BA_Harrison

The Toxic Avenger was actually made in 2023, but - according to IMDb's trivia - 'producers failed to secure a distributor for some time due to the film's violent content'. Yeah, right! Terrifier 2 & 3 did just fine with much more violence. I think most distributors passed on the film because it is pure garbage, easily one of the most moronic Troma films I have ever seen, and that's saying something.

I gave it a shot because I found the original The Toxic Avenger to be fairly fun, was intrigued by the impressive cast (Peter Dinklage as Winston AKA Toxie, Kevin Bacon as the villain, Bob Garbinger, and Elijah Wood as Bob's brother Fritz), I thought that the trailer looked promising (hinting at plenty of over-the-top gore), and I thoroughly enjoyed director Macon Blair's I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore. Unfortunately, nothing about this film works. Blair attempts to replicate Lloyd Kaufman's trademark lunacy, with plenty of colourful characters and general craziness, but it all feels so desperate: the gags fall flat and the chaotic direction is loud and obnoxious. The splatter is okay, but nowhere near as excessive as the trailer suggests (and too reliant on CGI).

I tried very hard to get into the swing of things - even forced myself to smirk a couple of times - but if truth be told, it wasn't long before I was praying for the film to end. The Toxic Avenger should have stayed on the shelf. 1/10.

If you think that the 'torture porn' sub-genre started with Saw and Hostel, you're very much mistaken: way back in the late '60s and early '70s, there was a brief craze for films collectively known as Hexploitation, in which women accused of witchcraft were tortured and killed by sadistic men in the name of the church. It began with the success of the excellent Witchfinder General (1968), and continued with the likes of Jess Franco's The Bloody Judge (1970), Cry of the Banshee (1970), Mark of the Devil (1970) and Ken Russell's The Devils (1971). Had the label 'torture porn' existed back then, they would most definitely have been categorised as such.

Having no doubt enjoyed financial success with Mark of the Devil, director Adrian Hoven returned to the sub-genre for more sadism and brutality in Mark of the Devil Part II, another account of an innocent woman branded a witch and subsequently subjected to all manner of nastiness. Beautiful redhead Erika Blanc stars as Countess Elisabeth von Salmenau, who falls foul of wicked Balthasar von Ross (Anton Diffring), persecutor of innocent women who gets his kicks from seeing his victims' bodies being broken and burnt. However, unlike the first film, this sequel doesn't feature such a great cast (only creepy Reggie Nalder returns; Udo Kier and Herbert Lom wisely did not) and the torture is quite ridiculous, almost cartoonish in its nature, which takes away from the overall effect: where the original film was cruel and disturbing, this one is unimaginative, frequently so bad it is funny (not the intended reaction), and, disappointingly, fairly dull in places.

Not nearly as shocking or as entertaining as a film featuring pervy nuns, a drooling rapist jailer, and assorted sadistic deviancy should be. 3.5/10, generously rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

The first twenty minutes or so of The Dark and The Wicked were so slow and uneventful that I soon began questioning my decision to watch the film, but I soldiered on, hoping that it might pick up as it progressed; but no... the rest of the film was just as stupefyingly dull, with lifeless performances from a cast who mumbled their way through their lines as though they just didn't care.

And who could blame them? It couldn't have taken them long to realise that the film was a clunker: there's nary a plot, the dialogue is extremely dull, and the whole thing moves drearily to a very weak climax. I'm guessing that all involved couldn't afford to call it quits -- bills to pay and whatnot -- but were unable to muster up any enthusiasm.

The film takes place on a remote ranch where an evil force has taken hold of the owners, whose son and daughter have no idea what is happening. The father is in a comatose state, the mother hangs herself, the goats all wind up dead, and spooky stuff happens - but director Bryan Bertino shows none of the film-making moxie that he did with his 2008 hit The Strangers: this film is slow, and devoid of the chills, atmosphere and scares that it is so clearly aiming for.

After an hour and thirty-five minutes of mind-numbing tedium, interspersed with a couple of lame gore scenes (the CGI in the knitting needle scene was so bad), Bertino wraps up his film with an incredibly lame attempt at a jump scare. 2/10.