Gutterballs

Gutterballs (2008)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A woman is brutally gang raped by four men. The next night those men, the woman and his other friends meet up at the same bowling alley and one by one people begin to get brutally murdered.

GUTTERBALLS is a film I had never heard of before joining a few Facebook groups and it seems this title was popping up all over the place. Writer-director Ryan Nicholson wanted to make a throwback to the 80's slasher film and he certainly accomplished that and a whole lot more. I'm really not sure who to recommend this thing to because it's going to either offend most or it's just going to drive them crazy by annoying them. If you "get" the picture then I think you'll have a good time but viewer discretion is certainly advised before attempting to watch this thing.

This is the type of film you really watch as a dare because, like I said, it's pretty brutal from start to finish. It's certainly not graphic like the recent trend of torture porn because the film is so over-the-top that you can't take it too serious. This includes all the characters who are downright stupid and annoying but I'm pretty sure this was done on purpose. The film is notorious for the death scenes and there's no doubt that there's some original and memorable scenes. If you've seen enough horror movies then you know it's hard to see something original but we get at least five original deaths here. Some are so downright crazy that you really have to see them to believe it. Needless to say, even Lucio Fulci would tip his hat.

While this film will always be remembered and talked about for its gore, I think the strongest thing is the technical aspects. There's no doubt that director Nicholson does an extremely good job at telling the story and there's no question that he can handle a film. I'm not sure what the budget was but I'm sure it was low but the film still has a professional look to it. The most amazing thing is that the film really does look like it was filmed during the early 80's. A lot of filmmakers try to capture that "look" but most fail That's not the case here. There are some flaws with the picture including some of the performances, the annoying characters and I think the film runs too long but there's still no question that GUTTERBALLS is quite an original film in many ways and that makes it worth watching if you can stomach it.