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Director Lacey Bickel (John Harrison) is making a cheap horror film, a
venture that doesn't sail under a good star from day one, as his lead
actor Barney's (Bernard McKenna) an asshole, his lead actress Rita (Debra
Gordon) soon starts to be unnerved by the on-screen horrors, Lacey's
assistants Nicky (Tom Savini) and Lobo (Charles Hoyes) are sleazeballs,
and cam-guy Dominic (Joseph Pilato) and gaffer Celeste (Susan Chapek) are
just too good for this world - but fall in love soon. And their lovemaking
is secretly recorded for posterity. Thing is, Lacey eventually decides to
take the horror of his movie one step further, to have his leading lady
killed for real. But knowing he would face strong opposition from Dominic,
he has Nicky and Lobo take him out into the woods - where they make him
the victim of a manhunt, all in front of hidden cameras. But Dominic
somehow slips through their net and makes it back to the main location,
where the bloodshed's about to unfold ... History has it that Effects,
which was filmed in 1978, was never released back in the day upon
completion as the original distributor decided to shelve it, so it had to
wait until an official release until the 2000s. And while the film's by no
means a masterpiece one really wonders why - basically, the film plays
like a good example of the (then-waning) grindhouse era, mixing violence
and sexy bits to hang them up on a rather thin storyline - which
admittedly might speak to nostalgia-afficianados like me way more than to
then contemporary audiences. And while the film isn't perfectly structured
by any means, it does feature a highly original and rather exciting
finale, plus in a macabre way it does anticipate today's fascination with
reality TV. That all said, still don't expect a masterpiece - but fun
nostalgic genre entertainment at the very least.
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