Given a very generic, meaningless title for its UK DVD release (wot, was “GORY” already taken?!), this low-budget flick has eye candy if nothing else. Young Lauren Currie Lewis is uber-hot, has a great ass and looks more than a bit like Alicia Silverstone circa 1995. You know, when she was bright, spunky and appealing and hadn’t yet slipped into the Bat Girl suit for that spleen-shriveling useless BATMAN AND ROBIN movie. The script of GRUESOME (formerly SALVAGE in its American incarnation) has her taking pointless baths and showers at various intervals…pointless because there’s no nudity. But still, you take what you can in this straight-to-DVD horror business.

   Lewis is a pretty convenience store clerk who gets picked up from work one day by a creepy guy claiming to be from the salvage yard where her boyfriend works. The guy (Christopher Ferry) quickly gets weird (“Don’t tell me you’re one of those fucking cunts…”) and ultimately breaks into her house and kills her. Only he doesn’t. It was a nightmare. As is most of the rest of GRUESOME, as Lewis enters / exits similar nightmare worlds in which she is relentlessly pursued by the salvage yard dude, who may or may not be a figment of her paranoid imagination. Reality gets blurred and the movie takes on the feel of a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie crossed with a TWILIGHT ZONE episode.

   In spite of Lewis’ appeal, this movie grows repetitive and borderline-boring fairly quickly. You will realize very early on that the whole rubber-reality-slasher first hour is one big shaggy dog joke building up to the now de-rigueur BIG TWIST that lurks at the very end. The makers of GRUESOME seem to be under the delusion that this twist is surprising and shocking, somehow forgetting the 967 other American horror movies and thrillers with similar left-field twists made in the wake of THE SIXTH SENSE.

   There are moments of genuine menace, but the movie gets bogged down with over-familiar would-be scares (figures walking past the camera, faces emerging from / disappearing into the darkness, bathroom mirror scares) and the effect is neutered by an intrusive use of anonymous rock songs at inappropriate moments.

   As for the oh-so-familiar BIG TWIST!!!, the climactic reveal turns out to be just a variation on the controversial switcheroo at the end of HAUTE TENSION - and GRUESOME goes so far as to rip off whole moments from that film for its explanatory montage - notably some crucial CCTV footage from Lewis’ shop. It’s just about worth staying awake for Lewis and for some quite well done, graphic violence, including a nasty eyeball poking, a face-peeling scene and a very effective, bloody shotgun blast-to-the-face moment.