Born for Hell

Richard Franklin Speck (1941 - 1991), the killer of eight student nurses living together in a Chicago Community Hospital during 1966. It was to be the night of July 13th - 14th that Specks inadequacies were to come to resurface, killing them one-by-one throughout the night. This was to be another dark night in America's history that was to add his name to the list of serial killers that have tainted its name: Ted Bundy, the Hillside Strangler, the Boston Strangler and David Berkowitz etc, etc.

With typical relish the film industry around the world then immortalised his deeds, within a certain scope, onto celluloid; Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck (2007 V) by Michael Feifer, Okasareta hakui (Violated Angels) (1967) by K. Wakamatsu, Speck (2002) by Keith Walley and 10 to Midnight (1983) by J. Lee Thompson and starring Charles Bronson as the cop on his tail. The lesser known, and possibly the less seen, of these films portraying the acts of his crime is the actual war zone setting of Northern Ireland during the mid nineteen-seventies that is the Naked Massacre. Giving too, its conjunctive title Born for Hell, this latter title comes from a segment of a tattoo that was on Speck's arm, and in the end, was to be his undoing, the full tattoo reads: BORN TO RAISE HELL.

What is intriguing about Naked Massacre, with its West German production that whilst being shot in Hamburg and Studio Bendestorf, Germany, again, and being dubbed into English, it is the 1970's exterior Belfast locations that sets this film apart to give it an air of historical reference. Ironically, too or just sheer coincidence, as both, then, Germany and Ireland were divided by the political, and with Northern Ireland, religious beliefs. Seeing our protagonist wander the derelict war-torn streets of Belfast, with its IRA slogans and with the English army patrols and armoured vehicles setting an atmosphere of desperation and bleak overtones in an environment were faction Vs. faction and soldier Vs. stone throwing youths. An interesting reflective on harsh times in both English and Ireland's history.

German born Mathieu Carriere is the US' Vietnam vet' drifter Cain Adamson, reprising the role as Richard Speck, who, while trying to get back home, finds himself waiting for a passage back to the States. It is here, while waiting, kicking stones and hanging around the local pub, he finds the dwelling of the student nurses.

Denis Heroux the Montreal born film director, producer and here, writer and director, has our woman hater disturbing these residents with his grudges and psychosis that are brutal and disturbing. While, in general, a film of female degradation, with its grainy film stock and basic environment, these European writers' too, have given us a tale of woes from the perspective of an eroding mind of a war vet' who questions his own existence while very easily blames others for his predicament. This downward spiral of sanity leads to a very claustrophobic and tense world of hate and retribution to those he finds responsible most: the female of the spices.

Whilst being a work of fiction here, one has to remember that the narrative is, loosely, based around fact, and the reality is that this film is hard-hitting and plays testament to the weakness of this male mind and its overpowering of the enduring "weaker sex". As the night progresses, we see the completeness of his insanity; vile, ruthless and completely out of control.

We can see violations of the fairer sex in films as I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Last House on the Left (1972) and in hindsight, Salo; 120 Days of Sodom (1975), this too, Naked Massacre, is not pleasant viewing. One should not fall into the trap of thinking this as macabre entertainment but it being a visual nightmare of a state of mind that in one summer's night in a nurse's dormitory, in the USA, a little piece of it died. Most mercilessly.

"Naked Massacre" is pretty strong stuff; a disturbing thriller definitely NOT for squeamish or faint-hearted people! It's not that gory or exaggeratedly sleazy, like the two key words of the title lead you to believe, but it's truly intense and filmed in such a sober way that you'll feel VERY uncomfortable. The story is something like Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians", only in this case it's Eight Pretty Nurses. Actually, that's not funny since this movie is inspired by the murders committed by real-life madman Richard Speck in 1966; Chicago. The setting of this notorious case has been moved, very ingeniously I may add, to Ireland in the mid-70's, when there was the post-Vietnam depression as well as the Irish civil war and bombings. On his way home from Vietnam, a young American soldier ends up in Belfast with no money or acquaintances. He's traumatized, has a very nihilistic world perspective and a petrifying hatred for women. It doesn't take long before he breaks into a mansion and starts terrorizing the eight young nurses that live there. "Naked Massacre" is obviously cheap and poorly edited, yet the atmosphere is constantly grim and the murders are genuinely shocking. The girls are physically abused, emotionally tortured and eventually stabbed to death with a BIG knife. There are no morals, comic reliefs or happy endings here, so only people with an iron stomach will be able to sit through this movie without suffering from nightmares afterwards. The acting performances are pretty decent, despite some of the dialogs being extremely inept and cheesy. Highly recommended in case you're searching for a horror/thriller that will really get under your skin.

Evident by the lurid, nonsensical title that was most likely slapped on the final print by seedy exhibitors and greedy theater owners, Naked Massacre aims for the profound but falls victim to the basest genre trappings. The film advertises itself as being based on the infamous Richard Speck case. Speck was an American mass murderer in the sixties who killed six female nurses during a home invasion. The film is merely inspired by the story, changing the locale from Chicago to Ireland. The switch works, giving the horror film an interesting backdrop, a war torn country besieged by the IRA, and setting it apart from similar themed movies like Last House on the Left and Last House on the Beach. The main character of the film, not named Richard Speck though he shares certain similarities, is a Vietnam vet trying to return to the United States. Surprisingly for a movie of this ilk, the film spends more time with the killer than with his victims. The nurses are non-entities drawn in broad strokes. The most recognizable actress, Carole Laure, is known for starring in Sweet Movie, a Yugoslavian film much more successful in blending socio-political statements with explicit sex and violence. Once the killing starts the movie devolves into a nasty grindhouse film. Scenes where our main character terrorizes a pregnant victim or forces one woman to perform oral sex on another crosses the line of good taste and belittles the measured film that came before it. Still, the movie is worth a look and recommended because of its unique place among horror films. Though flawed, Naked Massacre deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

I sometimes question the motivations of a director who chooses subject matter such as this as material for a film. There is such a sadistic vent to this that it has kept me thinking for days. This is obviously a retelling of the Richard Speck story where a psychotic ex-Vietnam vet terrorizes and kills a group of nurses in a residential house in Northern Ireland. The movie is pretty well done in that it gets us involved with the women and with their assailant. They are real people with prospects; one is even pregnant. I think that's why this so affected me because when you see those teenage slasher movies you say to yourself that no one could be so stupid. The violence is amplified and unrealistic. This one is so close to home. The business of why people don't defend themselves is an issue, but when you see the connection to terror and to humanity, you see why this could happen. Still, I could never watch this again and I'm not sure it needed telling.

I've enjoyed reading the many comments on IMDb about this obscure film, which I saw on video back in 1986. Here's some background about its production (I advise you to just click on the personnel for further info): it was made at a time of very liberal tax shelter laws for international co-productions, with Canada making several arrangements with European nations and even Israel.

The writeoffs available to investors, often 200% or more, encouraged backing many oddball films that would not have been made normally -for example a lot of German and British-backed pictures I remember fondly like The Internecine Project (w/James Coburn), Inside Out (w/Telly Savalas), Paper Tiger (w/David Niven) or the weird robot movie Who? (w/Elliott Gould). Born for Hell was structured as a a complicated co-production, based in Germany with a veteran German producer (GEORG RUETHER), an up-and-coming French Canadian director DENIS HEROUX, plus story and script co-written by veteran director GEZA VON RADVANYI (who made one all-time classic neo-realist film, Women Without Names, way back in 1950).

When I saw Born for Hell ten years after it was made I was shocked by the unbelievable cast of European greats and near-great talents that had been rounded up. Quota systems meant that actors from each co-production country had to be chosen, and in this case we have quite a lineup:

MATTHIEU CARRIERE from Germany is the lead; he's starred in many top-notch features, back to Schlondorff's Young Torless and some fine films by Andre Delvaux, Erich Rohmer, Marguerite Duras (classic India Song), the title role in the memorable Egon Schiele, Robert van Ackeren's A Woman in Flames and even some U.S. and Canadian assignments.

His female costars are: CAROLE LAURE, French Canadian, the star of Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie, Gilles Carle's excellent The Head of Normande St. Onge and later on Bertrand Blier's Get Out Your Handkerchiefs;

CHRISTINE BOISSON, the French star who had been featured in the mega-hit Emmanuelle, but blossomed as the star of Antonioni's Identification of a Woman, while also working for Miklos Jancso, Alain Robbe-Grillet and other top helmers;

MYRIAM BOYER, French character actress who had already been in a Claude Sautet hit Vincent, Francois... but in 1976 was part of the ensemble of the breakthrough Swiss picture Alain Tanner's Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the year 2000;

EVA MATTES, German star of many classics by Fassbinder, notably Jail Bait, Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and In a Year of 13 Moons, Herzog's brilliant Stroszek and Woyzeck, plus her best assignment in the title role of Percy Adlon's Celeste (about Proust's loyal servant);

DEBRA BERGER, an Austrian starlet with nutty credits, going from a Hawaii Five-O episode (!) to starring in one of Marcel Carne's last films The Marvelous Visit (a fascinating, forgotten movie), one of the discoveries (alongside Isabelle Huppert and Kim Cattrall) in Otto Preminger's flop Rosebud and finishing her career by toiling in 5 Cannon productions in a row, ranging from sexploitation Nana to sci-fi Invaders from Mars;

LEONORA FANI, underage-looking Italian sex goddess whose best of many '70s assignments was Salvatore Samperi's beautifully-shot Nene;

ANDREE PELLETIER, young French Canadian actress who showed promise in Gilles Carle's Les Males, and went on to work mainly in Canada in the Craig Russell cross-dressing hit Outrageous!, Micheline Lanctot's sensitive The Handyman and Teri McLuhan's unjustly forgotten The Third Walker;

and ELY GALLEANI, an Italian actress who never made the big time but did everything from giallos to comedies for top directors like Dino Risi, Carlo Lizzani, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci before joining the Joe D'Amato stock company.

I've gone on at this length to demonstrate why the 1970s are so fondly remembered -it wasn't about big budgets and big box office in those days, especially before Jaws and Star Wars changed everything. It was a period of productivity: Ken Russell and Robert Altman cranking out 3 films a year, and European filmmakers as busy as the Hollywood film factories of the '30s -not all of it good (Born for Hell is nobody's classic) but most of it interesting, even 30 years later.

Current strategies of romantic comedies, comic book adaptations and torture-horror films, mostly made on huge budgets, are yielding ephemeral results -junk like the recent The Spirit which has a shelf life measured in weeks not decades. The current slump is nothing new; I noticed a remarkable resemblance to today in the Warner Bros. 1961 lineup: consisting of mainly romantic vehicles for young contract talent: Warren Beatty, Connie Stevens, Diane McBain and Troy Donahue (all fun to recall but of no lasting interest) plus the inevitable gimmick film: the Canadian hit The Mask (...put on the mask now!), in 3-D.