Enjoy the title: Bizarre Lust of a Sexual Deviant. Sounds pretty disturbing, doesn't it? It fills your brain with all sorts of alarming ideas and nasty visuals, eh? Yeah. Upsetting stuff.

Ahem.

The movie itself ... is astonishingly boring. I mean really boring. Rare is the 60-minute movie that feels like a 60-hour visit to Yawnsville, but if your doctor happens to inform you that, unfortunately, you have only 75 minutes to live, you should break out a copy of this low-budget chuckle-fest real quick. Not only will your last hour on earth feel like an eternity, but you'll also be quite relieved when you expire ... because that means the movie's over.

Shooting for some sort of "psychological character study" in the vein of Taxi Driver, Clean, Shaven, or Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Bizarre Lust, etc. features zero in the plot department, absolutely nothing that's scary or disturbing or creepy, and backyard acting performances that border on the hilarious.

Basically, we have a chubby loser called Scott. This lonely fella loves nothing more than to break into the houses of single women, apply chloroform to their faces as they shower, splay the resulting nakedness across a living room floor, and take a bunch of Polaroids. And then he leaves.

Thanks to one interminably endless sequence in which our tubby geek cries into the uncaring answering machine of his ex-wife, we learn that our "sexual deviant" isn't much of a "deviant" at all. He's more like a fat loser who can't get over being dumped. He doesn't beat or rape or murder his women; he just kinda ... knocks 'em out, rubs 'em a bit, and snaps some photos. And he does it like three times in sequences that fill up much of the movie's running time. Bizarre Lust feels like a 15-minute short that was filmed three times, only each time they hired a different naked woman.

One clear indication that an indie filmmaker is making a movie just to get it on the shelves, and not to tell a challenging story, is when you see scene after scene that runs on about 64% longer than they need to. This is what I call the "redundo-filler" technique, and here's an example:

The scene calls for a naked woman to be attacked and put to sleep by a flabby stalker who's brandishing a washcloth. OK, fine. How long would you, as a director or editor, need this scene to be? 31 seconds? 48? Well, in this flick a scene like this will run you about 187 seconds, and as a bonus you'll get some soundtrack "music" that sounds exactly like a malfunctioning can opener. This flick is packed to the dreary rafters with scenes that just amble, ramble, wander, and go nowhere. The same technique is applied to the (thankfully rare) dialogue scenes; they're all clumsy exposition and painful improv. Even if you find yourself somewhat wrapped up in the minuscule narrative, you'll have little trouble noticing that even the most nominal sequences ... run ... on ... forever.

I'm not knockin' the flick because it's cheaply-made or less-than-polished -- but because it's endlessly dull, entirely pointless, and swollen with long, arid scenes in which nothing happens. Frankly I could have used a little more deviancy and lustful bizarreness.

The DVD

Video: It's your typical Sub Rosa shot-on-video grain-fest, but picture quality's good enough to see what's goin' on.

Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0, complete with low dialogue and blaring strains of broken can opener.

Extras: There's a feature-length audio commentary with leading man Jason Christ, which I suppose his parents will enjoy (despite the guy's one scene of full-frontal-fuzz nudity), a xx-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, a stills gallery, and a bunch of preview trailers for Sub Rosa titles like Bizarre Lust of a Sexual Deviant, I Spit On Your Corpse, I Piss On Your Grave, China White Serpentine, The Christmas Season Massacre, The Undertow, and Killers By Nature.

Final Thoughts

I don't think I've ever seen a Sub Rosa flick that I found particularly entertaining, but if they keep churnin' 'em out, I suppose it just might happen one day. Nice to see the minor-league schlock-merchants are still in business, but their particular style just doesn't really do it for me.