Maskhead

This fairly recent Toe Tag film directed by Fred Vogel, is actually pretty decent. Much more of a story than their usual productions (August Underground, Mordum), this one features a lesbian couple that interview victims for fetish and very gruesome movies, and then dispatch them in extremely brutal and graphically gory ways, via MASKHEAD, a disfigured maniac who likes to chop up his victims after torturing them. The movie plays with time, and you have to pay attention to figure out what the hell is going in, but in just about everyway, it delivers the goods, even though it can be a little confusing. I enjoyed it, it's borderline soft core, along with the extreme gore. It's definitely Toe Tags best film by far.

Maskhead is a movie that has no limits with its contents of intense violence, a bisexual cowboy, two lesbian snuff filmmakers, a disturbing masked killer known as the movie title itself - Maskhead. It's a movie that will satisfy fans of extreme cinema and it's definitely not a movie for the squeamish. Directed by Fred Vogel (The Man who brought us "The August Underground Trilogy" and many more hardcore horror features) and Scott Swan (writer of two "Master Of Horror" episodes - Cigarette Burns & Pro-Life). With all the blood shed and torture scenes, they're also some slowburn scenes, but it's still a 10 out of 10 for me and It would really be awesome to see a movie mainly about the movie title character itself, Maskhead.

Using a modeling group as a front, two women decide to embark on a side project making snuff films of their oblivious and sexed-up costars, unaware of their true intentions, feeding their victims to a hulking, masked maniac who derives gruesome pleasure in their dismemberment.

Overall, this is a wholly enjoyable and exciting effort with a lot to like about it. The main focus of this one is the creation of the kind of sleazy, adult-entertainment environment where it makes the exploitation of women feel quite natural and expected. The modeling gigs and the different interviews looking at the girls and guys auditioning to be in the adult entertainment industry offer the kind of grimy, hardcore sex environment that would make it perfectly believable that they would get away with their content as much as they do. With the blissfully unaware victims thinking they're going to get a specific vibe offering the kind of depraved, raunchy attitude, which is matched nicely by the torture aesthetic. Seeing the killer arrive in their scene and begin butchering and torturing the clueless victim until they're left broken, dismembered, and in pieces leaves quite an impression here, with it all turning the depraved directors on even further. While that all works incredibly well, the repetitive nature and one-note presentation do run into issues. It uses the same template and format for everything, of someone running afoul of a member of their entourage and realizing too late that their words have come back to haunt them, as the encounter brings them into contact with their secret weapon of the hulking, bandaged killer, turning on them and mutilating their body in the snuff video shoot. That works initially, as the whole thing is a great way to introduce the secret organization that's in play and how it builds from the first encounters. However, once it becomes apparent that this is how the whole thing operates, the one-note approach becomes a bit detrimental. The approach is more of a series of skits loosely tied together with the main characters and tends to aimlessly go through the scenes without much thought to a throughline here, which is what holds this down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Extreme Graphic Sexual Language, Nudity, sex scenes, and drug use.

Ok, first things first. Don't pay attention to the negativity. To Tag pictures is a low budget true underground horror movie production label. And for the 4 I've seen they've delivered what horror should.

Maskhead, not your avergae lesbian couple. Holding auditions for future pornstars but when they refuse to do something asked of them a killer known as Maskhead kills him or her or them.

For a low low budget movie this was pretty good. Fred Vogel is the American Ulli Lommel. He has the talent to tell a story without having a set of good guys that face off with killers.

This isn't August Underground but if you like underground horror movies this one is for you.

Honestly watching this film I could see how it was made. The guys wanted to top the other films they had done, so they got a cast of actors willing to do softcore porn shots, wrote a flimsy storyline to support the gore and then Google'd several sexual fetishes to make the film even edgier. I will give them props for putting guys through the paces as well as girls. Honestly seeing men in these situations is far more interesting to me and there are so few films that even include them. However, it's still only a couple of scenes. The movie itself (minus the male skin) isn't really worth watching. The effects are passable (especially if you thought August underground was decent)and the acting is about what you'd expect from Toe Tag (which is to say a bunch of foul mouth Southern Good-Ole-Boys and Trailer Park Chicks).

There are other and better gore films out there. This one is only for Toe Tag fans. And I think it's pretty clear that any rating over a 4 is from someone who was on set or sleeping with a cast member...