Fatal Exposure

What a fun little surprise! Not a good movie, mind you, but a fun surprise. Judging by the mundane title and cliched cover image, I was expecting a forgettable erotic thriller about a hunky photographer murdering his models after bedding them. And that's exactly what it is, in fact, but there's more! There's plenty of absurd gooey gore, AND "Fatal Exposure" is also a Jack-the-Rippersploitation flick!

A what? Well, one of the coolest short-lived hypes of 80s slasher horror was the "celebration" of 100 years since Jack the Ripper's infamous and still unresolved killing spree in Whitechapel, London. Between 1986 and 1989, there suddenly emerged a number of flicks that either revolved around the actual Ripper case or a copycat killer, or much sillier tales that somehow teleported the real Jack to a present-day setting! In the latter category, you'll find hugely amusing B-movies like "Terror at London Bridge", "Jack's Back", and thus also "Fatal Exposure".

Good-looking and smooth-talking Blake Bahner stars as Jack Ripperton (!); - playboy, photographer and great-grandson of Jack the Ripper who settled in a quiet God-fearing community where the local sheriff challenges you to a drinking contest and where Bible fanatics secretly dream about kinky sex games. Jack murders his models in imaginatively gruesome ways and drinks their blood, but simultaneously he also hopes to find the perfect woman to bear him a son. "Fatal Exposure" simply offers too much fun in the gore & sleaze departments to whine about the shortcomings! How can you not love a twisted little flick that features acid-kills, rotary saw dismemberment, shotgun blasts, axe decapitations, and plenty of gratuitous T&A?

Fatal Exposure was a sadly lacking film about a photographer that captures models, photographs them and kills them. He kills a lady by cutting off her arms and legs!! Why doesn't he just show her how much of the $2.50 the actors make is being taken away due to high amounts of unpopularity. Although Fatal Exposure has no real stars in it, neither did the Blair Witch Project and look at those ratings. If you want to see a bunch of cheap Special FX with no class, rent this movie. But I wouldn't waste my $2.00 on it.

I've been looking for Fatal Exposure aka Mangled Alive for around 15 years. I was lucky enough to find it in a VHS box for another film with the Fatal Exposure name. This film follows the murderous exploits of Jack T. Rippington descendant of the original Jack the Ripper. He plays a photographer who bumps off extremely stupid victims in order to drink their blood to increase his sexual potency! Filled with loads of stupid characters to get bumped, cheap but fun HG Lewis style gore and a good amount of nudity from non-ugly women, this is a fun film for fans of 80's SOV type flicks or cheap slashers. The gore fx are decent with the ending scene being a highlight. Gorehounds should go into this expecting a decent amount of gore scenes spread throughout and not thinking it'll be a Blood Pigs or Zombie 90 ultra-gorefest. The over-the-top performance of Blake Bahner as Jack T. Rippington is another highlight. It's a decent enough made film for this budget level without horrible sound that plagues some of these films. A real hidden gem for fans of such cheap gore films as The Soultangler, Revenge of the Living Zombies, 555, Goremet Zombie Chef from Hell, Demon Queen, etc...

Jack T. Ripperton, the comically named descendant of Jack the Ripper, practices snuff photography and drinks the blood of his victims to stay virile. One of his intended victims looks so much like his great great grandmother that he spares her, makes love to her, and turns her into an unwitting accomplice.

The story doesn't sound that bad but the movie concentrates on the killing scenes so much that there isn't much else to it. It's seriously just one death scene after another with very little else. If that's your thing, you'll love this. Oh, plenty of nudity, too.

I love horror movies, but when they're more about showing agonizing death scenes in detail than plot then they're not really my thing.

What kept me going were the surprisingly good performances and makeup effects for such an obviously low budget movie! And it was even well shot! I looked up the director and he's a cinematographer, so I guess there's no surprise there.

For fans of B-horror, this is definitely worth a watch.

I admit I am a fan of cheesy B-Movies, Fatal Exposure has okay blood/gore effects for a low-budget goremeister. Blake Bahner does a boyishly seductive killer photographer whose subjects are to die for-literally! Ena Henderson and the suppporting cast do an okay if hammy job. All in all, I kinda liked it.