The movie started off conventionally enough at a bar in England with lead character Tevin (Tim Poole) picking up a French woman, Anne Marie (Margot Steinberg) in hopes of some sexual pleasure. She invites him into her place, pours him a drink and asks if he'd like to watch porn. So far, I like this gal as a sweet little gal that appeals to my manly side. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse when he finds she has drugged him and he wakes up strapped to a metal chair, unable to move freely. Soon enough, he finds that she intends to torture him, both physically and mentally, which she does at his protests.

The rest of the movie detailed his torture at her hands as well as a second woman, Julia (Danielle Sanderson in a bizarre twist of an indie film losing its lead female). The suspense and horror aspects of the movie were lessened by the technical flaws (and there were many flaws) but remained gruesome nonetheless. The violence was not particularly graphic most of the time, preferring to leave the worst torture off screen, and the themes discussed during the director's commentary left me cold in terms of hoping to see a payoff by sticking it out when said payoff never came. The ending was such that I felt cheated but then I've seen a lot of movies over the years and probably expected something redeeming the rest of the movie.

I'm going to rate this one as a Skip It unless you are a true aficionado of horror movies and in really low budget independent releases. While I'm a fan of freedom of speech, I think the reasoning given for the existence of the movie made me think the whole purpose for the movie had nothing to do with an audience other than the impact of challenging a film board in England.

Picture: The picture was presented in its original 1.33:1 ratio full frame color. It was shot on 16mm stock and the ultra low budget of the movie led to a myriad of problems with the picture. From terribly abundant amounts of grain and video noise to compression artifacts and lack of focus to low lighting in darkened rooms and a host of other flaws (print scratches and camera angles come to mind), the DVD looked really bad. The content was the main attraction here, not the quality of the picture.

Sound: The audio was presented in 2.0 Dolby Digital stereo English but I didn't notice any separation between the channels. The audio was also quite flawed although not as much as the picture. The levels varied a lot and much of the time, I thought the sole microphone used to record the audio was the one attached to the camera. The dynamic range was about the same as an old 8-pound cassette recorder I had in the 1970's and there were dropouts on the audio track.

Extras: The best extra was the director's audio commentary where he explained the primary purpose of the movie was not to entertain as much as shock the British censors into banning it (they did for nearly a decade) so he could either make a statement or challenge the system. In short, it was more interesting to listen to the commentary than the actual feature. The extras also included some trailers, a photogallery, a script if you watch it on DVD-ROM, a handful of scene comparisons between the rehearsals and the actual feature

Final Thoughts: This was not the worst movie I've ever seen, even on a technical basis, but it sure came close. It was flawed on so many levels that it made a lot of mainstream pap movies look cutting edge by comparison. Even a fan of independent cinema has limits, many of which were passed the first time I watched this one (never mind when I listened to the audio commentary for this review).