Victims!

The opening scenes before the title involve women being killed by blades, and then some cross-dressing guy who attacks a woman getting chased and caught. There's a voice-over perhaps relating to that that was cut off on the videotape I watched.

Following that, a couple guys do a robbery, steal a car, sneak up on a couple having sex in a field, kill the guy and rape the woman and steal their car.

Following that, four women go on a geology field trip, and they're unwittingly followed by the two robbers. Predictably, they get stranded and raped, and then fight back. Some Vietnam flashbacks are thrown in to provide some backstory for the two robbers. The ending scenes take place in a police station.

It's not absolutely awful, but it's pretty cheap. Possibly older than 1985, though it references the "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" sketch from Saturday Night Live, whenever that was.

"Victims!" is an ultra cheap, ultra crude exploitation feature notable for a misogynistic edge. Two lowlife bad guys played by Robert Axelrod and Lonny Withers go on a crime spree, and target four nubile ladies. These ladies have gone into a remote part of the desert to supposedly study rock formations for a geology class, but seem to be more interested in having fun. The cretins proceed to humiliate the gals for an extended period of time.

Written by John O'Hara and directed by Jeff Hathcock, this movie looks and sounds pretty damn bad. But the writer & director know what their audience demands, and deliver various scenes of nudity and degradation. They get off to an awfully funny start with a couple of random scenes of tacky violence. Soon, they ease into what passes for this movies' story. Still, even at a running time of a mere 77 minutes, they're obliged to pad the thing as much as they can.

The largely unattractive cast give what are some of the worst performances to be seen in this genre. Only Axelrod had a somewhat decent career after this, turning up in some of the Charles Bronson / Cannon Group pictures as well as the remake of "The Blob". That said, these performances *are* fairly amusing in their badness. Axelrod and Withers are stone cold creeps, and a flashback late in the movie reveals the origins of their hatred for women.

And that music score! Composed by Glenn Baxley, it's a mind boggling assortment of inane, keyboard and piano based drivel.

If the photography were of a higher quality, the use of the desert locations would come off better.

This is worth a gander if you're interested in unearthing obscure trash movies, but be warned that it's more tedious than other cinema of its kind.

Five out of 10.

Four unattractive girls are raped and subjected to sexual degradation by two sleazy criminals.The desert setting is full of screams.After watching Jeff Hathcock's "Night Ripper" I decided to check out his debut "Victims".In comparison to "Night Ripper" "Victims" is far more exploitative and misogynistic.The acting is awful and some scenes are extremely cheesy,but the misogyny is rampant and some scenes of abuse are actually pretty mean-spirited.The film is obviously influenced by "Last House on the Left" and "I Spit on Your Grave",two exploitation staples of 70's.6 out of 10 for this low-budget piece of smut.Can't wait to see Jeff Hathcock's "Streets of Death".

The only remotely intriguing thing about this terrible dud is that, on my bootleg DVD-copy at least, the film starts off with the bloody murders of no less than three young girls, but they are seemingly irrelevant to the rest of the plot and remain unexplained. One girl has an ax planted in her head, another one is sliced up naked in her bed, and the third one gets stabbed in the back by a guy dressed up as an old lady. The killer gets apprehended, but none of these events are ever brought up again throughout the entire film; - very weird. Not that it gets any better, though. Quite the contrary, "Victims!" looks like a typical 80s slasher, but in fact it's more of an overdue and insignificant rape & revenge thriller (like they made many in the 70s). Four free-spirited and deliberately provocative teen girls head out for a weekend in the desert mountains, supposedly for a school project but naturally they are more occupied with parading half-naked in front of gas station attendants and skinny dipping. The four girls encounter two thugs who are hiding because they committed a bank robbery, so I reckon you know what happens next? "Victims!" is extremely unoriginal and boring, boring, boring. The film only lasts 75 minutes, including the random footage at the beginning, but still it outstays its welcome. The abuse of the girls isn't shocking or harrowing, like it was the case in the classics of the seventies ("Last House on the Left", "I Spit on your Grave", "House on the Edge of the Park", ...) and the revenge part is even more tame and pitiable.

Victims! (1985)

** (out of 4)

Two lunatics are running around town killing anyone they cross paths with. At the same time four female friends are hopping in their car for a camping trip and sure enough both sides eventually meet up.

VICTIMS! is a film I had never heard of until it hit Blu-ray and after watching the film I'm a bit shocked that it doesn't have more of a following. With that said, there are countless flaws in the movie that prevent it from being what I'd consider "good" but at the same time there's enough decent "slasher" things here to make it worth watching.

The film starts off in an incredibly fast mode as we get three killings within the first couple minutes of the movie. Being in the era of the slasher, the killings are quite gory as director Jeff Hathcock obviously knew who him main audience was going to be. The film gets off to a fast start and things really don't slow down as these maniacs run into several other people with gore that follows.

So, what happens? For some reason all of the killings pretty much come to a complete stop once the two killers and the four females meet up. The film completed changes gears and to be honest with you it gets very boring very quickly. It's really too bad the wild, over-the-top style that was the first part of the movie didn't continue throughout. I'm not sure if these earlier scenes were shot afterwards when they realized there wasn't enough gore or what but there's no question that they are missed during the second half.

Those who complain about horror films being misogynist will certainly hate this picture. There's a lot of women murdered. There's a lot of nudity. There's even some sexual torture as two of the ladies are forced to make out with one another. VICTIMS! is a pretty nasty little film and I just wish it had kept this up the entire time. At 76- minutes it's still worth watching for the nasty stuff.