the laughing in some scenes and the gag reel at the end), they made it with not a lot of skill, but a whole bunch of enthusiasm, and chainsaws. I am going to give this one a 6.5/10 it does drag towards the end, but for the amount of gore and bad dialog it is hard to top it.                                      

 

                         

Ruptured Review: X-Ray

Country of origin- USA

Year of release- 1981   

Director- Boaz Davidson              

Stars- Barbi Benton, Charles Lucia, Jon Van Ness   

The film follows Susan (played by the 80s Playboy model Barbi Benton) who is attending a hospital to pick up her check-up results in what Susan thinks will be an extremely short visit, she couldn’t be more wrong however. Almost as soon as Susan enters the hospital she begins to be stalked by a deranged killer dress as a surgeon. The killer begins to engineer a situation in which Susan will be trapped within the hospital, first by killing off her actual DR and then switching her test results to those of someone with a serious illness. This eventually leads to Susan being prevented from leaving and forced to undergo one of the sleaziest of full body examinations I have ever seen. The oddly forceful DR’s and nurses eventually put Susan on a ward filled with a trio of cackling old women, and treat her though she is a Broadmoor patient and not someone who they think is possibly very ill. But as the killers plan begins to culminate Susan is forced to flee for her life amongst the old hospitals corridors, chased by a surgeon who isn’t too fond of anaesthetic.

This was a originally a The Cannon Group release, so with that in mind I was fully prepared for a sensory overload of bad 80s heir, bad acting and downright insane plot lines. But to my surprise X-Ray manages to be a little more than just the typical Cannon efforts. I am not saying that X-Ray doesn’t have problems, because my goodness it does. The acting is generally atrocious, the script is completely awful and makes Susan sound like a complete moron, and there are plot holes so vast it is possible to fit an entire other film into them. For example Susan actually leaves her boyfriend in the car waiting while she pops into the hospital for "a few minutes". Amazingly, several hours go by and darkness falls before he even comes to look for her! It is problems like this it is easy to get hung up on when watching this film, but at the same time you just have to let that stuff go and enjoy the positive elements the film has to offer.

Firstly, this film does not spend 30 minutes playing with itself while trying to ‘build tension’ in a forced and false way, instead it gets right into the action within just a few minutes, soon after this the kills begin to come think and fast. The kills are plentiful and generally pretty brutal considering we see people being dowsed in acid, beheaded with circular saws and repeatedly stabbed and hung in wardrobes. However the film doesn’t show its hand when it comes to gore, although we get a fair amount of the old crimson splatter there is a distinct and disappointing lack of gore. One surprising asset the film has is its use of lighting and cinematography to make the most of the films setting, which is an actual abandoned hospital that was partially restored for the film. The various shots of the long dimly lit corridors, and large empty rooms makes the films environment all the more effective at creating natural tension and gives the film a fairly effective nightmarish vibe.

Overall this is an extremely strong slasher that could have easily been utter garbage, but by the grace of a director that understood that what the audience wants to see is an atmospheric setting with complete human carnage and just a hint of sleaze, it was saved. I would very much recommend this one especially considering it has just received a superb Blu-ray release from 88 Films, X-Ray gets a 7/10 from me.                         

Ruptured Review: SS Experiment Camp

Country of origin- Italy

Year of release- 1976   

Director- Sergio Garrone             

Stars- Mircha Carven, Paola Corazzi, Giorgio Cerioni 

The film follows a group of female political prisoners who have just been sent to, as the title suggests, SS Experiment Camp for what can only be described as bizarre and pointless sexual experiments. Some of the prisoners are forced into prostitution for the camps built in brothel which is supposed to boost morale amongst the Nazi guards, who all seem to be more interested in lying in their Y-fronts in front of one another for most of the film. The rest of the prisoners are forced to basically just have sex with Nazi’s while a predatory lesbian makes notes, and molests one of the prisoners now and again. The film quickly loses its collective shit however, when it is discovered that the purpose of these experiments is to find the most Aryan set of balls from amongst the clearly not Aryan guards, which are then chopped off only to be transplanted to the camp commandant who, as we discover, lost his on the Russian front.

This whole film is just one giant clusterfuck. Within the first four minutes of the film we see full frontal nudity, electric chair torture, urine and a furnace for dead bodies that causes people to break into interpretive dance, don’t believe me, watch it for yourself. After this stunning opening that has about as much taste as a blind 70’s pimp, we are then treated to what I can only describe as a constant barrage of pornographic failure. The film constantly tries to be titillating, but its fumbled attempts simply come off as some kind of crude Benny Hill sketch just with more pubic hair and Nazi imagery. Even the camp itself is a joke, its more like Butlins than Belzec, the prisoners can even walk around outside at night, in their “uniforms” which are little more than old bathrobes. For the most part the oddly well fed prisoners don’t even seem to mind being there, and treat it more like a hen party than a concentration camp.

It is bizarre to think that this film was, and is still today one of the most talked about Video Nasties, and even one of the most famous Nazisploitation films of this era. Putting aside the sporadic unintentional humour the film provides, this film is downright boring. It isn’t nasty enough to be as shocking and entertaining as Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS, and it isn’t as artistic as Salon Kitty or The Night Porter (which it so desperately wants to be) to be even remotely thought provoking. The director Sergio Garrone shot this back-to-back with another Nazisploitation sex film called SS Womens Camp which I thankfully haven’t had to suffer through…yet. Overall this is a very boring, slow, cheap and grotty vague rip-off of Salon Kitty, it does have moments that made me laugh but for all the wrong reasons, this one gets 3.5/10.