Lamberto Bava jumps on the old torture porn train and if the obviously plastic boobs being abused during the opening credits is any indication, there wasn’t a lot of production funds to dip into. Aspiring actress Ginette Cazzoni (the very attractive Elena Bouryka) auditions for underground director Alex Scerba. She finds the earring of a missing friend while auditioning (stripping) for the man and decides to hold onto it. Alex is all about pushing the limit of art and reality, he explains this while she poses on all fours in her underwear before Alex comes out of the shadows to get up close. Bringing all the sexual energy of a Gavin Rossdale impersonator who thinks he’s actually Gavin Rossdale, the two hit it off and hook up. Sludgy guitar riffs blast as we cut to scenes of scantily clad ladies being murdered. Alex freaks out when Ginette locks him in the bathroom (she thinks it’s cute) and has a flashback to some childhood trauma. Instead of opening the door as he pleads, she stands around looking constipated as he punches through the door… they immediately go to the bone zone and have some rough sex. He still has flashbacks to a remote control car while children chant on the soundtrack and that familiar guitar blares but it just makes him bang harder. Love (or something like that but corrupted by rot) is in the air, so Alex takes her to his family estate where he creates his “art” and introduces Ginette to his mentally unwell mother (the wonderful Carla Cassola) and his producer stepfather (who she has met before when he belittled his stepson during her audition). Ginette, despite acting like a complete idiot, begins to suspect Alex has something to do with her missing friend. While she’s investigating things (breaking into the family estate and getting soaked in the rain) there’s another plot going on with some wannabe actresses gathered together to audition and getting their cutie patooties slaughtered. Many attractive women die by methods that would be completely horrible if there was any money or talent thrown into them but fortunate for us, the murders are so shoddy it completely nullifies any queasiness that should be there thanks to how exploitative and misogynistic they are. Much like his mentor Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava shows he can falter just as well in the new millennium even if popular opinion claims he was never as essential as Argento. Can’t help disagreeing with that, I hold Demons and Demons 2 in very high regard but I like my cinema more on the trashy side. This is definitely sleazy trash but it also seems to amble around in a notably unenthusiastic way, coming off like a pervert forced to do menial tasks concerning their perversions. Dumb as fuck but so deeply daft that it’s probably my favorite torture porn film.
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