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Virtually out of the blue, middle class housewife and mother Ellen
(Lisa Cohen) is taken captive in her own home by three hoodlums, violent
Chick (Art Neill), retard Paulie (Neil Cerbone), and their female
ringleader Nikki (Jackie Neill), who claim they want nothing more than to
show her a video that will open her eyes concerning her husband Barry
(Gary Cohen), a relatively colourless but well-to-do business executive.
Then Gary's mom Estelle (Linda Herman) shows up, and oddly enough, she and
Nikki, two women from obviously totally different social circles, appear
to know each other. Estelle is shocked by the presence of Nikki, but Nikki
is delighted. The video Nikki and her friends - her brothers, actually -
are showing shows Barry 12 years ago, when he was still a hippie, and he
was together with Nikki. The two of them have a baby, but Barry is too
stoned to properly take care of the kid, and eventually, the kid dies in a
fire caused by Barry's stoned negligence. Nikki was sent to the slammer
for 12 years because of this, but Estelle, a woman of influence, makes
sure her son takes none of the blame. She now claims she has used the last
12 years to straighten her son out, get him off drugs and make him lead a
responsible life - of course she hasn't really succeeded, Barry is still
very much into cocaine, and has it made his habit to visit prostitutes to
beat them up ... The video has turned Ellen totally off her husband and
maybe even more so his mother, so Nikki and her gang should leave, mission
accomplished - which is when Ellen's babysitter (Denise LeDonne) shows up,
and in a fit of rage, Chick kills her ... which naturally complicates
matters ...
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Mean
little shot-on-video flick from a time when shot-on-video still meant
bottom-of-the-barrel - but this film, in all its exploitative approach to
its subject matter is actually fairly in its storytelling, in its set of
characters that show quite a few shades of grey rather than coming across
just as goodies and baddies, and in its very decent pacing. Still, Captives
is far from being a masterpiece, a total lack of production values, a
mediocre cast and the technical limitations of shooting on video back in
the 1980's see to that, but it's still a pretty cool piece of thriller
entertainment.
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