Slaughter Studios
DVD
*
Directed by
Brian Katkin
Writing credits
Dan Acre
John Huckert
Nicolas Read .... Kevin
Amy Shelton-White .... Madigan
Tara Killian .... Portia
Peter Stanovich .... Steve
Anand Chulani .... Ollie
Eva Frajko .... Trisha
Matthew J. Roseman .... Gary
Darren Reiher .... Chad Daniels
Laura Otis .... Rebecca
Jamie Akhavi .... Receptionist
Cheryl Dent .... Girl in Orange
Lorissa McComas .... Candace
R
90 min
A brief editorial message before I begin this column.
Roger Corman: For the love of God and cinema, retire!
Now...
You were never that good to begin with and time has not improved your work. I find your work to be comparable to receiving a root canal from a topless dentist. Lots of jiggling, but even so, very unpleasant.
Thank you.
We begin this truly awful schlockfest with a montage of poorly produced black-and-white films followed by a poorly produced Quentin Tarantino lookalike describing the first horror movie he ever saw and how it made him want to be a filmmaker. We immediately segue into a poorly produced Dom DeLuise lookalike producing a poorly produced black-and-white gangster film in which one of the characters actually dies as our director, Roman Grocer, screams that "no one dies like that in a Roman Grocer film!" which makes it all the more ironic that he actually DID die.
This film was the last produced at Slaughter Studios, where our Tarantino lookalike hatches a plan--to produce his OWN film in the nine hours before Slaughter is demolished.
His magnum opus? Naughty Sex Kittens Versus the Giant Preying Mantis, which, ironically, is a fair description of Roger Corman's ENTIRE BODY OF WORK - mostly naked women taking on some kind of monster or monsters. The monster is either a man in poor costume or a giant puppet.
The lone challenge to the production of this cultural phenomenon in the making is one security guard who makes his rounds five minutes before every hour. Meaning that the party needs to shoot this in fifty-five minute increments. And the party itself is a pretty big hindrance. Everyone is at best an amateur, and at worst, have a number of emotional and mental problems.
Naughty Sex Kittens is populated by idiots, divas, mental cases, and obsessive personalities... oh, and this one chick who's pathologically into the guy who died in the last film Slaughter Studios ever produced.
To distract us from the true awfulness of the film, the 'sex kittens' get into costume--essentially, lingerie. Okay, Roger...you've bought yourself some time with every male reviewer on earth. The ladies, however, are sharpening their ballpoints and are ready to turn you into a pincushion. Better do SOMETHING...and quick!
Roger's tactic? To pray every single reviewer who takes on Slaughter Studios is either a straight guy or a lesbian.
The one thing you can say for Roger is that once he decides on a tactic, he will ride it like Dr. Strangelove rode the falling nuke. He will ride it into the very heart of Hell. Thus, every fifteen, twenty minutes, give or take, Roger throws out another scene involving nude or nearly nude women. Shower scenes, lesbian love scenes, lesbian SHOWER love scenes...you call it. Chances are, unless you're a total pervert, Roger's got it in here.
However, I've got to give Roger a little credit. The comedic segments of the film, unintentional or otherwise, are very well done. For instance, one of our characters is going over his lines backstage, and frequently repeated "Run! There's something behind you!" in a variety of voice patterns. We then discover that there IS actually something behind him. Ironic, no?
Irony is obviously Roger's lone joke, and thus he plays it up like no tomorrow, infusing it into nearly every comedic bit he lets fly.
These minor comedic plusses, though, are scarcely enough to overcome a string of minuses the size of buildings - minuses like marginal acting, poor scripting, and the sheer bottom-plumbing depth of the low-budgetness. Everything about this movie screams low-budget. This is the kind of movie that makes you wonder: What was the choice here - payroll for the actors, or Chinese food for the crew? If you've ever wanted to see a dummy stuffed with fake blood die horribly, then Slaughter Studios is just the place to do it. The death scenes are horrible, and not just because of the gore factor. They are simply POORLY DONE. They start with a shot of the actor / actress, the murder implement coming at the camera, and in that instant they've obviously yelled: "Cut! Bring in the dummy!" Hardly a seamless operation. When you can see the zipper on the monster costume, you know it's badly done.
The ending is a roaring preposterousness, making the innocuous secondary throwaway character the KILLER.
Slaughter Studios is the kind of movie that makes me wonder why the cinema was even invented if it was going to crap out to THIS tripe. I reiterate my earlier editorial:
Roger Corman, out of the film business NOW, please!
|
Some of our content may be related to gambling.    |