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.