Ruptured Review: Soldiers Of The Damned

Country of origin- UK 

Year of release- 2015  

Director- Mark Nuttall 

Stars- Gil Darnell, Miriam Cooke, Lucas Hansen

The film follows the very war-weary Major Fleischer and his small squad of battle hardened soldiers on their retreat from the Eastern Front of 1944. Fleischer and his men are eventually tasked with a secret mission to escort a female SS scientist into an ancient and mysterious Romanian forest behind the Soviet lines to retrieve some kind of powerful artefact that has been requested by order of Himmler himself. Once in the heart of the forest Fleischer realises that something is oh so very wrong, as his men begin to vanish, and insanity begins to creep into the minds of those around him.

I went into this one not expecting a great deal to be honest, so it came as some considerable surprise that this is actually a pretty damn solid film. Firstly, Nigel Horne the films writer has actually written a pretty damn decant plot and has managed to avoid writing the oh too familiar one dimensional characters into that plot. I found both the story line and the majority of the characters to be fairly engaging and actually well crafted, this is certainly something that we do not see all that often in modern low budget horror cinema. To be honest the characters in this film are the most interesting thing about it, very rarely did feel as though I was being beaten over the head with stenotypes, and that is very refreshing.

However the film is let down by its low budget, which is sadly an inescapable problem this type of independent filmmaking has, although not overly used the poor quality CGI that is used dose take the viewer out of the film and leave them feeling a little disconnected from what’s happening on screen. Thankfully though when the CGI is used is doesn’t linger, and this allows the plot to run quite smoothly. The only other issue I had with the film was some of the acting wasn’t particularly good at times, although for the most part was either good, or decent, which is another pleasant departure from the carp that usually gets flung at low budget cinema fans.

Overall this is good psychological horror thriller that has a surprisingly decent war element. It may have its rough edges but I can overlook some of them because of how constrained by budget the filmmakers were. I think that with a larger budget this could have been a very good film if the poor CGI was replaced with practical effects. I am going to give this one 6.5/10, it’s well worth checking out. 

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Ruptured Review: American Guinea Pig: Bouquet Of Guts And Gore

 

Country of origin- USA 

Year of release- 2014  

Director- Stephen Biro 

Stars- Ashley Lynn Caputo, Caitlyn Dailey, Lilly Dickenson, Eight The Chosen One

 

Because this is still a very recent release I won’t be talking too much about its plot, or subtext, I will leave that for you to more thoroughly discover when you watch the film. Essentially the film revolves around three snuff filmmakers, who kidnap a mother and daughter and proceed to systematically, and ritualistically torture, dismember and mutilate them. To stop the women from making any noise the film makers inject them with a paralysis inducing drug, which means that the victims are awake through the whole gruesome process, but cannot cry out in pain. This is a particularly disturbing aspect of the film, as you find yourself as the viewer trying to comprehend the kind of agony these women are going through, yet they are unable to even scream.

This film is the start of a series of films in the American Guinea Pig series, which in more than name alone is a homage to the classic, and continuously infamous Japanese Guinea Pig series of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Bouquet of Guts And Gore is however a homage to one specific Guinea Pig film, and that is the masterpiece that is Flowers of Flesh And Blood (1985). This film holds numerous little homages to that classic, for example the idea that the victim would be drugged so as to be unable to scream is a key example, along with the very ritualistic dismemberment.

This film however does very effectively manage to craft its own little corner in cinema hell, without simply piggy backing on the original Japanese Guinea Pig series, and without being related in name alone. This is a commendable achievement on the part of the filmmakers. This brings me on to some the best features of the film, firstly the visual effects which is the combined work of Stephen Biro, Melanie Dean, David Hood, Marcus Koch (who is set to direct the next American Guinea Pig film), Shelby McIntyre and Chris Polidoro.

It goes without saying but all the effects in Bouquet of Guts And Gore are stunningly well done, extremely nasty and best of all, practical. This is very important as the film relies heavily upon it ability to shock with its gore. The second important feature of this film is the cinematography, which is done by the excellent Jim Van Bebber (The Manson Family, Deadbeat At Dawn). The film is shot on a grimy mix of 8mm and VHS, which gives it a distinctly grotty and unsettling feel that adds a tremendous amount to the overall atmosphere throughout the film. This atmosphere is also added to by some of the more subtle visual aesthetics, for instance the masks that the film makers wear in the film is a small but very important aspect that really does add a very creepy and almost inhuman feel to the characters.

 

 

Overall I think this is very well crafted and extremely unsettling film that pushes the envelope on gore and taste, and truly makes a solid attempted to shock its audience. I think the director/writer Stephen Biro should be very happy with what he and the other cast members manage to create here, and I thoroughly look forward to the rest of the American Guinea Pig series. This one gets 8/10 from me, check it out if you think have the stomach and tolerance for it.    

                                                        Buy the film here.

Ruptured Review: A Fucking Cruel Nightmare

Country of origin- Germany

Year of release- 2010  

Director- Sebastian Zeglarski

Stars- Raul Maximilian, Christian Nowak, Sebastian Zeglarski

The film begins with a warning that says: This film contains loads of cruel, nasty, brutal, sick and violent scenes. Furthermore there are scenes of necrophilia and sick shit that you don’t need to understand at all. Therefore it should not be seen by anyone of you.

With that rather odd but charmingly self-aware piece out of the way the film begins in earnest. The film follows an unnamed man who walks into a large house which has every interior wall covered in plastic sheeting. As the man begins to walk down the houses hallways and corridors he begins to peer into room’s that lead off the main passage way. In every room he looks into he sees a bound and gagged person usually strapped to a chain, along with a masked man in white overalls who is performing one of many horrific acts of torture, mutilation and perverted sadism on the poor unfortunate bastard in the chair. These acts include, being whipped with chains, having nails driven into a woman’s spine and cutting off a man’s penis after repeatedly stabbing his groin. But it seems that no matter how many rooms the man looks into, he doesn’t try to stop the killing, or in fact become phased by anything he sees, instead he just keeps watching the splatter unfold.

This may actually be the first film I have ever seen that has in no way, shape or form, any semblance of a plot. It’s not that this film tried to create a plot and failed, instead it just decided that it didn’t need one because, why not! And because of this blatant and complete rejection for what is a very standard aspect of film structure I have to give it credit, it was a bold move that arguably worked.

What do the film makers replace the plot with you may ask? Well that is very simple, gore, and a lot of it. Gore, more specifically splatter has more screen time in this film than literally anything else. They may not be the most well executed gore effects I have seen, but at least they were practical, fun and pretty imaginative. We also get some very grotty scenes of hardcore that feature some extremely silly looking fake penises, of the kind that we all know and, appreciate, from the work of directors like Andreas Schnaas. The film also features some rather strange moments of surrealism that seem a little out of place considering the films extremely low budget and general middle finger tone throughout. Overall, considering this is a film completely devoid of plot, character’s, acting, common sense and pretty much everything else apart from gore, it is surprisingly entertaining, and at times genuinely nasty. I think the dark grim gory world this film lives in is one that needs to be explored further, and I personally would love to see some kind of sequel. I am going to give this one a 6/10, it’s not bad for what it is, but it’s definitely not for everyone.                          

Ruptured Review: Taeter City

Country of origin- Italy

Year of release- 2012  

Director- Giulio De Santi   

Stars- Monica Munoz, Riccardo Valentini, Santiago Ortaez

The film is set in a dystopian futuristic metropolis called Taeter City. The city, and it seems the world in general has had some kind of crisis, and a despotic political figure known only as “The Authority” has gained power and begun to attempt to restore peace with an iron fist. The Authority is keeping the population in check by using special types of radio waves, known as the Zeed System. The Zeed System pre-emptively targets violent criminals and forces them to kill themselves instead of others. The Authority then use the corpses of the would be murderers as food at Taeter Burger, which is essentially The Authority’s figure head of “progress” and it’s used as a way of feeding the population.

However, the Zeed System backfires and mutates a serial killer called Trevor Covalsky, who then proceeds to mutate those around him by emitting the same radio waves that mutated him. The people that Trevor mutates become suicidal and homicidal and begin to murder, and mutilate everyone they come in contact with. The Authority send their troops, which are essentially somewhere between bikers, and Judge Dredd, to dispose of Trevor, but things quickly become apparent that Trevor will not be going quietly.

This is the second film made by Necrostorm, the company that brought us modern classics like Adam Chaplin and Hotel Inferno. But I’m sorry to say that this film doesn’t stand up against those two, and here’s why. Both Adam Chaplin and Hotel Inferno had fairly decent story line’s that ran at a good pace and allowed the film’s to gradually build momentum and coherency. This film however has a very choppy, stop-start feel to the plot, that made it feel much longer than its 80 minute run time. So all this film was left with was the typically brilliant Necrostorm gore and splatter, and a general atmosphere of slightly forced 80’s style cheesiness. Which were both fun, but they were not by any means enough to fill a whole film.

This brings me on to the gore, this has always been the main focus in Necrostom’s films, and this one is no exception. It features a mind blowing amount of extreme splatter and gore that is very well done considering the film’s low budget, and it’s over the top lurid look is very appealing to fans of old school 80’s gore fest films. Alongside the huge amount of gore there is sadly, but unavoidably some very poor CGI which considering the film makers budget and their history I can forgive, as it’s not down to laziness. Overall this is, despite its problems a fun film, to me it’s not as good as other Necrostorm work, but it’s still very much worth a watch, this one gets a 5.5/10 from me.