Nastiness Rating:
Directed by: Ruggero Deodato
Written by: Gianfranco Clerici/Vincenzo Mannino
The movie starts off with David A Hess (Krug from the FAR superior Last House On The Left) killing a girl in her car after running her off the road in his cab.
By the way, so identified is Hess with his role of Krug that I really didn’t care what his name was in this movie. He was still Krug. Same character. So he shall, from now on, be known as Krug.
Krug and his buddy, Ricky (Fred Schneider, I mean, Giovanni Lombardo Radice), get picked up by a couple of richies who need help with their car. They all end up going together to the party that the richies were going to. Krug takes his straight razor.
It takes a while to figure out who’s getting played here because, not only are Krug and Ricky complete assholes who are just looking for a fight, but the rich kids are trying to cheat Ricky out of money at a rigged poker game. And one girl is constantly coming on to and rejecting Krug, but they’re just generally enjoying making fun of these guys and humiliating them.
Eventually, (part of) the truth comes out and all hell breaks loose with Krug beating the two guys up and all of the girls being sexually abused.
Really, the movie is a cross between Deodato’s own Cannibal Holocaust and Last House On The Left. A bunch of rich assholes take advantage of a couple of “natives” and they get their just desserts. Of course, in Cannibal Holocaust, we wanted the white kids to die. They were fucking obnoxious, terrible rapists. These rich kids get it far worse than they actually deserve. Krug and Ricky are, of course, just like the characters in Last House. Krug is the leader and Ricky is the follower who does whatever his “big brother” says…even if he doesn’t agree with it.
Deodato obviously is not so into women. The guys are beaten, but the women are absolutely humiliated. Stripped, raped, tortured and, through it all, told that they’re whores. All the time, of course, their bodies are lovingly shot by Deodato and his DP. Gross.
This doesn’t mean that the men get off scott free. One kid is beaten and constantly called “faggot” (we’ll call him Straw Dog) and the other is beaten and tied up under a table.
The whole point of this movie seems to be the humiliation of the women and emasculation of the men. I don’t know if Deodato was trying to prove something about the worst things that you can do to people, but the women really do seem to get the worst of it. Two of them even end up liking it! Fuck this guy!
There is, of course, a castration scene. This time, though, it done with a gun and not shown explicitly, surprisingly enough.
There’s blood and a bit of gore, but really this is a Nasty for the same reason that Fight For Your Life is a Nasty. It’s just fucking disturbing. I guess it was made well enough, but I can’t say that anyone should see it.
Again, I say: Fuck this guy.
LOW POINT: The rape scene that’s shot like a love scene. “No, no. Leave the stockings on.” Seriously? The whole time I kept hoping that the girl had vagina dentate. No such luck, though. She ended up liking it. We’re supposed to feel better when, at the end she’s asked, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” She says, “It was disgusting!” ACK!!!