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Neal (Joseph Farrell) is a twisted art photographer who likes to take fetish
pictures of his models & acts abusive towards them, both mentally &
physically. So, when he rents an abandoned insane asylum for his next shoot,
the real estate company decides to send a watchdog along with him, Sam (Rob
Mankiewicz) who turns out to be a complete & ignorant asshole (though I
don't think that effect was intended by the filmmaker).
So, when at the asylum, he sees Neal treating his 3 models (Misty Mundae, C.J.DiMarsico, Heidi Kristoffer) & his personal assistant Maura (Rachael
Robbins) - whom he has fallen for - like shit, Sam tries to entice a rebellion,
but to little effect, since the girls fear for their careers.
After a few perverse but harmless games Neal plays with the girls though -
like encouraging them to have lesbian sex (which they don't), cuffing them to
their respective bedposts etc, while filming everything with hidden cameras -,
Neal finds the secret torture chamber of a previous owner, &, seeing this
is too big an opportunity to be missed, he lures model Bridget (Misty Mundae)
down to the room, undresses her & ties her to a cross, relishing in the
girl's fear, which he photographs & films with his videocam.
But then something else seems to step in, too, & seemingly out of
nowhere, poor Bridget is badly sliced up, with Neal frantically photographing
everything before - rather terrified - running off.
Asshole meanwhile has finally persuaded the other girls to leave, but when
he wants to fetch Bridget, too, he seems to be unable to find her, & Neal,
fearing he would be blamed for the sliced up girl, is unwilling to give away
the secret of the torture chamber. Only when Asshole resorts to brute force
does he - rather by accident - find the chamber ... which is not necessarily a
good thing, since the being that has sliced up Bridget has since manifested
itself, & turns out to be the spirit of Rossiter (Kevin G.Shinnick), the evil
& torture-obsessed former owner of the place, & he immediately kills
Neal & abducts all the girls to his torture chamber, strapping them to
various devices.
The dimwitted Asshole meanwhile knows nothing better than fetching his gun,
but rather expectedly bullets have little effect on Rossiter.
In the end, asshole finds out though that Rossiter's existence is tied to
Neal's videocam (well, he doesn't really find out, Rossiter tells him), &
he just presses rewind (really) making the ghost disappear & the
asylum (rather fittingly) go up in flames.
All the girls (even Bridget, who did survive her little slicing incident)
& Asshole manage to escape though.
As low budget supernatural slashers go, this one, while no masterpiece, is
not all that bad, since director Piper did actually put some care in creating a creepy
atmosphere, rather than relying on gross splatter effects (though a few effects
are wickedly funny).
The main flaw of the movie though is Sam, the male hero,
since the character (as mentioned earlier) proves to be an ignorant
macho-asshole who one can't help but wanting to be killed off 10 minutes into
the film - & when towards the end he starts wielding a gun in best macho
fashion, that doesn't
help one bit either. That actor Rob Mankiewicz rather proves the typical show-off
you'd expect for such a role, further contributes to
this effect.
Does anybody actually remember the time when slashermovies were emancipated
enough to have girls in the heroic leads ?
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