There’s an ultra-fine line between the b-movies and z-grade films, and yes it’s true that c-grade flicks exist too, but those tend to become the television cable fillers, therefore where does this movie fall on the sliding scale, it leans more to the b, than z, many due to fact it contains an abundance of blood and T&A in a repeating cycle. Hence the directorial debut of Bob Clark, no relation to the Bob Clark who directed Black Christmas [1974]), who also wrote the script and assisted by Bruce Kilroy, and found distribution with Midnight Releasing which is home to some low budget flicks American Backwoods: Slew Hampshire (2013) or Psychotic (2012) and later made its VOD appearance on Amazon Prime.
The overall movie moves at a quicken pace, which tends to be a good thing since it takes a while for the killing and bodies to begin mounting, the story focuses on Megan (Alicia Watson), a customer service rep who gets fired from her job because business is slow and learns her boyfriend is cheating on her with her roommate, this all occurs on the same day. Megan then moves in with her friend Amanda (Courtney Riggs) who is dating Bobby (Stefan Rollins) who runs a strip club with manager, John (Mark Law (Blade the Iron Cross [2020])), they seem nice, but a tad sleazy. Bobby offers Megan a job as a waitress due to the previous one who seemed to have left without a trace. However the viewers are quickly informed of her whereabouts as three strippers drag her into the woods and violently slaughter her, don’t expect much of it off screen, the editing portion introduces many hard cuts which reoccurs whenever there’s violence pending for the scene. Meanwhile, Megan excels at the waitressing position, and climbs up the ladder to become the bartender before embarking on a career of stripping. Before the movie descends into complete massacre proportions there’s just one truly disgusting scene that involves the biting off of male gentila similar to the that of Last House on the Left (1972) and what happens next, well just let your imagination work it over in mind. Sadly, not much really occurs in the movie, except it’s a strip club and a massacre occurs there; much of the cast were a one and done in the film business, though look for the character Jazz, who portrayed by Erin Brown (Theta States [2017]) doing quite bizarre actions.
Simply put, the cast just goes through the motions, placing blame for this is very muddled, the dialogue for the most part is spoken as words on page, no true emphasis, or effort. Now often a beginner filmmaker makes a few shorts or takes some notes from other directors for their big step to fill the director’s chair, but there’s plenty of weird angled shots. There needs to be a reason why it’s filmed this way, does it imply something else, someone eavesdropping or a demonic force, but shooting through the spokes of the chair instead of just using a wide shot for the three women talking doesn’t help. Then there’s an awfully long scene involving a party at the strip club that has trouble with lighting, angles, and sound, basically everything is a troublesome for the viewer; it feels as if it’s done for a music video. One will definitely lose attention as they’ll be focused on raising and lowering the volume throughout the movie rather than suffering viewing pleasure.
Thankfully, the movie takes the final 15-minutes or so to enjoy the pleasure of the keyword in the title ‘massacre’ however nothing that other movies which use this word haven’t done before, overall it’s a a small snapshot into the sleazy world of strip clubs. Just because one’s movie deploys countless blood and nudity don’t mean its a blockbuster of horror fun, however it’s not the worst either, be forewarned of this sick feature.
TAGLINES:
- She has a killer body.
- She’s got a killer body.
http://midnightreleasing.com/strip-club-massacre/
https://www.facebook.com/Reel-Bloody-Films-793437047382576/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4881430/
IMDb Rating: 5.1/10
Baron’s Rating: 3.5/10