I recently acquired a copy of the James Balsamo flick, "I Spill Your Guts," via Crypticon KC 2013, and after having watched another of his movies, "Cool As Hell," I was expecting more low-budget shenanigans, "uneven" talent among the cast, and a story that was, at best, a reason to string together set pieces... Turns out I was right, but also very, very, wrong... Made in the style, intentionally or not, of a grindhouse slasher, "Guts" "tells" the "story" of Dennis (Balsamo) and Joe (Billy Walsh), best friends and soldiers. Dennis heroically "saves" Joe from (offscreen) "attackers." However, he is wounded in the throat, which destroys his voice, and leaves Joe to earn a medal that looks like it came from the Boy Scout Shop...
And, that medal is only one of the signs of the shortcuts taken in this movie... When one has limited budget, one MAY need to shape the script to fit... For instance, if one is to set the opening scenes in, say, a German hospital, it seems a good idea to make sure that no one will notice the "New Yorker" poster on the wall, or the lack of German iconography, (I can attest that the Germans tend to be tolerant of uneducated Americans, but not to the point of erasing all signs, warnings, labels, etc of their native language.), or the fact that only one person in the entire hospital speaks with anything resembling a German accent, or that Dennis will be spending his allegedly last moments in what is clearly a clinic exam room, complete with posters of medications and body diagrams on the wall... If your budget won't support a foreign "location," then set it in the US.
I could also spend significant time on other errors and what seems to be a lack of even rudimentary research into the US military, its operations, or how to make actors appear as if they've been in the service... Suffice it to say that these failures were so distracting as to make the movie a chore to watch. I rolled my eyes in exasperation often enough to risk them sticking up into my skull...
But, I want to focus for a moment on the murders in this film... As with any slasher, a significant number of the victims are women. I accept that as part of the nature of the the genre, as I do the uneven SFX, weak kills, and inconsistent motive, but one particular UNRELATED and unnecessary scene suggests a woman being stabbed repeatedly in the vagina with a knife... This is not one of the central revenge murders, but a flashback apparently meant to create a back story for one of the essentially irrelevant minor "characters"...
Like Balsamo's other flick, there is a generous helping of blood, and tons of GRATUITOUS nudity. But, I have the Internet, so I don't need to go to sleazy home videos to look at naked women... Also, like "Cool As Hell," this movie has frequent cameos from a variety of people who had two minutes free to swear at the camera , and music from a slate of bands longer than the cast list, most of whom are featured as a character makes the obligatory visit to a bar or club, or changes channels on TV... And like "Cool As Hell," I felt an obligation, nay a calling, to spare as many people as I could the pain and wasted time of this movie, because this film is not even, "So Bad It's Good," it's just bad... I wish it wasn't, because there's a seed of an interesting thriller here... But it never bears fruit...
