hemical Burn Entertainment distributes a va- riety of low-budget independent films. So let’s have a look at a trio of titles from the Horror & Gore section of their catalogue.
The company’s latest release is a British film
called Bane, written, directed and produced by James Eaves. The plot draws heavily from ’00s tor- ture porn, namely Saw (2004), Hostel (2005), The Descent (2005) and Martyrs (2008). Four women are brought into a cinder-block room by a phalanx of men in hazmat suits who inject them with a drug that renders them unconscious. They wake up on army cots in a cell consisting of electrified industrial fencing draped in translucent plastic sheeting, with no memory of who they are or why they’re there. By day, they’re hooked up to electrodes while psychologi- cally tortured by the sadistic Dr. Murdoch. By night, they’re visited one at a time by The Surgeon, an enigma in blood- spattered surgical garb who carves numbers into their tor- sos – the time at which he will return to kill them. Mean- while, a nightmarish creature with a face of flailing tenta-
cles lurks within the complex. The Final Girl escapes her cell and discovers the real reason for these ex- periments. Bane plods well-trodden ground, but there’s an
earnestness and sense of craft that runs through the production, from the performances to the hi-def cin- ematography, score and minimalist production de- sign. A pair of entertaining third act twists take the story in a new, albeit clumsy, direction, and the whole thing is punctuated by a lot of blood and gore gags that include gashing, slash- ing, exploding eyeballs and a well-de- served cranial crush. Breaking Glass recently released
Crowbar (a.k.a. Crowbar: The Killings Of Wendell Graves), a film that writer/director Scott Phillips states, in one of the extras, has a horror side and an art house side that he feels makes it unique. In truth, it’s really just a pretty slasher. In the opening scene, a young boy witnesses his parents being
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Bane
murdered in their home by a maniac clad in a blood- soaked apron and a welding helmet. After the title se- quence, a young couple, Alex (Michael Ray Park) and Ronnie (Natasha Timpani), move into the house. That night, while Alex is at work, Ronnie has a housewarming party with her two best friends, who are promptly slaughtered by the same masked ma- rauder. The following day, Alex and Ron- nie look up the history of the house and learn that the boy who survived has vowed to exact revenge on anyone who violates his parents’ home again. Their investigation leads to an inevitable con- frontation with the killer. The film is a mash-up of Halloween
and Psycho, from plot points to musical cues. The score is unusual for a film of this budget though, comprised primarily of haunting classical piano and small- ensemble chamber music. Perform- ances from the supporting cast are decidedly quirky and sinister, and the signature crowbar killings bookending the film are appropriately juicy, includ- ing a few caved-in foreheads and vari- ous impalings.
Rounding out our trio is Charles Petersen’s The
Eleventh Aggression – the one that definitely goes for the nasty here, but a lack of bucks and balls some-
what undermine it. Starting with a scene that could have been a jaw-dropper, an enraged man ties a woman upside down between two trees while railing on about her sleeping with someone else. He slits open the crotch of her jeans, rams a funnel into her vagina, filling her innards with drain cleaner. The police then find her right side up, dead. Alas, not enough is shown to grant the scene any impact. But it does get better. Two detectives find themselves on
the trail of a serial killer who is re- acting violently to everyday aggra- vations. As the murders continue, the
social faux pas that prompt them become ever slighter while the killings become more vicious. A bum is flayed alive for attempting to rob the maniac, and he has fun with a couple, who cut him off on the highway while engaging in oral sex, by shoving the man’s severed penis down her throat and lopping off her head. The latter scene would have been much more disturbing if the effects were not so cheap and rudimentary. The focus of the film, though, is the investigation and the troubled per- sonal lives of the two cops, which culminates in an admittedly nifty twist ending. If these titles sound like your kind of gory low-
budget fun, visit chemicalburn.org for the company’s complete catalogue.