Denise_Noe

Split Second gives old-style film noir overtones to its story by having protagonist Liz Kelly give voiceover narration. She waits tables in a seedy bar, often fighting off male advances, sometimes succumbing to them. Her tone is world weary and depressed as she tells how she wants to move out but has trouble raising money from poor tips. Banjo, a fellow she had a tryst with, seeks another. "Just because we got friendly once doesn't mean I care to make a habit of it," she rebuffs. He won't take the hint until suddenly a gun is at his neck. Liz likes being fought over and even more likes having someone come to the rescue. She accepts a date with rescuer Dixon. Balding and older, he owns a logging company. It's a whirlwind courtship and she is soon his wife. A woman in the crude rough man's world of loggers, she thinks at first she could be happy because the house is big and Dixon's money is good. However, she soon finds herself plagued by boredom. "The whole marriage thing had worn thin in record time," she thinks. Handsome and buffed young Ted looks for a logging job. "A cure for boredom just showed up at the door." But her cure for boredom arouses her husband's jealousy, then his violence, and then the horrible revenge of the perverse loggers. The whole thing is quite nasty but set off by the good looks of Michelle Johnson and Ted Wirth. It belongs in "Tales from the Crypt."

A group of lively college kids are on break, dancing and romancing and generally fooling around when they are hunted down by burly, menacing Edgar (Patrick Cox) who shoots them full of tranquilizers. The young people awake chained in horse stalls. These would-be yuppies realize that they are now the property of human trafficker Wayne (John Still). With his white hair and beard and roly poly big belly, Wayne appears a kind of perversely demonic Santa Claus. More concretely, he comes across as a psychopathic business executive when he announces to the young people in the stalls, "You are my property!" The ruthless capitalist aspect is underlined when he is depicted at his desk, filling out forms and keeping track of funds like any efficient executive. But he is as ruthless as they come as poor Josh (Scott Fletcher) soon discovers. Letting out a series of loud cries at being chained, he faces Wayne's wrath, which is, of course, expressed in torture and mutilation.

The primary protagonists of the film are brother and sister Nick (Christian Walker) and Erin (Jeanette Comans). Nick is the youth with, as Wayne notes, "spirit," who desperately seeks a way out of enslavement, Erin is the sister of whom he is protective and who, in her turn, is protective of her friend Vicky (Scarlet Williams), the first to be toyed with by Edgar, and the first to be sold. Almost as striking as a torture or mutilation scene is the scene in which this pretty twenty-something female is locked inside a wooden box with the words "Live Animal" on it. We are told she is to be shipped overseas where she will be imprisoned in a brothel.

Perhaps the most interesting character is Kathy (Stacy Still) who is not one of the college kids but whom they are surprised find already there in one of the stalls. She appears to have been kidnapped some prior but has not been sold and instead gone insane from the sheer boredom of her surroundings. She spends her days reciting children's nursery rhymes, repeating phrases she hears from other people, and talking ambiguously about a husband who might be about to rescue her.

Directed by Jeremy Benson, with a screenplay he co-wrote with Mark Williams, "Live Animals" is a fast-paced, interestingly nasty piece of work. I enjoyed watching as these unfortunate young people sought so desperately to find a way out of their horrifying situation and fight against their heartless captors. Although others have faulted the acting, I found it satisfactory, particularly by John Still, Stacy Still, and and Christian Walker - the three performers who really count. A lot of blood is splattered around and the cinematography gives the whole thing an appropriately gritty and sleazy look to it. There is a startling twist toward the end. Does it make sense? Maybe. Maybe not. But it hardly matters because it ramps up the horror and fits perfectly in a film that wallows in the grisly.