This cruel film has pretty much everything you could want from a cheesy slasher flick: ample gobs of gratuitous Kensington Gore, plenty of gratuitous nudity, and some poor acting to round it all off. This British variant on a well-worn theme goes for the all-out sleaze aspect of the genre, focusing entirely on some grimy, bloody and explicit death scenes and mixing them in with peep shows and seedy, lecherous drunkards. Taking in the darker, grimier side of London, the actual setting is very good for a horror film, and setting some stalking scenes in dungeons and weird exhibitions works successfully; these scenes actually turn out to be quite frightening.
The particularly vicious edge to the killings in this film elevates it to a higher horror status than the other contemporary American offerings. Knives are shoved through heads, people are garroted, strangled, stabbed in the stomach, and in the film's piece de resistance, a gentleman relieving himself in the toilets has his member hacked off by a straight razor! Another gruesome highlight has a kindly old Santa roasting chestnuts over a grill, only to have his face shoved into the flames and scorched before being set alight! The acting here is below average: only a couple of the cast members convince in their roles, and everybody else is just wooden. Edmund Purdom and Mark Jones are quite good as Inspector Harris and Sergeant Powell respectively, and the killer's bug-eyed insanity fits the role nicely. But the female cast members seem only to have been picked for their glamour, take for example Caroline Munro who pops up to perform a musical interlude in one dire moment.
Thankfully, while we're mired in the poor editing and exceedingly slow police investigation, you can be sure that another brutal murder will soon pop up. This film has a very high body count, with just about everybody being bumped off by the time the credits roll. The eventual confrontation with the unmasked killer is rushed, too, unfortunately, and marred by an unconvincing is-he-dead final shock which appears to have been tacked on. Being a mid '80s film, you can expect some lousy fashions and hairdos, with the men looking like women and the women all having huge blonde hair. An embarrassing disco scene pops up and the killer lurks around in a "shrunken head" costume - it's pretty funny. Another scene guaranteed to evoke a few chuckles occurs when a drunken Santa is attacked by a gang of punks who then proceed to nick his bike! A cold detachment hangs over the film, meaning that we never really care what happens to any of the characters. The deaths impress only due to their creativity, and as we never get to know any of the victims, there's no emotional involvement, and therefore, no real scares. Still, the extreme gore is there, along with the extremely sleazy atmosphere to appeal to most genre fans. Worth a look, if this is your sort of thing. Oh, and one final thing: check out the 'surprise' ending, as it's a real gobsmacker!
The particularly vicious edge to the killings in this film elevates it to a higher horror status than the other contemporary American offerings. Knives are shoved through heads, people are garroted, strangled, stabbed in the stomach, and in the film's piece de resistance, a gentleman relieving himself in the toilets has his member hacked off by a straight razor! Another gruesome highlight has a kindly old Santa roasting chestnuts over a grill, only to have his face shoved into the flames and scorched before being set alight! The acting here is below average: only a couple of the cast members convince in their roles, and everybody else is just wooden. Edmund Purdom and Mark Jones are quite good as Inspector Harris and Sergeant Powell respectively, and the killer's bug-eyed insanity fits the role nicely. But the female cast members seem only to have been picked for their glamour, take for example Caroline Munro who pops up to perform a musical interlude in one dire moment.
Thankfully, while we're mired in the poor editing and exceedingly slow police investigation, you can be sure that another brutal murder will soon pop up. This film has a very high body count, with just about everybody being bumped off by the time the credits roll. The eventual confrontation with the unmasked killer is rushed, too, unfortunately, and marred by an unconvincing is-he-dead final shock which appears to have been tacked on. Being a mid '80s film, you can expect some lousy fashions and hairdos, with the men looking like women and the women all having huge blonde hair. An embarrassing disco scene pops up and the killer lurks around in a "shrunken head" costume - it's pretty funny. Another scene guaranteed to evoke a few chuckles occurs when a drunken Santa is attacked by a gang of punks who then proceed to nick his bike! A cold detachment hangs over the film, meaning that we never really care what happens to any of the characters. The deaths impress only due to their creativity, and as we never get to know any of the victims, there's no emotional involvement, and therefore, no real scares. Still, the extreme gore is there, along with the extremely sleazy atmosphere to appeal to most genre fans. Worth a look, if this is your sort of thing. Oh, and one final thing: check out the 'surprise' ending, as it's a real gobsmacker!