While Saw was anything but the first, the success of that franchise did bring about a slew of ‘I want to play a game’ type movies that brought all sorts of groups of people together to destroy each other in the hope of escape or great riches. It’s always been a fairly hit and miss field, as real ingenuity and intelligent plotting is all too often thrown aside for much simpler shock and gore tactics. I’d even level some of that charge at the latter entries in the Saw series…

Of late we’ve seen Truth or Dare and Hide and Seek turned into much deadlier versions of what we would associate from our childhoods, so why wouldn’t Would You Rather? have had the same treatment?

The story is ostensibly about Iris, one of nine ‘lucky’ contestants to be invited to a sophisticated evening where they’ll all get to play a game, with fabulous (and desperately needed) prizes to the winner. Iris’s brother is extremely sick and, with them struggling to make ends meet anyway, she feels she has no choice but to go along with this bizarre invitation. The party is led by eccentric millionaire Shepard Lambrick, played by Jeffrey Combs in wonderfully over-the-top form – he’s probably the most fun thing about this movie.

The game itself is a simple game of Would You Rather, with contestants starting small – vegetarian Iris eating steak and foie gras for 10,000 dollars, for example. But soon enough it’s all electrocutions, icepicks, whipping rods, attempted drownings and limbs being blown off. The last one standing will land the prize at the end of it all – so who has the guts, heart and intelligence to pull it off?

The best way I could probably describe this movie would be middle of the road – there’s nothing patently awful about it, but equally there’s not much to make it a real standout offering. For all the charisma Jeffrey Combs brings to this pantomime villain bad guy, I find Iris very bland as a lead character – she seems to vanish for large spells of the film, and I found myself more interested in other players. Ex-soldier Travis and the nihilistic Amy stand out as two examples, but that does all bring forward another limitation – we don’t know anyone well enough, even Iris, to really care about what happens to them. The section establishing her situation at the very start feels rushed, like we just can’t wait to get to the twisted part of things, and there’s never enough given to get you really invested in anyone else.

That’s probably best epitomised by the fact I had already seen this one a few years back, but very little of it was really wedged in my memory for the rewatch. Bits of this are interesting, and some are even fun, but it has a slight sense of the throwaway about it. It won’t have cost a huge amount to make, it probably made its money back with a little splash of profit, and is still streaming away on Netflix UK happily enough. I can’t hate it, or be offended by it, but it’s certainly not the best of its category.

RATING: 5/10. You might have guessed where this rating was going to land before I got here. It’s a fun enough concept, and there are some likeable performances, as well as some performances that come over a little half-cooked. As strange as it sounds, the focus is too much on the game, and by skimping on the characterisation we do rather miss out on the emotional impact that we might have had. You’ll probably pass an hour and a half happily enough watching it, especially if you’re an afficionado of this particular sub-branch of horror. It’s more wry and twisted than it is flat out gory and bloody, so if you are a serious gorehound you might be better leaning towards something like Red Room or Vile. With all that said, it was entertaining enough, and I can’t say I really felt bored at any points, so it’s a firm thumbs in the middle all around.

Would You Rather? is streaming on Netflix if you’d like to take a look for yourself.

Grindhouse is, for me, a subgenre that can be distinctly hit or miss. Sometimes it nails the bizarreness, violence and dark humour just right, and other times it can feel corny, cheesy and overplayed. I certainly couldn’t call myself a huge fan of the field, but I’m always willing to approach things with an open mind - practically a prerequisite if you have any interest in reviewing extreme horror - and that was how I came to Bunnyman. It’s a movie I’d heard of, one of those titles that tend to stick with you after you’ve heard it, and I figured it was about time I got round to watching it. But of course this isn’t the original, oh no -- this is last year’s fresh re-edit, a sort of director’s cut to bring out the more grindhouse elements, including never before seen footage.

I’ll say up front - I’ve not seen that original take, so I won’t be comparing the two versions here. If you’re curious about the 2011 version, you’ll just have to check it out for yourself.

So, Bunnyman: Grindhouse Edition is the tale of a group of young adults off on a trip to… somewhere (they may have said, but the detail is lost on me now). As they drive through the desert they are attacked and rammed into by a truck, which forces them off the road and totals their car. Not good news, but there’s much worse yet to come, because from the truck emerges Bunnyman, a twisted serial killer created by a tortured childhood (as introduced to us in a gritty if slightly clumsy prologue).

And -- let’s not put too fine a point on it -- from there begins about every slasher movie you’ve ever seen. Lost in the landscape and desperate, the group turns on each other, unsuccessfully seeks to get help from disturbed locals, and basically drops like ninepins throughout the movie’s running time. The characters are broadly drawn, and are the fairly typical motley crew of jock guys and their girlfriends/would-be girlfriends. As such, it’s hard to be that invested in their travails throughout the movie. The Bunnyman concept is interesting, although could maybe have been explored more -- it’s actually a fairly familiar urban legend in parts of the US, but the movie doesn’t really bring that in or play with that particular concept.

Honestly much of the above I wouldn’t have minded that much, but there were two frustrating things. Firstly there was a sense of rather playing for time -- not just with intermissions and adverts (not hugely uncommon in grindhouse) but also overlong shots of characters doing simple things like walking and many scenes sort of pausing for a few seconds mid-action. It might not sound that egregious, but there’s a lot of it and it feels really unnecessary. There were also moments in the film that I think were meant to be funny but made no sense, in particular a scene where the characters’ speech is suddenly dubbed over in a thick Eastern European accent. Why? Maybe it’s been done elsewhere, but it was certainly lost on me.

The other thing that was a bit underwhelming was that the movie never really built on some of its best stuff -- the set-up on Bunnyman in the first five minutes is all we get, and I could have lived with plenty more psychology on the character. Throw in some interesting… erm… family dynamics at the end of the movie that are also rather squandered, and there is a lingering sense this could have been something rather more than it was.

RATING: 4/10. I feel like I’ve warmed a bit more to this movie since initially watching it, as there were elements I liked, but overall I just felt as though it tried too hard to present itself as a slice of grindhouse rather than it feeling natural. It just felt a bit showy and obnoxious on the whole. With that said, there are some fun and interesting scenes, and this certainly wouldn’t be the worst slasher movie you’re liable to see. I feel like there is a better movie in here itching to get out -- maybe it was the original, or the sequel Bunnyman Vengeance?

While I do have a list of movies I want to get to and review, there are times when I do a bit of wandering around the internet to try and find something that isn’t on that list. It’s always worth exploring, and you often stumble across something interesting that way.

Enter The Champagne Club, a relatively unknown movie shot in Brazil with a cast of five and directed by then-newcomer Joao Machado – in fact, this remains his only feature film. Purported to be ‘based on the letters written by Jonathan Hacke, an artist and mental patient at a psychiatric institution’, this one was certainly quite a ride. Honestly I couldn’t find anything further about this Jonathan Hacke, but given what I just saw those letters might be quite the read.

The storyline itself sees four figures from the art scene descend upon a huge mansion miles from civilisation – we have art dealer and gallery owner Bruce Wallace and his wife Connie, young, stifled artist Tim Miles and his girlfriend May Donahue, heir to an arts fortune. Of course they all enjoy the finer things in life, and it’s not long before their vacation turns to grotesque excess. The group are rarely seen without a bottle of champagne in sight, and what begins as a relatively harmless jaunt of drinking, fine food and easy days soon turns unpleasant. The seclusion and the privilege to do what you want certainly brings out the dark side in our quartet…

I don’t want to oversell this movie, because although it is an interesting concept, and certainly has its moments, I came away ultimately feeling pretty ambivalent towards it. The actors certainly give it plenty – Brian Donovan as Tim Miles in particular looks like he never slept once during the shoot, portraying his character’s growing isolation and disillusionment really well. The other three actors around him also go at losing their minds with real gusto, each of them descending from the childish play of the chronically spoilt to genuinely vindictive and destructive behaviour as the movie wears on.

I think the issue for me comes in the fact that the characterisation is too weak – the cast are introduced in a little montage at the start of the movie, probably no more than 90 seconds. It’s not a bad idea in itself, but ultimately that’s about all we get in terms of who they are, and we have overdone stereotypes rather than well-rounded protagonists here. As such, it leaves the various slips into madness feeling hollow, because we don’t really know WHY it happens the way it does. If the characters were more fully set up and explored, the chinks in their psychological armour established, then this could have been an absolute cracker of a film.

As it is, things can feel more than a little random, and scenes sort of string together and drift along without that much meaning attached to them. Individually there are scenes that are funny, and scenes that are weird, and one or two scenes that are genuinely gross. But it’s hard to really know where it’s all going, or ultimately to figure out what it all means. Maybe there’s some sort of rumination on the nature of art here, but it’s muddy at best. If it is inspired by the letters of this Hacke character, it might explain just why the movie feels so disjointed and chaotic – but I can’t just give it a pass on those grounds.

RATING: 5.5/10. I have to give credit for some things here – the director has obviously come in here with a vision, and I think has largely delivered it, thanks to the efforts of a cast absolutely full committed to deliver it. There are some strong visuals throughout, and if you like things that are pretty experimental then you might find this one up your street. Those of you who are regular readers will know that I like something a bit different, and The Champagne Club certainly qualifies as that. Still, with all that said, I can’t say that it honestly sticks the landing on everything, and there were phases where I found my attention wandering a little. I wouldn’t say that I regretted watching it, but equally I don’t think that I’m going to be rushing back for a rewatch any time soon.

It’s something I’ve never really spoken about on these pages, but I’m a big fan of the Saw movies. Of course they’ve become infamous as ‘torture porn’, and many are pretty flippant about all but the first few entries. However watching all seven together is an interesting experience. Sure, they do decline in quality, but the story work right until the end does a great job of developing a narrative throughout the entirety of the series – no mean feat, and something I feel is unique in horror.

The relevance of this to The Collector is that it marks the directorial debut of Marcus Dunstan, writer of the entire tail end of the Saw series from number 4 to number 7. The script itself is by Dunstan and Patrick Melton, who was also heavily involved in story and script for those very same movies. Being that Saw 4 was one of my favourites in the series – and stands in my mind as one of the best movie twists I’ve ever seen – I was pretty excited about this one. And that’s without even mentioning that this was originally pitched as a Saw sequel – although unfortunately we ended up with 2017’s tone-deaf Jigsaw instead…

So here I am, looking for a worthy successor to Saw. Sadly, The Collector is not it.

Our story follows Arkin, a handyman and former small-time crook whose wife/partner owes some money to some dubious types. It may sound like I’m paraphrasing, but that stage of things literally takes 15 minutes and that’s about all we’re told. With this in mind, Arkin decides the best thing he can do is rob the wealthy family he’s been working for recently to save his wife/partner and daughter from reprisal.

What follows from there feels pretty disappointing, because when Arkin arrives at the house it is loaded with traps and being stalked by a vicious masked man out to mutilate and kill everyone in sight. We find out that he is The Collector, and this his particular MO is to collect people…

I don’t want anyone to think I’m being fatuous about it, but the paucity of the storyline really irked me here, especially given the complexities that marked the Saw series. The vague set-up is there to set up basically a brutal version of Home Alone, complete with acid on the floor, spikes on the stairs and knives hanging from the chandelier. The set-up is so weak that it’s hard to really invest in any of the characters or events, and while you could argue the traps in Saw pushed the bounds of reality, at least I know what the rationale was. This just feels like the various pitfalls and dangers came before the plot itself – hey, I’ve got some ideas for traps, what story can I include them in!

If you’re a hardcore fan of silent serial killers and inventive deaths you might get something out of this, but I was left distinctly nonplussed when I came to the finale – which was also frustrating in its own right. Even at an hour and a half the movie feels overlong, the characterisation is scant, the visuals are so dark it’s hard to tell what’s actually going on half the time and it all just feels like a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

There was a sequel to this one, The Collection, which I can’t honestly say I’m itching to get to but I will probably stick on the ‘to review’ slate, just because it’s always nice when you can go for a whole series. I gather there’s also a third movie in the works, so I’ll be collecting these movies up for a while yet…

RATING: 2/10. The Collector isn’t bottom of the barrel garbage, but by the same token it’s almost unbelievable that it could come out like this given the team behind it. Almost everything that made the Saw series great is missing, apart from the cavalcade of traps – which in this context basically mean nothing. There’s the odd interesting moment, but ultimately it’s all just pretty forgettable and leaves next to no lasting impression. It does borderline surprise me there is a sequel, so I might just have to bump that up the review list out of pure curiosity.

If you’re out there looking for a successor to Saw, you might be better served by the grim WAZ or the more fun/bonkers 13 Sins.

There’s a huge amount on the Film Gutter list that I always ‘meant to get round to’ – and honestly after wrapping up in January I assumed I never would. But here we are, still in (sort of) lockdown, and hopefully our temporary return is providing a little distraction and maybe some film recs to keep you busy during this time too…

Anyway, Vibroboy has always been on said list, and bearing in mind just how short it is, it seems somehow criminal it’s taken quite this long to get to. French extreme generally has a pretty good reputation in my eyes, so it always had that going for it too.

And I can now say ‘why on Earth didn’t I watch this sooner’ because, in short, Vibroboy was absolutely great.

So, the story follows a trio of characters – beginning with Francesca, an extravagant cross-dresser who returns from an unspecified archaeological trip with a gift for Brigitte (this serves as a separate cutaway at the start of the film). The two of them live at opposite ends of a tiny trailer park, and get along well – much to the chagrin of Brigitte’s abusive, obnoxious partner Leon, who remains persuaded that Francesca is attempting to seduce Brigitte right under his nose. Leon’s character is staggeringly over the top, but then again the whole movie is – everything is deliberately exaggerated for effect, giving the whole thing the feel of a real dark, surreal pantomime. The artifact Francesca brought back is of course an immediate bone of contention, but this is no regular objet d’art – no, it’s a distinctly phallic-shaped piece rumoured to contain the captured spirit of El Vibro…

Vibroboy is one of those occasions where everything feels pitch-perfect, as though the director has smashed everything out of the park just the way they wanted it. The energy in the performances all round is incredible, the chemistry between the trio of performers is excellent, and the visual style is really striking – the use of camera angles feels very clever, and gives the whole thing a further manic and uncomfortable edge. It has almost the style of other French movies the likes of Micmacs or The City of Lost Children – although a very different type of film. It’s dark, deranged and ultimately a very strange slice of fantasy. If you’re a fan of French film you may indeed recognise one or two of the actors involved too, who has gone on to some pretty notable success since this offering.

A huge part of me wants to talk about the ending to this film, but the other side thinks that I would just be doing you a disservice in giving away the finale. Suffice to say it’s worth waiting for, and perfectly in keeping with everything that came before it. Plot-wise it goes for just the right amount for its runtime – I don’t think that you could have spun this out any longer, and there was certainly never a feature film buried in here that didn’t get out. But if you’re looking for a wild, out there, delirious half an hour, you could certainly do a lot worse than Vibroboy..

RATING: 9.5/10. It’s fair to say that this movie won’t be for everybody – it’s certainly intense, and gets right in your face from the get-go. However for me that was a part of what made it work, and you’ll probably know within a few minutes if this is not going to float your boat. What I loved the most were the bizarre visuals and the flat-out energetic acting all around – it barely drops for a second and is overblown – because that’s what works, never just for the sake of being overblown. Director Jan Kounen does have a few feature film credits to his name too, so if you’ll excuse me I’m off for a scout around to dig those out. In the meantime, a very warm recommendation for this genuinely entertaining offering – and entertaining is not something I can always say, even for movies I’ve rated very highly here…

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DIR. LO LEE, 24 MINS

It’s not often I have the chance to visit fresh shores in the line of reviewing, but this one marks my first trip to Switzerland for a slice of extreme horror. It’s scarcely renowned as a hotbed for the subgenre – at least to my knowledge – but there are plenty of near-neighbours in Europe that have a strong reputation for the field, so this should be interesting at least.

Blutgeil is confusingly subtitled Zurich Cop Killer IV, although I’m stuffed if I can find three previous instalments. Maybe it’s some sort of gag I’m missing the point of? Anyway, we lead in with a news report of a man who’s killed 21 cops, with two escaping to fight another day. I couldn’t even tell you if that serial killer character reappears, honestly, but these are the two policemen that we follow throughout the piece. Right off the bat they break up a drug deal going on in a toilet – killing all but one of the people there, a woman who crawls away silently while the men are attempting to put up a fight. They ultimately trail her to a squat, which is where most of the action takes place, with the cops trying to avenge their fallen colleagues while the dark and bizarre cast of characters inside fight the law with everything they have…

I’m always willing to give a film I’ve not really got much of an idea about a whirl (especially if it’s this short) and I know this one does have at least a small cult following. Some of these low budget/no budget movies of this era have developed an audience over the course of time – and indeed some warrant it. It looks shot on VHS, and has a habit of skipping slightly awkwardly now and then throughout its runtime. Again that’s not necessarily a negative, and there have been some fun and even disturbing movies shot on VHS. Then again, we did have the filmography of Nick Phillips… *shudders*

Unfortunately this is not one of the best of its ilk. The acting is pretty hammy and overdone, it doesn’t look well-shot – that could be deliberate to add more edge to the chaos that unfolds throughout, but it didn’t quite land that effect for me. There is a certain energy, in the finale in particular, although for me the absolute last scene fell distinctly flat – I won’t say any more than that for risk of spoiling it. I always tip my hat to anyone who gets off their ass and invests them time and effort to make a film, and this is definitely one of those that feels like a bunch of mates of a similar mind that got together to do something. It’s good in its way that this one still has some sort of life, but there’s plenty – even in this sub-subgenre – that I’ve preferred.

RATING: 3/10. Sadly I can’t be neutral on this Swiss offering (damn it, I almost made it through this whole review without making that stupid joke). The idea is very simple, more just a set up for excess gore with little by way of plot or characterisation to hang it around – when characters both good and bad die it’s hard to really care either way. The gore effects aren’t terrible, but you will have seen rather more polished even in other low budget fare. If you’re a gorehound through and through, or someone who considers themselves an extreme horror completist, then you might find something here – other than that I think you could give this one a pass.

REVIEW BY ALEX DAVIS 

That’s some title, am I right? But if you like the moniker, then the premise is bound to draw you in even further. Our lead character, Chip Gutchel, is a man stuck in a dead-end middle-management IT job, led by an unbearably chipper manager, and rather marooned in an unhappy marriage and home life.

Oh, and he is currently on a crazed spree of shoving anything he chooses up his ass.

Goddamn it, I loved this movie.

The main focus of the plot is Gutchel’s relationship with Detective Fox, a broken police detective who turns up to Chip’s AA group. It’s not long before Chip is Fox’s sponsor, but he doesn’t do much of a job of it – as Fox continues to decline Gutchel is mostly wrapped up in his bizarre anal rampage, putting a host of household items (and even the family dog) where the sun doesn’t shine. However when ‘bring your child to work day’ rolls around at Chip’s office, he can’t resist the temptation to lose something a bit bigger in that cavity. And his problems only get worse when Fox is assigned to the case of the missing child, and a surreal game of cat and mouse is on.

The tension between these two central characters is great, led by solid performances – director Tyler Cornack doubles as a lead actor for Chip, and does a strong job as a downtrodden man hiding a horrible secret. Tyler Rice does a fine job as Fox, who is maybe a little too much every other cop from any other movie, but delivers the stranger elements of the movie with gusto. Shelby Dash also puts in a solid stint as Anne Gutchel, and the issues in the marriage bubble away in a way that is believable, especially as Chip’s life gradually begins to unravel.

The movie is pretty gross in places – particularly in its second half – but generally builds pretty steadily, showing plenty of the home life of both characters and what led them to the situation they find themselves in. You feel a certain sympathy for both of them. By doing this, the movie – which could have been a little vapid – is actually surprisingly deep and warm. Wait, maybe that’s not the best choice of words here…

The point there stands though – there’s far more to this movie than just shock value, and as well as its emotional story there’s plenty of laughs too. The humour is plenty dark but it does have a number of hilarious moments, and often calls upon the utter weirdness of its central conceit for incidents that might make you smile wryly too. It also has a great finale which is well worth sticking around for!

It’s hard to know quite what to compare Butt Boy to – I’ve seen some people draw a line between this and The Greasy Strangler, but that doesn’t quite work for me. I feel like this has a lot more heart, or maybe just more meaning to it, and is at large a cleverer and more watchable movie to me. I’d dare to go so far as to say it’s one of the quirkiest and most interesting films I’ve seen in a long time, and probably the best thing I’ve seen in 2020 so far. It’s not long been released, so if you can get hold of this wherever you are and you like your horror/comedy distinctly off the wall, this should nicely kill another 100 minutes of lockdown…

RATING: 9.5/10. I was drawn in by the frankly bonkers idea behind this one, but what kept me watching was the interesting characters and the relationships between them and the fact I never quite knew where this one was going – even until the very final scene. It’s weird, it’s fun, and it might just ‘hit you in the feels’ when you least expect it. Ultimately it combines together a lot of what I like, including one of the most prized things for me – a great streak of originality. This sits right at the top of the charts for me – in fact it’s nowhere near the bottom… (sorry, couldn’t resist one final pun!)

There’s always a little reticence on my part to approach this sort of film. Not because there’s something specifically disturbing about the ‘kidnapped person trapped in cage’ trope that permeates through horror, but it’s so tried and true that it’s hard to do with that much originality. It can work well – I can think of a handful of interesting entries, with Oldboy being an obvious standout. The trope itself can even work if done well, with strong performances.

Cage gives itself away with the title, and you’re pretty set from the get-go with what you’re getting into. Our main (and basically only character) is Gracie Blake, and the difficulties of her life are laid out as a series or phone calls that play throughout the credits. Not enough money to go around, her child living elsewhere (although it’s never really specified what that situation is) and a life she hates in taking phone calls for a sex line. In a desperate moment, she accepts an offer of $5000 to meet one of her regular callers – a terrible idea of course, as she wakes up in a near-empty room chained to and locked within a cage.

It’s effectively a one-woman performance, as while there are some conversations and interactions they’re all on the phone. Lucy-Jane Quinlan carries it pretty well, but it’s so hard to deliver something like this without it falling down in a place or two. Her kidnapper, Peter, is some sort of businessman who jets all over the country, who leaves her phone in her possession (??) so she can contact her boyfriend, her mother and ultimately of course the police – despite instructions not to do so. Peter leaves her enough food and drink to live on, along with toilet roll and a bucket, implying to Gracie that there’s some reason that she’s there that he will reveal in time.

To be fair there are plenty of twists and turns, enough to keep you guessing, although I would have to say that not all of them absolutely land – in fact one or two events are sadly a bit frustrating and rather jarred my suspension of disbelief. With these films that sense of reality is pivotal, and Cage breaks it more than is comfortable. Some of the side actors – despite only being on the phone – are not always believable, and there are also a number of other smaller niggles that I won’t detail here for risk of spoiling it. In my mind some of those less significant elements added up to a rather bigger problem – there was a sense of convenience to the plot, things happening in a certain way at a certain time that were a little too coincidental.

As I said up front, the ‘person (mostly women, to be honest) kidnapped and held against their will’ isn’t my favourite subgenre, but I always try and go into a movie with an open mind. This is not the best example of the field, despite some promising ideas – unfortunately all too often it fails to deliver on the concepts it has, and a likeable lead performance is slightly undermined by the plot and sometimes the script. You might want to visit this one if you consider yourself an afficionado of this particular field, but it didn’t hold my attention captive as it might have.

RATING: 4/10. I think with the sorts of subgenres you either have to do it really well, or deliver something different and original – and sadly Cage doesn’t really deliver on either of those fronts. I tip my hat to Lucy-Jane Quinlan, who basically spend all the screen time on her own, in a good effort to carry this particular vehicle. But it loses its way in a few places and there are some questionable decisions in the plot sense, so I have to come in with a slightly below-average grade.

If I were to describe Necro Files 3000 as a few guys dicking around with action figures, you might think that I meant that in a bad way.

But I don’t – not in the least.

This movie is a follow-up (of sorts) from 1997’s The Necro Files and The Necro Files 2, which came out six years later. Full disclosure – I’ve not seen either of those films, so precisely how they all tie together is a little lost on me. But I don’t think the first two featured any action figures either way.

The story is slim, but does exist – we open with a couple (a clown toy and a Barbie doll, to be precise) being terrorised by a crazed zombie cannibal that escapes for their TV screen and kills them both. The creature proceeds to go on a rampage, and the only people that can stop it are hardened occult expert Professor Blackthorn and his new companion, investigative journalist Phineas Hogweather. Phineas pokes at the darker elements of Blackthorn’s past, while the professor is unwilling to believe that the zombie menace – Logan – is loose again. But when they catch Logan killing a camgirl (that’s a weird scene) they know they have to act to stop the undead menace.

It’s obvious that everyone involved is having immense fun, and also pretty apparent that this one was made for nothing or next to nothing. I say the characters are action figures, but there’s nothing stop motion a la Robot Chicken (the method is facetiously called Superpuppettronimation in the very opening frame). It is literally two guys holding the toys as the characters move around, and I could understand if this maybe puts some viewers off – it looks silly because it is. If you could imagine a rather more primitive version of Team America: World Police you might be about in the right ballpark.

For all that, the enthusiasm of all involved was infectious to me, and the sense of humour here coincided with mine very nicely. The scene in which the characters repeatedly enter the wrong room looking for the camgirl was a stitch, and the movie commonly pokes fun at the absurdity of the ‘action figures as characters’ premise in a way that is plenty self-aware. Things take a deeply weird twist towards the end as Killbot 3000 and the Electronic Detective come in (not a toy I’ve heard of, but it might ring a bell for some of you!) I think basically it will just boil down to if you find this to your taste comedically – it entertained me, and made me laugh a number of times, and with that in mind I’m willing to forgive plenty that I might have been a stickler about had it less tickled my funny bone.

This one is barely over an hour long, and if you like macabre humour and a bit of puppet absurdity this could be worth you investing the time on. I’ll say something I’ve often said at Film Gutter in that ‘it won’t be for everybody’, and honestly you’ll probably get a sense within five minutes if you’re in the yay or nay camp here. I believe the first two movies are a bit more straight zombie movies/slashers, but if they have the same minds behind it as this one I might just have to go back and check those out too.

RATING: 7/10. I can’t go overboard – there’s only so far you can go with waving action figures around, and Necro Files 3000 probably does it about as well as is possible. There’s plenty that made me laugh, and the plot was quirky and took off in all sorts of strange directions throughout – and that absurdity helped things along for sure. I’ve always had a penchant for movies with energy and enthusiasm – for me that can go a long way towards replacing higher budgets – and this definitely fell into that category. There’s nothing particularly deep, or cutting, or insightful, but it was fun – not something I often get to say with these particular reviews…

Back in January 2015, I wrote a first review for the Film Gutter series with Debris Documentar, a movie from notorious director Marian Dora. Back then I didn't really had a long-term plan, I was just driven by a curiosity to explore some of the strangest, darkest and most confrontational parts of cinema. Film Gutter has run for five years almost to the day since then, but sadly the time has come to draw things to a close.
 
There's a couple of reasons for this – partly it's just time to watch and think about it and write the reviews. 2020 is looking like being busier than ever with work commitments, and just squeezing in a Film Gutter per week is becoming more difficult all the time. Partly it's continuing to find the right sort of thing – over five years I've reviewed more than 200 extreme horror movies, and it's getting ever harder to find things to watch that I can get really excited about and interested in than ever before. Having covered so many of the big releases in the field, there's a sense of having much less ground to cover these days.

It's not a decision that I take lightly, but I've yet to put up a review in January and if I'm going to do this series it’s important to me to be doing it properly and doing it justice. The aim was always to be weekly, and only rarely have I slipped in that over the last five years – 2020 hasn't been pretty in that regard and that's sadly not liable to improve.

I have to say a huge thanks to all our supporters over the years, all the people who've sent in movies to watch and recommendations of films to check out for the series and all the fantastic directors and actors I've had the chance to chat with – I still pinch myself at some of the talented people I've had a chance to chat with online and even meet face to face, the likes of Jorg Buttgereit, Tom Six, Pollyanna McIntosh, Stephen Biro, Uwe Boll, Kasper Juhl, Phil Stevens and so many more that I couldn't possibly list them all here.

 – hopefully it's given you some interesting and different movies to view, and if you've not quite had the heart to check them out then maybe it's made for interesting reading anyway!

And last but by no means least, I want to extend a massive thanks to Mr Ginger Nuts himself, Jim McLeod. It’s been a pleasure to be part of such a fantastic site, and I’m so grateful to Jim for giving me the opportunity to explore the sorts of films that so many other horror sites might shy away from and for all the support for the series over its run.
 
I'll be continuing to watch plenty of weird, wonderful, out-there and brutal horror in my spare time I'm sure, so the spirit of Film Gutter will live on in some way...

Thanks again to all for all the support, and never be afraid to try something a little extreme!

Alex