The double-sided DVD is a fine thing – two films (or in this case, three) for the price of one, all wrapped up in a singular little package. Who can argue with that? Unfortunately, anyone who falls into the trap of bargain basement indie clearing houses such as this. Billed as “A double dose of murder, madness and lust,” this set films brings us the dinner theatre murder mystery And Then They Were Dead…  along with a pair of futurities comprising Guilty Pleasures. And all of them have something in common, as we shall see.

                Some uneven camera work through what looks like the Jersy Pine Barrens tracks some city broad as she pulls off the main strip, hopelessly lost. Stepping out of her car to use a cell phone she’s suddenly confronted by a masked figure in a leather trench coat, and techno music begins to bounce as she’s chased screaming through the trees in her go-go boots. Finally caught and stabbed to death by the maniac her head is taken as a souvenir, while all the while the entire event is being filmed by an unknown observer.

                Following this low-grade appetizer the plot begins to congeal, based around a gourmet meal that a handful of select individuals have been invited to attend under the condition that they also sit through a promising business proposition. In ones and twos the seven guests begin showing up at the ‘mansion’ where the dinner is to be held, quickly proving themselves a mixed and uptight bunch as they awkwardly get acquainted. These include Dr. Mark Reibolt (Joseph Zaso) and his wife Rebecca (Lynn Macri), Lance (Ray Schwetz) and his paid escort Sarah (Tina Krause), and singles Hunter (Devon Mikolas), Leo (Frank Gagliardetto) and Anna the vegetarian (Sarah K. Lippmann). The host is nowhere to be seen as of yet, prefering to remain anonymous and watch the group through a series of closed-circuit cameras as they’re attended to by a butler (Willie Hill) and a French maid (Darian Caine, still slumming after being unseated by Misty Mundae as Seduction Cinema’s main hottie).

                During their “gourmet meal” of assorted cheeses and roast meats the maid, Gabrielle, gets some wine spilled on her black uniform and decides to strip naked and bathe. During her shower the masked killer strikes again, slashing her to death with a straight razor and filming her dead body as Dr. Mark accidentally asphyxiates his wife to death during a quickie in the adjoining bathroom. Rebecca’s body, hidden in the shower stall, is quickly discovered, and with it the fact that the phone is dead and the cars have been disabled. As the rest of the guests mill around outside in fearful uncertainty, Mark gets drunk, talks to his dead wife, plays with the dinner leftovers, and finds the head of the film’s first victim in the refrigerator. Just at this point the other guests enter the kitchen, and Leo is so surprised that he blows Mark’s head apart with the shotgun retrieved from his car.

                In the aftermath it is realized, partially based on the mystery chef’s use of Gray’s Anatomy as a cookbook, that the group has been feasting on the dead girl’s body. (If that’s the case, where the hell did those turkey legs come from?!) Somehow this isn’t quite as shocking as it’s supposed to be, but the guests go ahead and freak out anyway. Anna runs to the bathroom to have her wrists slit, the butler puts Leo, overpowered after his little overreaction, to bed and stabs him in the head, Lance takes the gun and wanders around outside in the dark until the killer beats him half to death (despite his macho posturing), and Sarah and Hunter wander around and find the butler’s dead body.

                Following their grisly discovery Sarah and Hunter go back to the dining room for some salad and a remarkably out of place heart-to-heart chat, then go out to find Lance just before the killer finishes him off. Running back inside the pair wander around some more, fuck around in the basement for a little while, and finally come to the heart of the mystery.

                And I’d gladly provide a spoiler here, except for the fact that the film does a pretty adequate job of spoiling itself. Through sheer laziness (a script packed with filler and a cast lacking enthusiasm) the filmmakers somehow manage to counteract their intended atmosphere of tension and claustrophobia and turn a murder mystery into a snorefest. (Despite putting a bit of a spin on it, the ‘surprise’ ending isn’t as much of a surprise as it is a relief – the end is near!) And a derivative snorefest at that; the plotline here, dinner guests being eliminated one by one for some insidious purpose, is reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s 1939 tale Ten Little Indians, right down to the US title of Christie’s book, And Then There Were None.

                Along with the plot hinging upon an unoriginal idea, the sets too clearly betray their budgetary restraints to allow for that ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ all-important to the successful cinematic experience. A newscast looks like a bad cable access show; the “gourmet meal” is a bargain buffet of supermarket specials (meat casserole? Kielbasas? cheap-ass sold-by-the-liter wine?); and the ‘mansion’ in which most of the action takes place is ridiculously cramped and shoddily furnished (in fact it appears that the interior and exterior belong to two entirely separate homes).

                Matching these factors, there is also a profound lack of attention to detail present in the film; in one scene a woman is stabbed through the hand with an obviously retractable blade that doesn’t emerge from the other side; a woman sits down to pee and give herself a pregnancy test – on a closed toilet seat; after coming inside out of the dark a guest says, “I’m not going out there, it’s gonna be dark soon”; after a ‘sex’ scene the guy not only still has his pants on, but his belt is still buckled; etc.

As mentioned before, the acting skills of the cast are also sub-par, whether they’re bickering with one another or reacting inappropriately to the murderous activities taking place all around them. (Needless to say, with all of the bodies popping up nobody thinks to just leave the house and, say, GO ACROSS THE STREET FOR HELP.)

                And lastly, as do many low-budget indie filmmakers, the producers of And Then They Were Dead… make the common mistake of shooting on tape rather than on film. All of the attendant flaws are painfully clear, the muted colors, the many scenes shot too dark (which gets old in a big hurry), the prismatic graininess and moiré patterns in clothing, foliage and wallpaper, and the ultra-cheap quality of the mastermind’s spy camera footage, all of which further degrade the viewing experience.

                As is always the case, it’s a damn shame to see so much planning and effort go to waste on a poorly executed effort such as this. But it’s not as much of a damn shame as it is to sit through 82 disappointing minutes that seem to stretch out twice that long.

                The flipside of And Then They Were Dead…, Guilty Pleasures, consists of two short films by different directors. These are ‘introduced’ by a seasickness-inducing credits sequence, accompanied by random shots of sex ‘n violence meant to cater to a warped sense of voyeurism. And some just plain wacky shit – an old lady speaks into a strobe light, saying, “Calling all monsters! Bring me your demons! Send me your vampires!” This bewildering array eventually leads to the first segment, entitled Nocturnal Emissions (directed by Joseph Parda). (WARNING: The descriptions of both of these films include spoilers. This is done in the interest of adding nearly two hours to your life, spared by not watching the films through to their ends.)

                And I was ready to switch this thing off even before the second scene had played out, as in some gaudily-lighted Western restaurant some guy is getting dumped by some girl and they spit the same lines back and forth at one another over and over again. “What do you mean it’s over?” “It’s over.” “What do you mean it’s over?” “It’s over.” “What do you mean it’s over?” “It’s over.” Etc., etc., etc. In the following argument both parties prove each other impossible to stand, and after their fight is broken up the woman, Silvia (Alexandra Paulhiac), goes home and undresses, only to have her relaxing after-breakup bubble bath disturbed by a violently obscene phone call.

                In a seemingly unrelated scene an unidentified assailant abducts a woman (who’s wearing a teddy and wandering around what looks like a deserted classroom) and takes her out to the country where he digs a hole for her.

                The next day Silvia meets up with her girlfriend Kim to talk over last night’s trouble. As they do so the handheld camera circles about them wildly (in a wildly unnecessary fashion – way to impart kinetic drama to casual conversation!), and unable to bear it any further Kim cuts this chit-chat short in order to make it to her gig as a fetish model (“Okey-dokey doggy daddy!”). Right after which she gets a meat cleaver to the wig and dies one of the goofiest deaths ever caught on film.

                When Kim’s body is found the police show up at Silvia’s place and grill her rather severely. Detective Philip Dargent (Joseph Zaso) plays the good cop, or rather the smooth cop, leaving Silvia his home number before going to look up her abusive ex-boyfriend Jerome. The next time Jerome calls her to talk dirty the cops are just waiting for him, and chasing him out of a window they proceed to engage in perhaps the most sadly pathetic and contrived chase sequence ever: filmed for some reason against a blue screen, with moving city street footage inserted behind the actors later, the cops chase Jerome in running-in-place mode, all three flailing their limbs unconvincingly as the poor editing gives the players a blurry halo indicative of the failure to effectively transition the effect. Suddenly Jerome stops, puts his hands on his hips and looks to the right (what the hell does he think he’s doing, the Time Warp?), just in time to get hit by a car (or rather, sound effects and a zoom indicating that he’s hit by a car).

                Cut to Silvia and Phil at the same goddamn Western restaurant as before, where Phil’s going off on some sort of rant about the nature of peoples’ dark sides or something. Curiously Silvia tells him that the obscene phone caller hit her again just after the detectives left on their chase of Jerome, and encouraging her to go into all of the call’s pornographic details Phil drops a napkin into his lap and jacks off into it as she speaks. Silvia rambles away, oblivious to Phil’s orgasm, and even invites him inside later – for some kinky sex involving a telephone spray painted cherry red?

                Afterwards Phil admires himself in a mirror, then starts in on the fable of Narcissus while Silvia sits on the shitter reading Criswell. When moments later she declares Phil’s body less than perfect he smacks her down and identifies himself the murderer, and looks to be about to add her to his hit list before he’s gunned down by none other than the obscene phone caller himself, who’d been listening in on the line left open from when he called Silvia a moment before. Oh the irony.

                The heinous pink and blue lighting scheme throughout enhances the irritation factor of this infuriatingly bad film, as does the nauseating camerawork that wildly swings through the most benign of scenes. Oh yeah, and middle-aged women with sagging breasts really don’t make for the best nude/sex scenes. Sure it may be more realistic, but in a film this bad you’ve really got to look for gravy somewhere and unfortunately Paulhiac just can’t cook. Negative comments about And Then They Were Dead…’s amateurish low-budgetary apply here as well.

                The next piece of… film is Method to the Madness, directed by the Joseph Zaso (the previous film’s dick/Narcissus). It’s New York City, and Rosemarie Curtis (Sasha Graham) is a young theater student desperately trying to break her way into show business. Taking the advice of her white trash roommate Louise, Rosemarie enrolls in a method acting class and begins training under the self-important Claude DeCarlo (Joe Marzano).

                But it seems that someone else is already quite familiar with Rosemarie’s work, as elsewhere a crazy broad named Monica is busy cutting up Rosie’s head shots and reliving bad childhood memories of being tied to a chair and whipped with thorny rose stems by her crazy mother.

                Back in class Claude is unhappy with Rosemarie’s progress, and pulls a Hannibal Lecter on her by asking penetrating personal questions. While also demanding that she strip naked in front of his class of wannabe thespians. Under his interrogation she admits that a girl named Monica is part of the reason she left home for New York, but will say no more than that despite Claude’s slapping her in the face.

                More shots of Monica and her craziness, and blue-lighted flashbacks of her drunken ma, and her hacking ma to death with an axe. Soon Rosemarie begins getting cards and deliveries from the mysterious Monica, and with them come some incapacitating hallucinations. Rosie starts upping her meds and having nightmares, passing out in class and generally losing her shit. Monica’s intrusion, which now includes phone calls, grows increasingly more threatening, and she even breaks into Rosemarie’s apartment to leave roses and sinister notes. Rosie goes a little kooky and runs around the streets of New York until she’s found by her boss Bill (Carl Marchese), who listens to her crazy story and lets her spend the night at his place (despite the objections of his fat bitch of a wife Amy).

Rosie has another freak-out that night, but the next day her questionable story (Bill don’t like all them pills she’s been taking) is backed up at the office when Bill receives a menacing call from Monica. He also hears from his secretary that there used to be a famous stage performer named Amanda Leherby who had a daughter named Monica before sliding downhill into booze, pills and obscurity.

At her artsy “showcase” later that night Rosemarie freaks out again, mistaking her acting partner for her father and stabbing him in the belly. The audience, thinking this part of the performance, applauds as Rosie rushes from the stage. Backstage she’s confronted by Bill about her true identity, and now referring to herself as Monica Rosie knocks him cold. No surprise she’s shit-fucking-nuts, still pining for her runaway daddy and suffering the torments inflicted upon her by the crazy mother who blamed her for her husband leaving. All of which gave rise to the split personality of Monica, still angry at the men in her/Rosemarie’s life for leaving her. Now she’s hung up on Bill because he somehow reminds her of her dear old dad, and she chains him up in the theater basement and presents him with the body of his murdered wife to prove it. There she torments him until the ghost of her dead mother calls her up to the roof and pushes her off. Yep. And what do you know, in the aftermath it’s discovered that old Claude’s method acting approach was so effective that it was instrumental in unleashing Rosemarie’s other half Monica, hidden away so long by repression and pills.

And it’s all so much like the previous flicks that I’m not going to comment any further.      

                ‘Bonus’ features such as commentary, slideshow, behind the scenes footage and trailers are available, but not recommended.  It’s a cheap and lazy critique, I know, but suffice it to say, these films were bad.

Cinema Image Productions – www.cinemaimages.net

Review by Crites – http://home.earthlink.net/~newpaniscus

  Horror Bob Note: Sorry Joe and Joe, I know you guys are a good friend of Christos, and I enjoyed some of your previous work myself, but my buddy here just did not enjoy the films.

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