Oh, Albert Zugsmith - the Auteur Supreme behind College Confidential (those who saw The Movie Orgy know what that was all about) sometimes lets a scene go on a bit too long for its own good (or not good), but that doesn't stop him from staging some of the most ruthlessly sleazy, sickening and engaging rape scenes in the 1970s; this all being rapes where it's clear the guy in the laughable Halloween masks always keeps his pants on.
Not that it makes it any less horrific, mind you, as it is rough to watch, but there's almost something so ludicrous seeing it unfold is on a line between inept and entertaining. Oh, and there's a Swatstika carved into the women because that equals bad! (Not much time for actual political context but why carp for this Z grade nonsense). There's times the performers are trying to add some real heft to the characters... and other times what you see is exactly what you get - they can get through the dialog... mostly!
This isn't meant as a complaint so much as a point of order (like I'm in a courtroom I guess now, order I say), like this is a movie where it has to be made so painfully clear to the audience that the cops won't do Jack s**t about the raper crimes and that comes after the cop explains to one of the woman (gasp) how next to impossible these crimes are to prosecute as if we have no idea how sex crimes were and are ignored. Yet there are scenes that go on for a minute too long where the cop does question guys and those don't go nych anywhere, so... hell with it, get to the revenge and paybacks! Go sadism!
This is all like tawdry and kind of silly pizza underneath it's exploitation deep-dish crust, and even with the expert blu-ray restoration by Vinegar Syndrome everything has that unmistakable 1970s auburn sheen (so many ugly vouches and wood walls, and denim clothes and fully body suits. Violated! Is I have to mention again kind of ineptly made, in the slack direction and over-written and over wrought dialog, but the "kind of" is because this is still watchable and has a feral quality to how the violence and attacks happen, and you want to see how the rapist cutter gets his.
Among the "lost" films in the VS box set, this one at least has a strong sense of its time and place in the seediest parts of LA and the crude attitudes of everyone involved fits the subject matter. It's a guilty pleasure.... like strap me to the electric chair next after the guy in this movie, huh huh....
