Rating: 3/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 12/52 | Ozploitation
Freedom is obedience. Obedience is work. Work is life.
In the future year of 1995, we see footage of military men invading cities and mowing down and arresting protestors in droves. A van for a reeducation camp (Re-Ed) carries Chris, Rita, and Paul — social deviants by the current government’s standards. Chris is a shopkeeper whom the police arrested when she begged them to stop beating up a man in her store. Paul runs a pirate radio station where he details the camps he has escaped. Someone turned Rita in for being a sex worker, though she denies it.
The Re-Ed van arrives at Camp 47. A prisoner sneaks underneath the van to escape. A whip-wielding guard named Red gives the new prisoners the rundown. We meet Camp Master Charles Thatcher (Thatcher, get it?) and Secretary Mallory as they detail how each handles the camp overcrowding problems. Mallory sees Chris on the security camera and details what he’d like to do to her. We then watch some assorted torture, women showering, guards murdering inmates — the usual fare.
Eventually, we meet Thatcher’s accomplices and learn of a yearly hunt called the turkey shoot in which the accomplices hunt five prisoners over 12 hours. If the prisoners survive, they go free. Among the five selected this year are Chris, Rita, and Paul. Will our heroes survive? Will any of the assorted escape plans come to fruition?
Disobedience is treason. Treason is a crime. Crime will be punished.
Like director Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Dead-End Drive-In, the film spends much of its already brief runtime idling, attempting to say something about abusive power structures but never finding the precision necessary to say anything meaningful.
That said, I’m not sure the approach to this movie was all that serious to begin with. The filmmakers clearly tried to think of as many oddball tortures and means of killing people. For example, Thatcher puts Paul on a scale where the weight on one end keeps a rock from crushing him, but they slowly remove weights, forcing Paul to hold up the rock himself. Also, there’s a wolf man?? He rips off a dude’s toe. And there’s a woman who is in horse-riding attire, just hunting on horseback?
Like much horror, he finds rage and fear, and uses that to fuel the regime. As with any governance that relies on punishment as retribution for crime, the definitions of crime fall into subjective hands, leading people who don’t “deserve” punishment to receive it still. Chris doesn’t understand why she’s here — she never spoke out against the powers that be. But Rita assures her that it doesn’t matter. If the government regime thinks you belong here, then no one can argue to the contrary.
The score uses the same synth as the lead in Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock.” I never get tired of wonky B-movie synth scores.
I’m not going to talk about the craft (cinematography and whatnot) because I could only find a pan-and-scan version, which feels unfair to judge. It doesn’t look cheap.
Overall, pretty lukewarm on this one. The director has claimed it’s “satire.” I’m leaning more towards goofy. It’s that goofiness that makes this entertaining, though.