Final entry in Hugh Gallagher’s unrivaled shot-on-analog-video gore trilogy is the lo-fi masterpiece of the whole “American Nekromantik”. Taking nothing away from the prior outings (1993’s spellbinding trash odyssey and Ghetty Chasun powerhouse showpiece Gorotica and 1990’s Gorgasm which is equally magical but lacking the intensity that Ghetty Chasun brought to everything), Gore Whore adds a level of otherworldliness-on-shoestring-budget that I just adore. Sadly, we had to trade Ghetty Chasun in the deal but I’ll try to look past it. Luckily, Audrey Street is another fearless female lead and makes the transition much easier. Dr. Whitman has been robbed of his breakthrough formula and pertinent documents by his lab assistant. Private dick (and someone I wouldn’t trust with taking out the garbage) Chase Barr (beloved Brady Debussey who nearly stole the show in Gorotica and played Helvis himself in Damselvis, Daughter of Helvis) is hired by the doctor to get his shit back. Well, Barr gets to investigating and discovers that the assistant is actually a dead whore and the formula is a regenerating agent that this undead lady of the night needs to keep her corpse-ass alive. The formula (injected with a dildo attachment to the large syringe into… well, you know where) doesn’t work on its own, it also necessitates the consumption of human blood. Luckily, our undead hooker knows where to find plenty of dopes willing to let her into their homes for a quick bang session, so there’s more than a couple cadavers piling up. Desperate to hold onto the only thing keeping her scrambling about the earth, Dawn reanimates the dead to attack the man tracking her down. An opening erotic dance for a bored scuzzball by a pencil-thin girl ends with his penis being bitten off and blood spraying everywhere. This would be horrifying if we didn’t know it was inevitable. She manages to chew his head off too but that’s the fate of any dope dumb enough to take a mysterious woman to bed in these flicks. This is the world Gallagher has built for us and we’re stuck for as long as he decides. Audio and visual remains in the barrel where it should be, and the loosest definition of “hero” is fitted nicely to our long-haired gumshoe with a troubled past. Collateral damage, trauma to the genitals and an aimless nightmare scenario is perfectly acceptable on this forbidden journey through a world we shouldn’t be a part of. A severed head shouting orders to its headless body (brought to terrible life by green screen magic) is just one pit stop on this journey. Our hero punting the severed head into a pond is the perfect punchline. An empty club and a musical trio dishing out awful comedy before dying at Dawn’s hands and getting resurrected serves as a climax that feels more offensive than an anti-climax, it feels like a purposeful “fuck you” to the audience but I don’t see how it could have gone any other way. There’s still the “big” reveal to come but that seems more like an excuse to see the doctor’s hairy ass and to throw in an axe dismemberment. Again, I don’t think we should have expected anything different. Gallagher has a way of making all his films feel like the back page personals of a questionable porno magazine imagined to visual life by the addled brain of a sociopathic sex pest. There is nothing like it and if you can get comfortable with the diseased wavelength the whole thing operates on, you’ll find yourself in the wrong kind of paradise. In the span of time between this final outing and his first piece of the unconnected trilogy, Gallagher didn’t so much grow as a filmmaker as he did fester. There’s almost nothing like it.
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