Deadly Exposure

A satiric purpose within the script of this vulgar mess embeds itself to a point of oblivion among the excruciatingly ungifted sequences of violence that comprise most of its action. Tyler Scott (Robert Pellerin) wishes to make only "good, clean" movies, thereby avoiding those common exploitative excesses of "violence, blood and sex" that characterize many commercially validated films, but is facing strong resistance to attempts at marketing his initial film because it lacks these mentioned elements, or apparently any other forms of vitality. Since Tyler's opus seems likely to be a stillborn dud, his girlfriend discards him while her father, Mr. Turner, who has invested $183,000 in Scott's movie, dispatches a quartet of thugs to persuade the tyro filmmaker through strong arm methods that he must increase his efforts for bringing a financial harvest to his backer. While Tyler is taping a video message to his parents, Turner's ruffians burst into his apartment and begin beating him, but during a clumsily organized scene he turns the tables upon his assailants, killing two of them and fleeing with a handgun and his trusty camera, the latter required due to a sudden inspiration to record actual scenes of violence involving himself. Somewhat cross as a result of the deaths of his henchmen, Turner then deploys, from a seemingly limitless supply, comparable individuals who, in predictable fashion, are subsequently slaughtered by the budding (and still busily filming) Tyler in a junkyard, a locale without doubt selected for its minimal location cost. This production does in reality have a low budget of $300,000, and this becomes a significant motif, as the success of Robert Rodriguez with EL MARIACHI, shot with $7000, is often mentioned, but of course the Mexican director does not lose contact with his audience as in the instance of this picture. Shot with 16mm. stock and too often with a hand-held camera, the work is set in and about Sierra Vista, Arizona, with many of the players based near there and lacking acting experience as evidenced by their slurring, stumbling over lines, and other enunciatory weaknesses, but even without these flaws, the film lacks a point of view (other than that type of instrument) subsequent to the initial premise, one not sufficiently shaped. The metamorphosis of Scott from a gentle cinema artist into a coldly calculating and proficient killer is not convincing, and we do not see the results of his self-recorded homicidal attacks upon his vocation, with these being among many from a bumper crop of deficiencies in a piece wherein use of false blood is simply risible, editing is awkward, notably with mishandled scene shifts, and a thoroughgoing dependence upon fatuous violence numbs the senses of a viewer. In sum, a lack of linear design causes one to hope that the film will soon come to a close, as feeble attempts at satiric humour by its makers are inept and relentlessly stagnant.