"Smash Cut" review

Smash Cut (2009)

Director: Lee Demarbre
Writer: Ian Driscoll

David Hess ... Able Whitman
Jesse Buck ... Isaac Beaumonde
Michael Berryman ... Philip Farmsworth Jr.
Ray Sager ... Reverend Ezekial Boone
Sasha Grey ... April Carson
Jennilee Murray ... Georgina Carson / Gigi Spot

A bad movie review drives a director insane. Able Whitman's, (David Hess), soul needs inspiration so he can start making horror movies that people actually want to watch. He runs into the warm embrace of his stripper muse looking for something inspiring in her lap dance. After a horrific car accident, her mangled corpse provides the spark he needs to start making blood soaked horror again. His movies needed to be more realistic in their portrayal of murder and mayhem. He decides that the only way to get the shots he needs is to kill everyone who has hurt him. Unfortunately it turns out that everyone he knows has hurt him. It won't be long before they all feel the homicidal wrath of an angry B-movie director.

There are a lot of exploitation icons in "Smash Cut". David Hess, Michael Berryman and Herschell Gordon Lewis all make appearances. David Hess is the frustrated director on a homicide binge. Berryman is the nervous studio head and Lewis shows up as intrepid reporter Sasha Grey's boss. The filmmakers wanted to show their love for the exploitation arts so they invited some notorious characters into their movie. While seeing horror and exploitation icons jump back into B-movies can be fun, their appearance in "Smash Cut" feels like the sole reason this movie exists.

I thought "Smash Cut" was going to be vehicle for Sasha Grey to strut her stuff in a horror flick but it turns out the filmmakers are more in love with David Hess. Now I liked Hess in "House on the Edge of the Park" and in other nasty horror flicks but I think the filmmakers priorities are a little skewed. Sasha should have taken center stage here. Haven't watching all of these exploitation movies taught us anything? Women are always the stars of these movies. They scream the best, run from maniacs the fastest and look good taking long showers to wash the blood off of their bodies. David Hess has some fine qualities but not nearly as fine as Sasha Grey.

Sasha Grey is an interesting character. If you've read anything about her, it becomes apparent how deadly serious she takes being a porn star. Rough sex is the brand she's selling and she does it very well. But the filmmakers fail to capitalize on her nasty reputation because they're too busy fawning over their exploitation idols. Sasha runs around the film set trying to find out what happened to her missing family member. It turns out Hess is using her dead relative for props in his movie. While this clearly should have led to a scene where Hess has rough sex with Sasha, (to get her to confess her deceitful sins), the filmmakers decided to let Sasha stay pure and not engage in any sort of carnal activity. For shame.

So without any Sasha Grey sex scenes, (or even nudity!), what else is there? "Smash Cut" is a collection of cheap gore scenes as Hess runs wild over every person he's ever met. Every gore scene is played for laughs as Hess uses a variety of instruments of death to get the job done. A knife, a nail gun, and even a harpoon is used to spill the guts of his enemies. While the blood is plentiful, the effects are too cheap and shoddy to be anywhere close to shocking. Even an eye-gouging scene can't horrify as it's clear that some poor doll is getting its fake eye mangled.

"Smash Cut" has some fun scenes as Hess laments the state of low budget filmmaking by morosely slaughtering his enemies. But it wasn't quite the exploitation movie it could have been. Sasha Grey is featured on the DVD cover and could have shouldered more of the exploitation burden. If the filmmakers would have let her explore her dark side, "Smash Cut" could have been so much more than the standard B-movie it is. You must never let a porn star go to waste. Any exploitation fan should know that.

SCORE: 2.5 out of 4 intrepid Sashas