Violent Shit: The Movie

Violent Shit: The Movie (2015)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Rome is under attack as a series of brutal murders are leaving body parts everywhere. A couple detectives are investigating and before long they are wondering if Karl the Butcher is behind the attacks.

The original VIOLENT SH*T series from Andreas Schnaas was certainly an aquired taste. While I wouldn't call the movies good they were at least from an era of German shot-on-video films that became quite popular around the globe thanks to their gore level. VIOLENT SH*T: THE MOVIE comes from Italy and it really does seem as if they were wanting to bring the country back into the mix of horror films. After all, it has been quite a while since the likes of Argento and Fulci were top dogs.

Sadly, this film has some really major flaws that keep it from being more entertaining and that's really too bad because the final twenty-minutes of this movie are great. The final has a sex orgy, cannibals and of course Karl the Butcher doing his thing. The finale is when the film really takes off and it also delivers what fans were wanting. That was a bunch of gory violence with over-the-top blood. I must say that it's really too bad that the first hour was so deadly dull because had the entire film been like the final twenty-minutes then we'd have a cult classic on our hands.

Sadly the first hour is full of boring dilaogue and scenes that just drag out to the point where you'll be wanting to scream cut at your television set. These scenes really drag down the movie and the pacing is all over the place. Several Italian heavyweights appear throughout the film with Giovanni Lombardo Radice doing good work as a Professor. You've also got the likes of Enzo G. Castellari and Luigi Cozzi in small roles. Seeing these three was fun and the final twenty-minutes are great. Can I give a mild recommendation for a bad film?

With VS: The Movie, director Luigi Pastore has done the seemingly impossible: he's made a film that makes Andreas Schnaas' Violent Sh*t Trilogy look good by comparison. Although Schnaas' films were excruciatingly bad in many ways, they at least compensated with loads of enthusiastic bargain basement gore; in contrast—barring one 3 minute sequence where serial killer Karl the Butcher goes crazy with a machete—VS: The Movie is relatively devoid of splatter, and with a terrible plot and painful performances, the film proves very difficult to endure.

Somehow (gun to the head, perhaps?), Pastore not only managed to cast Italian horror legend Giovanni Lombardo Radice in his crap-heap of a movie, but also convinced cult film-makers Enzo G. Castellari (The Inglorious Bastards) and Luigi Cozzi (Alien Contamination) to take on roles, AND got Claudio Simonetti's Goblin to provide the soundtrack. None of this counts for much, though: Radice is terrible, Castellari and Cozzi usually work BEHIND the camera for a reason, and Simonetti's score is forgettable.

With much of the film consisting of lengthy scenes of dialogue in English, mangled by a cast whose command of the language is only slightly better than my Italian (I can order a beer and ask where the toilets are), only hardened fans of z-grade crap will make it to the end, where they will be rewarded with some gratuitous female nudity (not worth the wait) and the aforementioned kill spree by Karl, which finally serves up the kind of gore that the film should have delivered throughout.

2/10, solely for the nasty castration, minus 1 point for naming characters after famous people in the horror industry (Fulci, D'Amato), an idea that is neither original nor clever.

Why anyone would make a sequel or remake of one of the worst movies ever made (Violent S**t), done by probably the most untalented director EVER (Andreas Schnaas makes Ed Wood look like an Oskar winner...) is beyond my understanding.

Acting, dialogs, sound, editing, synchro, even the special effects, it is all so bad the 1:20 hours feel like an eternity. The two famous Italian directors must have been forced at gunpoint to do a cameo in this steaming pile of s**t. The only thing noticeable it the music, done by Goblin.

This sorry excuse for a movie is bad, really bad, and I do not mean bad in a funny or entertaining way.

There are so many little movies worth of a remake, so many film gems that would deserve a sequel. Why this one????

Another violent sh*t movie and the weakest in my personal opinion. This film has a spectacular U.S. release by Reelgore which it really doesnt deserve. If you liked the previous films in the series for high body counts, cheesy gore and a story that has no plot then this film takes it and f*cks that up. First the body count is surprisingly low, compared to the other films in the series, from what I remember, those films all had higher body counts and could at least present a few excessive kills. If you're wondering if the filmmakers could make up for that with some unique kills, the answer is no. The kills are generally worse than the rest in the series and the closest we get to a unique kill is a guy getting is genitals cut off, which has been done before including on tv, ex: Sons of Anarchy. Maybe the film still has a loose plot where the butcher just kills people, nope. They try, and the important word is try to turn this film into a giallo, it went about as well as the time Jason Voorhees got turned into a slug in Jason goes to hell. Also the film tries to be story driven and tries to be a straight up giallo but it never works and there's no suspense in the entire film. Finally one of my biggest gripes is that the film seemed to have a larger budget than the rest of the films but the camera work is some of the worst I have ever seen. They try to incorporate the the bright color of giallo into the film with a green tone, it doesn't work since the film is super over exposed and everything is really bright or really dark. The camera work in the first one was better. Also seemingly unironically the camera man always has a close up of a characters face when their talking to the point all you see is their face, or the characters face is halfway out of frame, also not to mention a few dutch angles. The movies only saving grace is a few lines that aren't even meant to be funny but the delivery by the actors is so bad it makes you laugh and the soundtrack is really amazing. Only see this film if you're a completionist of the series and don't spend money on it if possible, unlike me, who is sadly a series completionist and likes to own a physical copy.

I mostly agree with other reviewers. It is not that great. Well, yeah, its pretty bad. I disagree that the directing is horrible, but I do think it has one fatal flaw: The frame is always too close. The acting is sub par. Some actors are OK, but it is hard to see past the extreme close-up on everyone. Not sure if we are trying to show the audience how good the format is showing every pore and stubble, but it is not working for me.

You really have to dig deep to see that there is actually a decent horror concept and screenplay here. I even think the script might be OK. It is hard to tell. Between acting and directing I kept getting so distracted that I just could not suspend disbelief.

To the main detective guy actor and the nerdy German guy with the glasses, I kept thinking... these guys are almost there, but the camera is just too close.

I don't know how to fix this. Its a mess, but is not completely devoid of redeeming qualities. To you actors(resses) in this... don't give up!... well, at least some of you. Others, yes, please give up, and go back to school! In my earlier years I would have tacked another star on for the gratuitous nudity, but as I am not tacking, I do want to give a thumbs up to the short-haired brunette. Super body, and I thought the close-ups on the face when she was clothed and had lines just didn't capture her whole essence. Girl, you need to get with a better agent. Now that we know you have the naughty bits, hold out for a better speaking role with a better organization. You can do it! I am writing this while I watch. I am ending this at 1:11 out of 1:21. I have no idea what is going on any more. I don't care either.