Murder Set Pieces - Lisa's Review

* SPOILERS*

This is a movie I hadn't heard anything about before today, so I pressed play with absolutely no knowledge of what awaited me whatsoever.

What can I say?  I was all ready to slate this movie due to its appalling lack of plot, flimsy character building and seemingly spliced together scenes, but on thinking about it outside of the box and outside of my own personal viewing preference, I can't be as critical as I would perhaps like to be.

To give some idea of what we're talking about here, Murder Set Pieces is a story of a german photographer living in Las Vegas who has a penchant for raping, torturing and murdering beautiful young women.  The movie mainly documents him picking up the women and their eventual demise.

The photographer is portrayed as an incredibly sadistic, immoral individual who it seems is driven to do what he does.  It doesn't even seem that he gets much enjoyment from his actions, but rather it's just normality for him.  We are given a tiny piece of background information on him in that his grandfather was an associate of Hitler and fought in WW2.  He has various Nazi paraphernalia around his appartment and seems to believe the germans were the good guys in the war.  This is as much information as we are given about why he is how he is or what drives him.  The movie just seems to be one long blood bath with occasional naked women thrown in.

A store robbery is played out in the movie which seems to have absolutely no relevance whatsoever.  1 woman is left alive, which I thought may tie in later, but it is never visited again, making me wonder what the point was... It is slightly humorous which is saying something in the midst of this movie, a little light relief is sorely needed.  This scene shows us that he is willing to kill anyone for pretty much no reason, again adding to my notion that he doesn't do what he does for kicks or fun, but simply because he wants to.

There is also the murder of a child in the movie, which is definately a taboo, but thankfully this isn't strung out and no torture or abuse scene is included here.  I think I'd have been reaching for the remote if much dwelling was done.  Again, I wasn't sure of the relevance of this scene, apart from to make him even more repugnant.....

Now that the negatives are over, I will say the effects in this movie are excellent.  The blood is one of the most realistic I've seen and the murder scenes look exactly like you would imagine them to be in reality.   There is no theatrics, no case of overkill (no pun intended).  This does honestly feel like you're watching these horrible scenes for real.  Specifically one scene in a bath with a young woman who is almost drowned and then has her throat cut comes to mind.  I would imagine the violent dunking she undergoes left quite a mark with her.  I know I cringed watching it, not because I was enthralled with the story (because there isn't one!), but because I felt for the poor actress playing the role.

I will say all the deaths, rapes and tortures in this movie are horrible.  They are remarkably well put together and believable, I will give the movie makers that much.  However the one scene which disturbed me the most about this movie was a scene including a young toddler.  The Photographer lifts him from his cot with his hands covered in blood and holds him up to examine him.  Inwardly my heart was thumping... as a mother of a 2 year old, I can't bear to see anything happen to a child in a movie, but with the way this movie was going, I didn't even want to think where we could be going with this one.  Thankfully he doesn't harm the baby and we see him toddle down a corrider crying, covered in blood to his dead mother, where he puts his head on her chest.  The scene is heartbreaking.  I found it very difficult to deal with, both from an emotional viewpoint of being a mother, but mainly as this child was clearly very upset and distraught and was of much too young an age to be 'acting'.  He was flailing around and pulling away from the actor, clearly wanting to get away from him, clearly frightened and crying hysterically for real.  I didn't find it appropriate that they put such a young child through this experience for entertainment purposes.  Ok, so it's a movie, it isn't real, but the fear coming from that poor child was definately real!

After watching several deaths and rapes, I just felt like this was a movie for gorehounds who don't care for a story at all.  It did however occur to me, that this lack of plot, storyline or explanation is quite possibly due to wanting to place us inside the head of the killer.  This guy didn't give anything much thought and killed for killings sake.  The movie definately succeeded in giving us an insight into the mind of such a person and it most definately isn't somewhere I liked visiting.

So in retrospect, can I slate the movie because it doesn't fit a certain stereotype and it wasn't necessarilly my type of thing?  Most probably not.

Oh I neglected to say, the soundtrack is excellent.  Its very industrial/rocky and I found myself wondering what the tracks were all the way through as I loved them.

I will end by saying, I didn't enjoy this movie.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I know to watch for enjoyment purposes, but I will say, I think it achieves what it sets out to and it does contain some of the most realistic murders I have personally ever seen.   Most people would do well to avoid this one, but I can't give it an 'Avoid' tag, as certain aspects of the movie were very well done and it will surely appeal to some people.

The Last House on Dead End Street - Will's Review

This is going to be short.

I was even considering just putting the word "shit" in massive letters, and leaving it at that but if anyone actually reads these things, they deserve better...



Guy gets out of jail, decides he wants to make exciting new movies, teams up with a washed out porn-director and a bunch of weirdos and makes snuff films. That's it. That's the whole movie.

It's incredibly non-linear (apparently cut down and shuffled from its original edit) and very badly dubbed - seriously, the worst dubbing I've ever seen (inexplicably, given that it was already in English).

The gore that we do see is unconvincing but most of it (and this is a movie about making snuff films, remember) happens off screen.

It tries its best to build an atmosphere, and with a better... Everything else, may have succeeded.

I will say this for it though; it's probably the only time you'll see a man being forced to fellatiate a deer's foot as it hangs from the fly of a topless woman's jeans.

I think I've made this sound more interesting that it is...

Week 99: The Last House on Dead End Street

Alternate Titles : Fun House, The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell 

Year: 1973 (made) 1977 (released) 

Reviews / Author Comments due: 13/04/2013

Reason for Inclusion: It's believed that this film was intended to be placed on the DPP list but, thanks to it's alternate title, Tobe Hooper's "The Funhouse" was accidentally put on the list on its behalf.

BBFC Status: Passed uncut in 2006

More Info: Wikipedia, IMDB

DVD: LINK

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Feel free to use the comments section of this post to add your own reviews and thoughts about this movie.

Who Can Kill a Child - Will's Review

This weeks movie opens with 8 minutes of disturbing real-life footage (concentration camps, victims of Korean and Vietnam wars ect. ) all captioned to remind us how badly children suffer during such things. Grim stuff.

Then we cut to a happy beach scene... Where a dead woman washes ashore - having apparently been stabbed repeatedly, including in her thighs.

This is clearly the feel-good family movie of the year!


Before long we meet out protagonists, holidaying English couple Tom and Evelyn, who have left their first 2 kids at home (the 3rd is still in Evelyn's belly) in order to visit a small island that Tom visited as a child. This island is so small it isn't on the map, yet our stars have decided to leave both the hiring of a boat, and indeed clarifying the exact location of the island, until they arrive at the nearest coastal town in mainland Spain.

You'd think that having gone to the effort of having them spend a day in said town, there would be some kind of payoff to relying on a stranger to point to the bit of the map that should contain the island; but, no, they get there just fine.

Upon arrival the town appears to be deserted but for a handful of children, and it isn't long before we find out why - the children seem to have taken a homicidal dislike to adults.

For some reason, long after Tom starts to realise what is going on, he continues to insist to his wife that the adults have probably just gone to a festival at the next town over, and that everything is fine; Unfathomably, even having seen a girl kill an old man, and then watching the local children use the body as a piñata, he still has his pregnant wife stay the night!

Eventually, they realise that they really are going to have to leave, for reasons I cannot fathom it is only then that they become a target for the children.

The title if the movie is a question asked within the narrative... Apparently the reason the children have been so successful in their adultcide is because no-one can bring themselves to kill a child.

Luckily, Tom is a little more pragmatic than the natives, and has no problem offing the little fuckers once it becomes obvious that its then or him. Evelyn, in the other hand, had me screaming abuse at the screen on more than one occasion.

Sadly, there's also a supernatural element that the film REALLY didn't need - upon finding a small group of
'Normal' children, we see that the desire to kill adults can be passed on by making eye contact (which isn't even the silliest example of the 'infection' spreading in the movie).

At times, I was reminded of the Village / Children of the Damned movies, so it wasn't a shock to see that this movie has also been released as 'Island of the Damned'

I did enjoy the movie, particularly the rather dark ending (the dramatic ending, not the 'sting' which relies too much on the supernatural element) but it does have some fairly major faults; that said, the acting is solid enough, and I did have fun watching it, therefore I will give this one a 'Will Recommends' ... But only just.

WEEK 98 - Who Can Kill a Child?

Alternate Titles : Island of Death, Island of the Damned, Death is Child's Play, Would You kill a Child?, The Hex Massacre, Trapped

Year: 1976
Reviews / Author Comments due: 6/04/2013

Reason for Inclusion: "Island of Death" was at one point removed (then re-added) to the DPP list. It is believed that it was removed after someone watched this movie (See "Alternate Titles" above) and was re-added once the mistake was realised. It is possible though, that this film was briefly on the DPP list, then removed, then the other Island of Death added.Because the DPP list was not required to be explained or defended, we have no way of knowing for sure if this movie was ever a Video Nasty.

BBFC Status: Passed uncut in 2011

More Info: Wikipedia, IMDB

DVD: LINK

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Feel free to use the comments section of this post to add your own reviews and thoughts about this movie.