Slaughtered (2005)

Produced, written and directed by Anthony Doublin
Starring
- “Khhryst” (Chris Smith)
- Arlisha Fogle
- Rebecca McCuen
- Aschleigh Farynn
- Ariel Carmine

Though I consider myself a fair-to-middling student of human nature, I honestly don’t understand people. Why would a director seek me out and send me a screener, when even the most cursory perusal of my site would reveal that I hate movies that resemble his in any way? Is it some sort of masochistic thing? Are there microbudget filmmakers out there who desperately want to feel my critical boot shoved up their cinematic backsides?

That impulse may be truer than you think, since the movie in question is a goth one, and we all know what an obsession those people have with death and pain and despondency and everything else that seems really really poignant to a morose adolescent.

I don’t hate this movie simply because of its goth blather, though; no, there are plenty and oversufficient reasons for me to loathe it.

THIS MOVIE RATED 100% ASS

We open with a backyard photoshoot. The photographer is named Harold; the actor is Chris Smith, who also goes by the name “Khhryst,” which lets you know that he isn’t just playing the role, he lives the dream. What dream? The one that’s realized by wearing tight black pants and Frankenstein boots and black mesh shirts and long black-dyed hair and pasty foundation and more eyeliner than any three of Charlie’s Angels. (I believe the dream is then fulfilled by whining how isolated and misunderstood you are.) The model, well, she’s Amanda, played by Lena Ramon, but I wouldn’t bother committing that to memory; in the middle of the shoot, Harold clubs her over the head, then continues to photograph her artfully-arranged body.

And what does he do with these pictures? Why, posts them on his members-only snuffporn website, SlaughteredSheep.com, from his little suburban home all decorated with skulls and spiders and every other “damn, ain’t I spooky” piffle he could find. Congratulations; Harold isn’t a protagonist in any generally-accepted definition of the term, but he’s the person we get to spend the whole movie with.

No sooner has he posted his latest set of pics, but he gets an email from another prospective model (Ariel Carmine), who comes right over. Thanks to the spycam in his bathroom, we’re treated to the spectacle of her changing from her street duds into a fishnet outfit. In realtime. Seriously, it’s a full three minutes of her adjusting her stockings and checking her ass in the mirror.

From there, it’s out into his back yard again, where he cuffs her up for a bondage shoot. (In realtime, once again. Mustn’t hurry these things.) Then, once she’s immobilized, his formerly-gentlemanly demeanor changes, and he stuffs a gag in her mouth while he shouts obscenities at her and alternates hitting her with photographing her. Eventually, once he’s half as bored as we are, he slits her throat, then keeps on snapping pictures for several minutes, just so we don’t miss an inch of her mostly naked corpse. (I don’t think he got a good shot of the “corpse” blinking, though.)

Oh, is that how we get people to stay for the entire movie?

Finally, at seventeen minutes into the movie, we meet someone who is apparently supposed to be semi-sympathetic: Monica (Arlisha Fogle), a sassy black private eye whom we meet while in the middle of demonstrating herself unable to work her computer. Yeah, that’s really endearing. She takes a call from a prospective client (Dee Jiminez), mother to Amanda, the first model we saw, who’s obviously reading her lines from an index card in her lap. According to her, Jenny’s been missing for a month, and even though the police had her computer in custody, they haven’t had any leads. Monica agrees to take the case.

Gee, look, it’s time for yet another model (Callie Marie) to show up at Harold’s door. Which means it’s time for yet another three-minute view of her changing in the bathroom. Harold gets his jollies watching her, interrupted only momentarily by a ghostly voice that says… something. He shrugs it off and leads the latest victim out into the back yard, where he ties her in a chair for a fake-electrocution bondage shoot. Of course, after several minutes (several very… long… minutes) of taking pictures, he demonstrates that the electrocution is very real. (Please note that the “cap” of the electrocution device is actually a stove burner tray.)

Meanwhile, Monica now has Amanda’s computer, and checks back through her old email. Among Amanda’s plentiful internet modeling jobs, Monica notices an email from Harold, setting up their shoot, right at about the time she disappeared. Huh. Boy, it sure takes a private eye to notice clues like that. Monica follows a link in the email back to Harold’s website, and is frustrated when she can’t log in to the member’s area after guessing at usernames and passwords four whole times.

Well, enough of the exciting detective action. Now let’s go back to Harold, who waits until dark to toss this latest victim’s body in the trunk of her own car, then drive around town looking for a likely dumpster… Driving… driving… Hey look, there’s one. Drag the body… drag… drag… On the way back, he picks up an cheap hooker (Aschleigh Farynn), and when they pull into a darkened alley, he once again shows his charming ways by threatening her with a knife, photographing her as she cries, and then stabbing her to death.

Guest-starring the Shroud of Turin.

Oh, and once he gets home, he sees a ghostly face on his computer monitor. Which might only have been a dream. He doesn’t have much time to think about it, because another girl (Rebecca McCuen) then shows up at his door. For variety’s sake, she’s not a model come for a shoot; instead, she tells him that her car’s broken down. But once she’s in the house, she pulls a gun and starts screaming at him about her missing sister. After stumbling through a couple of excuses, he knocks her gun away, and… well, it ends up with her strapped to a board in her panties as he trails the gun up and down her skin and listens to her cry and whimper. Until, after several minutes, he shoots her. I suppose I should feel grateful that there wasn’t a three-minute clothes-changing sequence in there. Oh, and ghostly female voices keep muttering things like “Got to be stopped.” I think they’re speaking about Harold personally, not the movie, but I can’t be sure.

In the meantime, private investigator Monica has been showing off those sterling sleuth skills by calling a cop she knows and making giggly voices at him, with vague promises of adventures in a back seat, to get a copy of the local missing persons report. Her eye-rolling for our benefit is supposed to show that she’s basically promising sex for information. Given that the information she wants could be found in ten seconds via Google, this earns her nomination as world’s worst P.I. (Hint: Cops don’t keep missing persons reports under lock and key, since — duh — they’re trying to find these people.)

The nomination is then cemented when she calls back her cop friend and, at the price of further flirting, asks him to track down a “backdoor” to the website for her. I’m guessing the thought never crossed her mind to simply pay for access and bill the client for expenses.

Our finale takes place on Halloween night. Harold is disturbed by dreams of ghostly figures whose lips don’t move with their voices (he has nightmares about bad dubbing?) and the flames of hell. Nevertheless, he’s got a model (Cheri Lynn) coming over for a shoot, which naturally means another sequence with the spycam. This time, though, it’s cut short — to only two-and-a-half minutes — when the same ghostly voices warn the model to get out of the house. Harold cuts off her escape, though, and she ends up duct-taped to a weight bench in the back yard. Can our intrepid investigator, who’s been matching photos on Harold’s site to the missing persons report, get there in time to save her?

If you think I’m going to make an OB/GYN joke here, you’re crazy.

Actually, no. But the ghosts do. Halloween night, remember? A good night for ghosts to take charge. Before he can kill his latest victim, the ghosts all meld into a CGI-created bat-winged vagina monster and chase him around the yard. By the time poor irrelevant Monica arrives, not only has the ghost creature eviscerated Harold and shredded his genitals, but the model has managed to free herself from her restraints. The end.

You’d think, from looking at this piece of anti-social fetish-worshipping flotsam, that the director would be some twenty-something who thinks that because he’s got a camera and some friends willing to bare their skinny breasts for him, he’s a director. But no. Anthony Doublin has a credible professional history as a special effects technician and supervisor. He’s even directed before. Granted, his previous feature, Future War (1997), regularly garners at least an honorable mention as one of the dumbest movies ever made, but I will tell you right here and now that I would watch a 48-hour Future War marathon than sit through Slaughtered again. Did all of that professional experience, hanging around with working filmmaking professionals, allow some slight talent to rub off? Hardly. Despite competent digital video and special effects, Slaughtered is roughly as entertaining as masturbating with barbed wire.

How much did I hate it? This much: I wouldn’t even link to it at Amazon or eBay. If you want to own it, you’ll have to find it yourself, because I’m not helping you purchase it. In fact, if my description of this pustule of a movie interests you in seeing it, you’re a pathetic bastard, and I’m ashamed to have you reading my website.

Not that purchase links are an issue; it doesn’t look like the movie’s been distributed yet. The screener I got proudly trumpets it as an upcoming release from Brain Damage Films, but I can’t find it on their website; this may be a unique instance, in which the powers-that-be at BDF took a rare stance on quality control.

“It’s either a bullet to the brain, or watch the special-edition DVD complete with extra footage! Choose!”

And now, the moment I’ve been waiting for. My screencapping’s all done, I don’t need to refer to the credits any more… There. I just took the disc from my computer and stomped on it. It’s not nearly recompense for having sat through the thrice-damned thing, but it was still oddly satisfying.