Gutterballs

Title: Gutterballs
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Starring: Alastair Gamble, Mihola Terzic, Nathan Witte
Director: Ryan Nicholson

Continuing my days interest in B-Movies is a slasher constructed on a mere $250K that sets to take everything to a new extreme in every aspect imaginable. Whilst slasher's aren't usually my style of choice, this is one that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see; is there nudity? You can bet your bare ass there's no shortage of that here; male? Female? Bloody? Clean? It's got the lot. Is there gore? At a kill every ten minutes, each more gory and inventive than the last, there sure as hell ain't no shortage of blood as victims are maimed, tortured, maimed a bit more, given a shiny wax coating and then put on show. And don't think it lets up on the swearing either, with a reputed 500+ f-bombs during the course of the film, that's an average of one swear word every 11 seconds, this is a film set out to offend in every way. Brace yourself for graphic depictions of rape, impromptu transvestite operations, and trust me when I tell you that you probably don't want to know half the uses they come up with for those bowling pins.

Set in a bowling alley, two rival teams are bowling against one another, but tensions run high. When a fight breaks out between the two groups, the owner throws them all out telling them to return after-hours tomorrow to play their match, but the four “jocks” decide to set out to get their revenge on the cause of the argument, Lisa, first. By gang-raping her. Soon ensues a massacre by the mysterious “BBK” as both sides fall prey to a foe who seems less intent on getting revenge as they are at simply killing everyone. The dialogue is largely pointless, the plot no more interesting than any other slasher – though there is some interesting use of the environment – and none of the characters in the entire film are even remotely likeable, which probably helps in the long run as it isn't long before you start cheering the anonymous BBK in his violent escapade. There are flaws in the humour which when not reliant on a gory slapstick tries for a “Porky's” sense of juvenility but at best succeeds in not being an annoyance, the level of angry swearing at one another quickly becoming grating, needing some filtering out from the viewers end to recognise the occasional snippet of actually interesting dialogue. But since when did anyone watch an exploitation flick for the plot?

You could easily mistake it for an 80s slasher, such is the way that the set is made to be so immersive, the classic rock soundtrack and cinematography immersing you in an experience torn straight from the Grindhouse era; the only two clear indicators of its true origins being the gratuitous content on a level unheard of at the time and the rather amusing Canadian accents (trust the canucks to do a US-style slasher well eh?). This film is nothing short of an exercise in bad taste, and is only for those who don't just need a 'strong stomach' to deal with such exploitative excesses but instead revel in them, laughing maniacally as they allow their inner sadist to take over. It's films like this that make me chuckle at those who thought the likes of 'Antichrist' was graphic. Give it 20 minutes. If you're enjoying yourself after the first use of a bowling pin, it'll only get better. If you're repulsed, you can rejoin the other 99% of humanity.