Gore Gore Girls

Title: Gore Gore Girls
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Horror (Comedy)
Starring: Frank Kress, Amy Farrell
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

It is perhaps only a matter of time before the chief horror reviewer of this blog will change hands, myself taking the place of the regular horror hound as when work becomes slow, I find myself drifting towards the TV, and as luck would have it the horror channel happens to be amongst the few channels available at my fingertips. A channel devoted almost entirely to 70s and 80s horror; low budget extravaganza's filled with excessive violence and nudity, all wrapped in a delightfully low budget shell, and so whilst not always my genre of choice, you can be rest assured that there will be more to come.

And there are possibly few better places to start than with this; the last of this notorious Horror directors work (until his return 30 years on with 'Blood Feast II') and be rest assured he wanted to retire with a bang. Following the story of a twisted detective tracking down a brutal serial killer with a powerful desire to mutilate the faces of their many victims in a variety of ways ranging from machete's to boiling oil, or just digging your hand in until eyeballs pop and the flesh squelches and bulges out like a grapefruit leaving only a bloody pulp remaining; the only link between the murders are the target group, each victim a stripper. In true B-Movie style they have devised a less than subtle strategy to combine excessive violence with excessive nudity and this video nasty is not one to shy away at the last minute.

I could go on with describing the excessive tendencies of the film but its suffice to say even the most bloodthirsty gore hounds will find little to be disappointed with, but what makes this stand out head and shoulders above the rest who prey on such simplistic tendencies is the humour, not in the least delivered by the outstanding wit of the manipulative detective cracking jokes about how his witness 'seems to have lost face' when arriving to question her, only to find her face missing before helping himself to a lit cigarette tucked neatly between her toes and grabbing himself a beer from her fridge, or intentionally getting women drunk whilst on duty to return to later and fool around with whilst fooling the local police into a false lead on the case simply so they'd stop bothering him. And after all this is said and done, lets not forget the sheer amusement of watching a bloodbath occur to fun and bouncy jazz that somehow fits between music to play on a carousel and badly dubbed porn.

This is a film that was made assuming that women never wear clothes around the house, that they always want to sleep with the nearest man at hand (regardless of how bad a moustache they might have), and can never entirely believe just how much fake blood can come out of such a small blood pack. There's nothing revolutionary here but this film in all its cheesy, humorous and excessively violent glory serves as a prime example of what makes B-Movie Horror so entertaining.