d. Joe Wiezycki (1975)
Rape revenge films are always mean and tawdry: no matter how satisfying the revenge element is, there always has to be a disturbing attack to set up the story. Here,
there's a slight twist on standard exploitation mores: the victim is a teenage
boy, a runaway from an intolerable home life who meets an older guy who he
hopes will be a friend and mentor but instead turns out to be the scumbag leader of a gang of scumbag abusers.
The scumbags all take a turn with the unfortunate youngster then dump his
ripped and torn body in the middle of nowhere, where he is discovered, semi-conscious,
by a group of satanists. How lucky can one boy be?
The satanists are all young, hippy-ish and in the thrall of a super louche
smoothie called Simon, who gives orders in a slow, quiet voice whilst fiddling
with his Zapata moustache. He talks of The Master as if he were the area
manager. It's a ridiculously tough group – disciplinary infractions are
punished by execution by hanging or, if they're being generous, by burying you
up to your neck in sand and covering your hair in syrup to attract the ants.
Strangely for an unconventional cult of sexual freedom and social
anarchy they are dead set against homosexuality to the extent that poor Bobby,
even as a rape victim, is treated with suspicion and labelled a 'loser' who was
'weak' enough to 'let' himself be abused.
The only way Bobby can prove himself is in the bloodiest terms possible.
He escapes, pushes two of the pursuing Satanists into quicksand (actually a hole
filled with plaster of paris and washing up liquid), goes home, hits his mean
Dad over the head with a bottle and bundles his wicked stepsister into the boot
of his car before finding and shooting his attackers and cutting off their
heads and putting them in a bag which he presents to Simon as proof of his sincerity,
proving himself as a ‘winner’: a bright eyed boy with a bright arsed future. His
stepsister (who is more unpleasant than plain evil) is handed over to the group as a kind
of cult-warming present, to be tortured and, eventually, crucified.
It’s a remarkable film, really, despite clear technical limitations: the
sound often overlaps or gets suddenly cut off; special effects and pyrotechnics
are on show; several key scenes lose dramatic intensity by simply being too
dark. The cast is made up entirely of students, which occasionally shows, but
actually helps create a terrifying vision of a post-Manson USA where disaffected
youths are being corrupted, abused, degraded and turned to the dark side all
across the country without anyone knowing about it.
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