Vengeance

Ok surprise for me. I go thru so many of here cheesy b minus movies looking for gems and this is one. The means she uses to kill these schmucks are as it taken out of a slasher movie! Well played director!

"Naked Vengeance" while an entertaining flick, is really just an artless and brainless ripoff of the MUCH superior "I Spit On Your Grave," a groundbreaking film that managed to be aesthetically beautiful in all it's ugliness. This retread, with it's tacky 80s soundtrack and filming style is basically throwaway entertainment. It's filled with impossibly dumb characters and an even dumber police force, making the events that unfold seem ridiculous. Now if this movie was the first of it's kind then it might be something special, but by 1985, audiences had seen this exact scenario played out many times before, in more competent films. I did give it an extra star for the ending that culminates on New York City's famed 42nd Street. That was a nice touch. Unfortunately "Naked Vengeance" is average at best..

In the vein of those aggressively seedy, but stock-like revenge thrillers; "Naked Vengeance" is a considerably cut-rate, but amusingly rowdy and efficiently catered b-grade imitation of "I Spit on Your Grave". Carla's life is shattered when she witnesses her husband murdered, so she retreats back to the town she grew up in and stays with her parents at their lakeside cottage. But the nightmare continues for her when some drunken locals break into her home. There they would terrorise her, until her parents walked in on them to only be killed. Abused and left for dead, the law just won't cut it. Revenge… cold-hearted revenge is what she seeks. Her own justice with pain driving it. The men that caused the act, leaving this women's descent into madness (or that's what we are to believe); simply are portrayed as perverts, drooling low-lives and thugs. Even the clueless, narrow minded local Sheriff isn't painted that fancily.

While unimaginatively clichéd, it packs fury (some intensity makes its way into some set-pieces) and instinctively lays out many horrid encounters as she toys around with her initial victims knocking them off one at a time. Jack-cheap exploitation film-maker Cirio H. Santiago provides serviceable direction, as it doesn't waste much time and never does it outstay its welcome. The writing / dialogues might seem rough, but it's simple and formidably to-the-point. Deborah Tranelli (of "Dallas" fame) provides a grippingly strong performance as the traumatised Carla.

This was a very fun film to do, and I agree, this is one of Cirio's better films. We shot the film in parts of Baguio City, and at Lake Kaliraya in Laguna Province. We filmed this right after we had finished "The Devestators", which was also another fun one to do.

I played Arnie, one of the five rapists of the female lead played by Deborah Tranelli. Naked Vengeance was one of the early "Chick Vengeance" genre films.

Doing a rape scene was very difficult as the mood on the set is very tense, especially from the women on set. Anyone familiar with film production knows that it is a surreal atmosphere but standing around with nothing on but a jockstrap became almost natural by the end of the long night. Deborah was a real professional, detaching herself from direct contact friendly conversation. Before and after the "rape scene" she was friendly but she got "into character" during the very intense, violent, demeaning, dehumanizing sequence.

I think any woman seeing this movie would be deeply moved, emotionally and stunned by the brutality of the sequence. The entire production crew did a great professional job, though it was a long time before some of the female staff would even talk to me. It was that realistic and graphic. I never understood the horror of rape until I "took part" in trying to reproduce the crime in "ReeL life".