August Underground's Penance

The shock film, August Underground's Penance, is the pinnacle of holiday filth. I suggest using your Christmas stockings once you run out of barf bags, you'll definitely need them for this movie! T'is the season for child molesting and baby killing! The August Underground trilogy is a collection of snuff footage filmed by the murderers, one male and one female, themselves. The first August Underground is disturbing in the way that it depicts a snuff film so accurately. August Underground's Mordum, as far as I am concerned, is the most disgusting and upsetting movie ever made. So what does the latest installment have to offer? Pure unabashed gore! Blood, guts, intestines, nails through the head, disembowelment, cigarette burns, limb sawing and heads being opened like Christmas presents! Thanks to the special features section in Penance we learn that real pig intestines were used in the film making the actors sick to their stomachs! Yes, these poor psychopaths actually got immortalized vomiting nearly constantly during the taping. The effects in this gore-fest are so realistic that the Toe Tag crew decided to use a better quality camera then in their previous movies to show off their skills and attention to detail. This film shows the character development of the killers and adds that touch of humanity to contribute to the realism to this movie. And, while Penance may not be as disgusting as Mordum, it does manage to supply a generous amount of its own sickness to the trilogy.

Which brings us to the only thing worse than Christmas carolers; home invaders! Focus on a standard suburban family. Let's call them the Cleavers. Each of the Cleaver family is beaten, raped and killed all on Christmas day. It's better to give then to receive! Of all the atrocities committed on this family the worst by far is done to sweet baby Jane. After the killers viciously beat and rape the sweet lass, her butcher delivers one of the cruelest lines in cinematic history: "Kill it." Did you get that? Not her - "it."

Another offensive scene which actually triggers the emotion of one of the killers highlights a very realistic looking fetus being ripped from a mother's womb. The female slayer finally breaks down and cries once she realizes they've finally go too far. The dead mother-to-be experiences the one instance where it's not better getting your present too early! Taking violence to another level all together. It is chilling the way these serial killers are portrayed so believably. August Underground's Penance also has an ending that has to be seen to be believed! The final scene might leave fans a little choked up.

August Underground's Penance is a shockingly gruesome movie filled with anger, torture, and ejaculation. It looks like it will be a White Christmas after all! This film is a holiday must own for any true gore-hound like me!

So what's the message in Penance then? A guy brutally murders people because he hates himself? Well f**k me what a revelation! This bombshell aside, there appears, not surprisingly to be no valid reason whatsoever for this incredibly crapulent and nauseous creation. If it's purely infamy Vogel's looking for he's gone about it the right way, but hey Vogel, why not surprise people and at least try to make something remotely intelligent, then you can throw in as much filth and degradation as you like and still get taken seriously? The thing is, Vogel doesn't have the minerals to create anything of any quality or depth, and Penance is a hollow exercise in pushing the boundaries of what is watchable. It's utterly devoid of any subtext whatsoever.

Ironically the only thought provoking element in this film is Fred Vogel himself, who co-writes, directs, produces?, and stars. In much the same way as Argento used to perform the stabbings himself in many of his films, Vogel has a vested personal interest in the violence displayed here. Writing, directing and playing the central character seems to be giving Vogel the closest experience possible to fulfilling his ultimate fantasy without actually having to get arrested, although one could argue that even the inclusion of such a young girl in the filming of this offal is worthy of a stern ticking off. Has she seen it yet? I wonder. Charming.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a lover of extreme violence in cinema when it is in context. Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer, Man Bites Dog, Peeping Tom - these are all violent films - Henry especially, but they also deal with serious themes such as alienation, voyeurism, the boundaries between audience and spectator, and in particular, audience complicity. Vogel's film, on the other hand is designed purely to shock and/or titillate. The only comforting thought one should be drawing from this experience is that you're not turned on by imagining yourself sexually and violently abducting people. If you are, then perhaps you should be applying for a job at Toetag films.

In Penance, Vogel seems, more than anything to be exploring his own psyche - his own capacity for the kind of behaviour he's mimicking, and it really does look like he's ready to take the plunge.

Beware Vogel - when you're staring into the abyss, the abyss is staring back at you!

After watching all three August Underground films, you will be questioning yourself whether the directors are disturbed for making such a sadistic series, or are you disturbed for watching all three. The first august underground was dark and disturbing as it mimicked a snuff film so accurately. Mordum, in my opinion, is one of the most brutal films ever made. So, what are we expecting with Penance? Well, Fred Vogel and Cristie Whiles are back as directors and star in the third installment of the series playing the psychopathic killers Peter and Crusty. Penance takes a different approach, yes, there is still vile scenes such as disembowelment and cutting out a fetus from a victim, but we see more from the killers. There are more "breather scenes" in between the torture and murders showing them just goofing around in front of the camera. What is pivotal in this film is that it digs deep into Peter and Crusty's mental state. Over the series, we have seen Peter, a big strapping lad perform such barbaric acts that he is now reduced to gagging, not being able to perform and abusing substances heavily. On the other hand, we have seen Crusty drop her punk goth image and her twisted enjoyment of brutally torturing and murdering women, to become highly emotional and realizing how vile she has become. It was going to be very hard to top the horrendous depravities that occurred in Mordum, but somehow Vogel and Whiles managed again to have us reaching for the sick bucket. For a film that had a very low budget and unknown actors, it pulled off something so spectacularly disgusting that the series will be implanted in our memory for a long time.

"August Underground's Penance" is basically the personal home video of two sociopathic killers on murder spree.Again two nameless butchers played by Fred Vogel and Cristie Whiles videotape their bloodthirsty madness,but "Penance" shows also their slow decline.First of all I'm not a big fan of "August Underground" series.Still as a lover of extreme cinema who had previously seen "August Underground" and "August Underground's Mordum" I really wanted to see the final installment.This time the faux-VHS look of Mordum has been tossed aside in favor of a more contemporary digital look.The gore effects made by ToeTag crew are very convincing and the violence is dirty and vile.There are some boring moments,but overall "Penance" is not as perverted and repulsive as "Mordum".7 out of 10.

After the somewhat disappointing 'August Underground's Mordum', which often went beyond believability in an attempt to do outdo its predecessor, the team at ToeTag have delivered what must be one of the most nauseating, realistically disgusting and vile pieces of filth that I have ever witnessed. The film is an 84 minute catalogue of extreme depravity, sexual violence, torture and dismemberment, and hardly a minute went by where I didn't feel revulsed by what I was watching (and more than just a little bit sordid). But, of course, director Fred Vogel doesn't want viewers to enjoy Penance; he wants them to endure it, which means that the third and final movie in the August Underground series can only be hailed as a success!

The aim of Penance is to make damn sure that anyone watching it sees murder as it truly is: an ugly act that is nasty, messy and totally repugnant. Viewers are made to feel sickened by what they witness. Vogel's on-screen killers, a couple of psychos (played by the director himself and Mordum's Cristie Whiles) who enjoy nothing more than inflicting pain and suffering on complete strangers, are neither glamourised or exaggerated, nor are they portrayed as anti-heroes; they're shown to be real people—albeit bloody scary ones who would be perfectly happy to remove your head from your shoulders without giving it a second thought.

Once again, the film consists of random video footage shot by the twisted twosome as they go about their day-to-day business, attacking the homeless, going to rock gigs, indulging in drugs and, of course, raping and killing innocent people. This time, however, the quality is not that of a degraded VHS tape (as in the previous two AU films), but digital (and in widescreen), meaning that the viewer gets to see every last sickening detail.

And what sights they have to show us: Vogel's character wrestles with entrails whilst trying to disembowel a corpse, removes a foetus from a pregnant victim, and (unsuccessfully) tries to rape a woman after having smashed her husband over the head with a hammer; Whiles's soulless bitch slowly squeezes the life out of a child, gleefully hacks up a deer (which is later fed to the scariest lion in existence), and also indulges in her fair share of vicious torture and bloody dismemberment. Every last second of each hideous act is unflinchingly captured by the roving camera, and watching without wincing is not an easy trick. The gruesome effects are top notch and praise must be given to effects man Jerami Cruise for successfully turning my (usually cast-iron) stomach several times.

With the OTT approach of the second film replaced by the more realistic feel of the first, Penance is a satisfactory end to a unique and very unsettling series of films. I now hope that Vogel leaves the 'pseudo-snuff' genre well alone and turns his attention to making the zombie film that he has mentioned in the past.

As with the other AU movies, I find it a hard film to rate. It's not 'enjoyable', and at times it plods (the first twenty minutes are pretty uneventful), but it's a powerful work that you just cannot ignore, and for that reason Penance gets 7.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 8 for IMDb).