Cut

Another slasher where the victims put up no fight and the antagonist's supernatural nature isn't made apparent until the very end of the movie.

The main problem I have with Cut is the weak scripting of the characters. It's like everyone on set are all just passing time waiting for the pay check to come in, its so bad.

Music and tempo is actually the movies strong point especially the lighting. The whole set looks and feels great but everything else just falls apart. The script made all the actors look like dills. They should have called it Cringe.

Being a horror primarily Cut also falls short on creating any sense of discomfort. Again another horror where you don't care what happens because not one of the characters do anything intelligent and everyone is two dimensional.

I do like Australian horror movies, I'm surprised that I had not already seen this one. Don't think it had a UK DVD release so I got a copy on good old VHS. Not a great deal of plot here, but this is a slasher movie so that is quite normal. This one is about the making - or rather completion - of a slasher movie called Hot Blooded (sounds more like a porno to me!), that filming had ceased on back in that great slasher decade, the 1980's. Naturally people start getting killed, one by one... Not a bad film to be fair, the acting was OK, there are some gory deaths with a high enough kill count plus we get a body melt scene. Molly Ringwold, who appeared in several iconic 80's movies, adds a bit to the retro feel, but sadly Kylie Minogue has nothing more than a cameo, despite her name being highly billed. Scream is a too obvious influence, in fact it gets name checked, whilst Freddie Krueger too is here in pretty much all but name. Does build to a fun finale, certainly no classic but enjoyable enough.

A horror movie is being shot and things aren't going well. It's about a masked killer. The director tells off the killer in front of the cast and crew. He goes crazy and kills two people. He's killed himself and the film is never finished. Twelve years later a bunch of film students decide to try and finish it--but there's a curse. People who try and finish it are killed themselves. The students ignore that. Guess what happens next?

The plot is old hat but this isn't bad...for what it is (a low budget slasher film). It's well-made with a young and fairly talented young cast. No one is great but no one is terrible either. It also avoids the obligatory (and needless) female nude scenes. It moves quickly, the gore is nice and bloody and the script doesn't insult your intelligence. Also Molly Ringwald is in this having the time of her life playing a bitchy faded actress.

No great shakes but not bad at all. I give it a 7.

CUT is called an Australian Scream. This mainly has to due to the characters mentioning movies during the entire thing. I enjoyed it myself until the last 15 minutes where everything started to jumble. Parts I enjoyed though were: The killer's weapon (Which reminded me of over-the-top 80s B-Movies), Molly Ringwald (Of Course), and the cameo by Kylie Minogue. Some cliches, some gore, and some entertainment. 5/10.

While filming an 80's horror movie called 'Hot Blooded', the director is brutally murdered and the leading lady is scarred as she survives the attack and manages to kill murderer. After all of this, the production is abandoned and the stock reels are left to gather dust. So a group of filmmakers decide to pick up where the film left off even though they're warned by people to keep away from the film, as the last person who was interested in the flick turned up dead in the cinema while watching the film. From this it's labelled as a cursed production. Not taking these warnings seriously the crew goes ahead with the production and they get the original star of the movie to return from Hollywood to reprise her role, but not as the daughter but the mother. But again the murders start occurring with the cast and crew getting butchered by an unknown figure dressed up as the film's killer.

Look what 'Scream' started! Hey, I enjoy those films, but mostly everything else that followed on afterwards were annoying and pointless excuses. During this stage the sub-genre came back with vengeance, but it wasn't much of a good thing as they were mostly unsuccessful and unoriginal attempts, where they followed the derivative pattern of the Scream franchise. 'Cut' which is an independent Australian take on the textbook slasher genre is purely shonky garbage that lacks basically everything and shamelessly knocks off every other slasher flick. But you know what, I found it a cheesy delight. Yeah, It's gawd awful and highly forgettable, but it's a bit of ala good cheap fun while it lasted. Although I did hate it when I originally came across it, but the second time around I knew what I was getting myself into and it worked better for it. It was just like helping myself to a nice slice cheesecake again, but this time it wasn't so sweet.

The film came out around the same time as 'Scream 3' and 'Urban Legends: The Final Cut' did, which all three follow the same structure of using a movie within a movie. 'Scream 3' is obviously the strongest of the three, but I would actually watch this trash over Urban Legends: The Final Cut. Though, it did seem more of a throwback to the 80's slashers than that of one of Scream's bastard offspring. Pretty much the film is given b-grade treatment and that shows up in the script and performances. The dialog is truly unimaginative and hardly comes up with any surprises and suspense. While, the performances are pure mockery and Molly Ringwald takes the crown for it. She plays the wash-up actress returning to finish the cursed flick and I had good fun with her laughably ridiculous send-up performance. She provides the bite here and nails it down perfectly. The rest were mostly recognizable Australian TV stars (that's if you're an Australian) with a ravishing Jessica Napier leading the cast with the likes of Stephen Curry and Frank Roberts. Also pop singer (and supposed actress) Kylie Minogue makes a cameo appearance in the opening just to be hacked up! Nice. These teens mostly followed the formula of horny and dim-witted kids that have nothing better to do but to be killed. Sometimes it feels like they just waiting in queue, because they have no real substance to be there.

The plot starts off rather interestingly, then heads into a mystery phase where red herrings pop up, but then it makes a sudden u-turn where it becomes a somewhat satire on the horror genre. Simply it's rather choppy and when it comes to the explanation for all of this madness I was kind of left thinking… oh my. This when it tries to twist back onto itself in a clever manner, but sadly it falls along way. But don't you just love an opening ending. Also it sports some pop culture references and a self referential, tongue-in-cheek approach. Predictability makes its way in rather early and the jokes can become over-stated at times, but it knows that by poking fun at itself quite a bit. The atmosphere looses a bit of edge because of the humour taking away the bleakness, but still the isolated grand old mansion where they are filming has some neat touches that added 'some' spookiness. The cinema scene is done rather nicely too.

Now, now we know we want gore and nudity when watching this type of flick, but sadly there's no nudity to be found and the gore is pretty standard, if lacking but it's more then decent for such low-budget flick. There are one or two creative deaths, but the rest are systematic. The killer wasn't bad but when he spoke it kind of hurt it I thought, well the smart-ass attitude didn't sit well with me. Another notes of the production which were dire ranged from the cut-away editing, out-of-place soundtrack and Kimble Rendall's direction lacked execution and was pretty careless, but these contributing factors pull together to add some sort of sheer entertainment to all of this badness.

The imagination matches the budget that's for sure, but heck this lousy slasher wasn't trying to be anything else. Pure schlock that's slightly amusing!