FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: REGOREGITATED SACRIFICE (2008)

BY ALEX DAVIS

Film Gutter
Come on in, the water's sickening...

ReGOREgitated Sacrifice (2008)
Dir. Lucifer Valentine, Canada, 65 minutes

It's very rare that there's a movie that I truly put off watching. Those of you who have followed Film Gutter since 2015 will probably sense I'm fairly hard to shock and where it comes to extreme gore and violence, I think I'm made of fairly stern stuff. But having virtually back-to-backed two installments of Lucifer Valentine's luridly titled Vomit Gore Trilogy, I was anything but keen to complete that repellent triptych. Still, I think I would be doing myself, the director and all my fellow gutter dwellers a disservice to ignore it. Welcome back to the disturbed mind of Lucifer Valentine for ReGOREgitated Sacrifice.
 
First off, the eagle-eyed among you will notice this is the second movie of the trilogy and that I have somewhat made a mess of the order. So here there's no Hope Likens, with the focus (to some extent) on Ameara Lavey and even more so on The Soska Sisters. Yes, those Soska Sisters – Dead Hooker in a Trunk, American Mary etc. That's not to suggest that any of the content here is softened at all – what we have is actually even more sexualised than either of the other installments, and the vomit comes thick and fast yet again. If you seriously can't stand to hear people retching and gagging, do yourself a favour and duck these movies.
 
If anything, this movie is probably the hardest of the three to make sense of – no mean feat in and of itself. We see the feature character of the series, Angela Aberdeen, very little as we focus on 'The Black Angels of Hell' (depicted by the Soskas) as they go on a grotesque rampage of murder, physical abuse and sexual depravity. Even more this one begged the question of 'how did you get people to agree to that?' because this one has a larger cast, with a wide range of victims seen and debased in all sorts of ways. There's golden showers, people puking on each other, lashings of blood and gore and – most strangely – a man vomiting into a hollowed-out head whilst wearing an octopus on his own head. Feel free to take a moment to take that in. That, of course, is the repulsive Hank Skinny – somebody who strikes a little note of fear into me every time he appears on the screen. In fact, I struggle to think of anyone I less want to see on a screen that him, because it's a cue that what follows is going to be truly horrible.
 
The plot is practically non-existent, eschewing anything traditional in favour of the kind of montage that you might get to enjoy if you end up actually going to hell. The sound effects are crunching and unpleasant, the visuals are unremittingly extreme and upsetting and basically the whole thing is just there to make you feel bad as a viewer. It's one of those movies which it's kind of hard to go back to real life after. Even at an hour and five minutes it feels too long, because a part of you just wants it to be over. The whole trilogy is a unique endurance test that makes no concession to watchability, to decency, to traditional filmmaking or indeed to traditional morality. I dread to think what it would be like to watch the whole set back to back – you might never get over it...
 
For all that, and as I said of the previous, there is something compelling and fascinating here. Part of you wonders what's next, what can be next, what boundary will be crossed in the next few minutes. And part of the fascination is trying to find the meaning beneath the madness – something I'm not sure I was really able to do this time, despite my best efforts. That doesn't mean it's not there, but I'm not quite sure I can come back any time soon to delve deeper.
 
Still, that's the full Vomit Gore Trilogy watched and survived! Achievement Unlocked!
 
Wait, what? There's a fourth movie...?


Uh-oh...

RATING: 7/10. It's likely these movies will always hold a place in extreme horror folklore, and are probably the bellweather against which so many other disturbing movies are judged against. 'You thought that was disturbing? Well, you should check these out...' Literally nothing here is made easy to watch, either visually or aurally, and brief moments of candid talks from characters feel like glimpses of precious respite in the maelstrom of abuse, murder, violence and bodily fluid. Nobody has ever dared go here since, which is possibly some sort of indication of the dent these movies have made in the horror consciousness. It was still hard to turn away from, despite it all, and all three are grimly fascinating in a way I still can't quite pin down. This one felt more disjointed, and lacked some of the rawer emotional punch of the other two, so it falls a bit short of its bookends with 7/10.

And yes, I will come to Black Mass of the Nazi Sex Wizard at some point...