The film starts with a few drug-crazed hippie-girls in the countryside. When they find out one of
them has held back some drugs on the others, they shoot at her (not kill
her). Onto the scene steps a young man self-consciously calling himself
Satan. He tortures her. Having nothing to do with that, Terri, a young
sexfilm starlet, arrives at an South American airport. She is to star in
a movie & to sleep with the producer, but secretly she's in love
with Horst, playboy son of an arms-dealer. He, in turn, dumps his girl
Anjelica for her, & she in turn, goes to Satan for help. The first
thing he has done is having the producer killed (why this is such a good
idea is not explained. Then Anjelica & the hippie-girls go on a
killing spree, finally ending at the house of Horst's father, where
Horst humps the wife of a friend (who watches) while Terri, now
pregnant, lies in bed with Horst's father. Naturally, Satan's girls kill
them all.
So far goes the story that the Findlays have directed back in 1971,
it's a very unsubtle film in fact, obviously based on the Manson
massacre, & rather badly done & dubbed. Somehow, I still find it
charming. As far as I know, producer Shackleton never released it in
this form, however. He had director Mal Worob add some new material in 1976 right at the
moment when ...
... Anjelica plunges her knife into Terri, there is a cut to another
camera & someone shouts cut. It soon becomes clear we are in a
filmstudio shooting the final scene of the movie. The director confesses
to some blonde that the scene turned him on. She feels the same way
& the director wants to make out. The girl has objections since the
camerateam is still here. The director tells her the'd soon leave &
they start to make out anyway, though the camerateam shows no intention of
leaving. Then the director decides to spice things up a bit & cuts
off one of the girl's fingers, getting some help from the camerateam who
hold the girl down. Still not content, he decides to cut off a hand of
the blonde too, her now screaming in terror. The cut-off hand does not
seem to be
faring all that bad, being seperated from the rest of the body apparently
doesn't prevent it from moving about (!). Now the director seems to have
tasted blood (in more senses than one) and disembowels the girl too,
until the filmstock runs out ...
These last maybe five minutes are great fun all for themselves, for
they are actually as phony-looking as I try to make them sound in
writing, not at all helped
by bad gore effects ... but Shackleton still tried to (& to some
extent successfully) fool the audience into believing they were seeing
an actual snuff-film - "... filmed in South America, where life is
cheap."
I was too young to notice back then, but the 70's must have
been great !
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