Gutterballs (2008)

GutterBalls (2008)

Written and Directed by Ryan Nicholson

There is obviously talent working behind the camera on this movie, too bad its not used to its fullest extent. The film starts off with some annoying ( and gosh do I mean annoying) teens who are on opposing bowling teams, bowling on a league night. After some heated arguments there is a brutal rape that leads to following night where the members of each team are equally brutally murdered one by one. The killer wears a bowling bag over his head.

Is it new?

No.

Should people see it?

Maybe…. It’ll piss a lot of average viewers.

However, I feel I may have not been prepared for some of the things that happen, first off there is graphic nudity in this film, borderline x, and that is only the start of things. I still had fun watching it though, each murder scene out doing the other in grotesque carnarge you can only enjoy in low fi horror films like this. Its just for me its too inspired by better movies, namely Maniac with Joe Spano. The other thing is I can tell the makers want to make a film that is a product of its time, it has the feel of a seventies film for sure, films like Prowler, Thriller and Forced Entry come to mind as far as the inspiration. But the film is a confused kaleidoscope of eras, characters have outrageously short skirts from the seventies, there are also eighties punks and even straight laced early nineties kids.

The actors are very bad, the girls not so bad to look at, but the guys dialogue is their weakest link. All of the leads are really over the top and horrible, none of them really believable. Steve has to at least say fuck over three hundred times in this film. One character tells another her ‘tits defy gravity’…ok….are they inverted? Nah… But to a degree I think it’s a statement of being completely over the top with every category, sex, language and violence are all turned up to eleven.

The film does have good qualities from a film makers perspective, great camera work, good editing, awesome lighting, creative use of soundtrack and wildy inventive death scenes. The death scenes are statements of breaking taboo’s in horror, our first murder scene is a disgusting one that is true horror porn. You won’t believe it written, but its death by 69…yeah…its pretty shocking. Another involves bowling pins going in and out of places they don’t belong and a Trannsexual has his dick cut in half. However there is another attempt at keeping it real, a character practices safe sex! But is still killed. Some other deaths are shot gun decapitation, head crushing, shoe lace strangulation and a bowling ball wax machine used to its best extent. The gore scenes are sick and twisted, but its what keeps you watching. One scene I really thought was well done was a bowling pin bludgeoning that made you feel the impact with the film strip coming off sync with the frame with each hit.

However, starting the film off with a rape scene is just uncool with me, I know the message is to push buttons, but it becomes gross and disgusting near the end of its eight minutes…but that’s the no holds barred notion. It may set a different expectation but its still deplorably even in the over the topness of gross out humor laced horror… its funny in spots….

On a whole, yeah this is an ok movie, especially for the curious crowd trying to find the next shocking movie, we don’t really have the culture in the eighties when films like ‘Last House on the Left’ ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ ‘House at the Edge of the Park’ were being released to infamy. This film could be infamous, but infamy is created with wide release and public knowledge. I just feel this one is a cheap imitation of better movies, namely early eighties flick ‘Intruder’ about people stuck in a grocery store. But the tone feels like an Abel Ferrera flick, grainy like Ms. 45. it’s a slasher film that is redundant, but my god is it gory. The end blood bath is a glorious time for us gore hounds… but if you’re a parent trying to torment your children on Halloween, or scare them…you’ll probably get them to not try any hasty advanced sexual acts that can lead to death.

But you also might be better off with classics.

This should make Uncle Lloyd Kaufman happy.