Marauders

This is one of the first and best shot-on-video shockers. It looks like a real movie and, like Savage's little-seen BEYOND THE PALE shorts, takes no prisoners.

Story is simple. A sleazebag and his Lolita-like girlfriend are tracked by two thugs to a country house. En route, the thugs rape a local girl. The climax features the killing and maiming of both very young children and adults as unhappy parties exact revenge.

Made on a shoestring, but never less than technically polished and sharply directed, MARAUDERS features a really nasty rape scene that is cut in most countries. The dialogue is funny and crude and the characterisations of the bad guys are very authentic.

Colin Savage, the brother of the director, portrays the meanest thug convincingly and would later appear in Richard Wolstoncroft's BLOODLUST, Savage's SENSITIVE NEW AGE KILLER and THE MASTURBATING GUNMAN and the excellent Aussie BULLET IN THE ARSE (which I caught at Sitges just recently).

Savage's output reminds me of an Aussie Takashi Ishii.

"Marauders" tell the story of two sociopaths named JD and Emilio on the wild murder and rape spree in Aussie countryside.Paul Harrington's character runs over one of the psychos by accident,injuring the loon's leg and does a hit and run.A pursuit follows that leads to an apocalyptic showdown in the deep Australian woods."Marauders" plays like a nasty homage to "Death Weekend" and "Last House on the Left".Despite some amateurish acting and atrocious dialogue the film offers lots of violence and is hugely entertaining.The often talked rape scene is quite tame,especially in comparison to the scenes of sexual violence shown in Savage's disturbing "Defenceless".The production values are pretty high and the editing is pretty good.Overall,I enjoyed this little Aussie exploitation flick and you should too,if you are into violent no-holds-barred cinema.

Given that Marauders was basically made by kids, it's pretty impressive. Is the acting great? Not really. They're kids. Is the directing great? No. He's a kid. It's a glorified backyard project of someone who's serious about making movies. As such, it's pretty good. As an accomplishment, it's outstanding.

"Marauders" is a zero-budget independent movie from director Mark Savage that is part horror, part revenge movie. Like earlier exploitation and grindhouse films, the movie enters taboo territories. We see the murder of children, there are scenes of rape and graphic violence to boot - this is, without doubt, a hard-hitting picture.

Savage used friends as the cast and the use of non-professional actors is one of the weak points of the production. Despite this, "Marauders" isn't bad, it just fails to really engage the viewer. On the positive side, the use of a high-end camera gives the film a polished appearance.

Oh, one last thing. "Marauders" features one of the most painfully realistic hit-and-run scenes ever!

6 out of 10. A tighter script and more creativity would have made this a better film.

Australian Indie flick Marauders is a film that sets out its stall pretty quickly; it's clear that it's going to be a nihilistic, yet poorly made thriller right from the word go. I do feel like I have to be slightly forgiving to the film because it's clear that the filmmakers had no budget and couldn't even afford decent actors; but unfortunately, this film is just rubbish so it's hard to be too forgiving. The only thing that Marauders really has going for it is the nihilistic atmosphere, which would have been good and impressive if only the rest of the movie was good enough to support it such a way that it could be taken seriously. There's not really much of a plot and the film begins by introducing us to a bunch of wayward Australian delinquents. We find out what kind of people they are and then the plot starts properly as we witness a hit and run accident (that is actually one of the only good moments of the film) and two psychopaths band together to chase down to the car driver who was responsible and get their revenge.

The film is obviously playing up to the classic films of the exploitation genre and indeed at one point in the film the characters are directed to 'the last house on the right', but while the grittiness is captured through the poor production values, nothing else is and most of what goes on in this movie is fit only to laugh at. The most ridiculous thing about it is undoubtedly the performers. Obviously acting isn't all that important in a film like this, but here it's just ridiculous and really rather boring as a result. The actors just don't seem interested in the film and it's hard to care about anything they're doing when it's being portrayed in such a dull manner. Some of the acting is so rubbish it actually is painful to watch, and even worse than this is the fact that all the "psychos" look so unconvincing that one has to question how they ever managed to get cast. We end up with actors that don't look right and don't have the talent to carry the thing off, which is never going to work. Thankfully, Marauders is very short at just seventy minutes so that is a relief but I was still really bored by the end and while I can respect the director somewhat for getting this off the ground; his film still isn't very good.