Video nasty number 28 may be 49 years old but it still feels like being punched in the face when you watch it so god only knows what audiences in 1972 felt like the first time they wat...... no watched is the wrong word, the first time they were subjected to it.
Audiences on this side of the pond never got the chance. The British Board of Film Censorship of course banned it's cinema release in 1974. 8 years later the full version snuck out into the unregulated video market and within a year it was placed on the video nasty list and history was made. 17 years later in 2000 another cinema release was banned when distributors refused to make cuts to the film's myriad of sexually violent scenes. Even Mark Kermode defended it to the Video Appeals Committee to no avail. In 2001 a DVD release was once again banned but changes in BBFC policy allowed it to hit the shelves of HMV minus 31 seconds of brutality only a year later. It took another 6 years before UK and Irish audiences could legally see what director Wes Craven set out to achieve in 1972 in all it's uncut glory. Did it deserve all the fuss?
Yes.
Most of the nasties are harmless tosh, splattered with terrible effects and worse acting. You'll laugh em off and forget them the following day. You won't with this one. It lingers. It's haunting. You'll feel shitty about yourself for sitting through it. It's a genuinely well made slice of horror, inspired by Ingmar Bergman's film The Virgin Spring, that makes the cardinal sin of being too effective because this time there's no zombies, nazi's or cannibals knocking around. Nope, this one could happen in the woods behind your house. That's where Mari and Phyllis end their short lives at the hands of Krug & company.
Two teenage girls out to celebrate Mari's 17th birthday with a concert have the bad luck to run into Krug Stillo (David Hess who repeated his role here in The House On The Edge Of The Park 8 years later) and his gang of Weasel, Sadie and Junior, when they try to score weed from Krug's son Junior. Krug and Weasel are prison escapees and real nasty pieces of shit. The next 40 minutes of the film are a litany of atrocity. Rape, sexual assault, psychological trauma, stabbings, shootings, torture and disembowelment until mercifully both girls die from their wounds. Unlike other nasties on the list it's not dwelt on for kicks, and Craven's camera mostly keeps it's distance, watching over the events with a clinical eye and more often than not cutting away from the worst moments. And as such it ends up being absolutely horrifying. In the cheaper, more tawdy nasties ropey special effects and bug eyed acting would lift you right out of the scene. Here Krug and his gang treat their victims like playthings, something to pass the time, cold & casual, quietly spoken brutality that will make you feel sick to your stomach. Then when it's all over they stand over their bodies, looking down on them sadly like kids looking at a snail who's shell they've just smashed. Somehow that's almost as disturbing as what came before.
The rest of the film concerns itself with bumbling cop scenes (the younger is played by Martin Kove of Karate Kid/Cobra Kai fame) to pad out the running time and Krug & his version of the Manson family snaking their way into Mari's family house where her parents twig what's happened and wreak bloody revenge. Genitals are bitten off(!!), throats are slashed and bad guys get chainsawed but it all pales in comparison to what came before. What came before is the reason this film was banned for so many years and it's not hard to feel surprised by the fact. If it's still this disturbing in 2021 it must have been an assault on the senses in 1972. No wonder the film's poster tagline was "Keep repeating, it's only a movie, it's only a movie, it's only a movie."
Did it deserve it's place on the nasties list. I'm not sure. It didn't exploit it's horrors like others but it never soft soaps then either. As mentioned earlier, it's the clinical approach that makes it feel so hideous.
It is worth a watch? I'd say yes but be prepared.
Next up - Love Camp 7. Another skincrawler of a watch. For entirely different reasons.
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