Death Shock

A lone female cyclist in a very short skirt travels down a country road, coming to a rest at a gated field. As the young woman dismounts her bicycle and climbs over the gate, the camera seizes every opportunity to zoom in on the exposed gusset of her tight white knickers.

Obviously having never been warned of the dangers of walking down a lonely wooded path on her own, the girl then proceeds to do just that, totally unperturbed by the loud Satanic chanting coming from up ahead; before you can say 'devil worshippers', she finds herself being pursued by several naked men.

A quick vault back over the gate results in her skirt being torn, revealing her knickers once again. Unable to remember how to ride her bike, the frightened woman then continues on foot, fails to flag down a passing car (driven by the only bloke in the world who wouldn't stop for a clearly distressed, fit bird in a short skirt) and falls in a swimming pool, before being trapped, stripped, and sacrificed to Old Nick by her assailants.

This trashy pre-credits sequence to Death Shock is so cheap and tawdry that one might easily be forgiven for thinking that this film is going to be a totally unmissable piece of exploitative horror cinema. Nothing could be farther from the truth, though, the focus of the film being solely on arousing its viewers rather than scaring them. Director Lindsey Honey, better known as hardcore porn star Ben Dover, spends the remainder of his scant 47 minute running time cramming in as many sex scenes as humanly possible, but this being a British film, the bonking has been carefully choreographed and edited so as to avoid revealing anything that might break the UK's Draconian obscenity laws of the day (they're graphic enough, however, to suggest that perhaps a harder version was also produced for a less uptight European market). The result is tedious, to say the least.

Shot in 1981 on an ultra low budget, expect all the women to have ugly hairdos and terrible fashion sense (we're talking day-glo Ra-Ra skirts here, folks!), at least one of the men to be sporting a Nigel Mansell style 'tache, and terrible acting from all involved, including a particularly bad but incredibly funny performance from UK sex industry legend Linzi Drew.

This shot-on-video British obscurity is more of a sex film than a horror yarn, in that most of the running time (barely an hour) consists of very '80s looking actors engaging in over the top sexual practices with each other for scenes which drag on endlessly. You know the film is going to be a cheesy delight from the opening scene, in which a barely-dressed girl discovers a satanic sect of naked men in a forest and flees, before being sacrificed, stripped and captured (but not necessarily in that order) by the mysterious cult. Straight afterwards we're introduced to a bunch of really bad actors (two guys and three girls) who have come to enjoy the sunny delights of the English countryside by indulging in a bit of the old rumpy-pumpy, which they do, both in and outside on their car.

Clichés abound as the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and a too-nice vicar takes the group to an isolated mansion, inhabited by an overacting host who screams sinister. There's also a maid whose large bosoms constantly threaten to spill out of her skimpy attire and a sadistic dwarfish manservant who has designs on one of the visitors. The host invites the group to stay the night, which means the plot is put on hold for yet more sexual shenanigans to take place as we bear witness to the (very) explicit activities that take place in the bedrooms. Finally, the finale comes and not a moment too late: the film ends with some cheap and unfunny jokes and a twist ending you can see coming a mile off.

I'm not sure why this has been marketed as a horror film because it really isn't. It's just a sex film with mildly mysterious horror trappings, or clichés should I say. The horror elements are very weak and only take up about ten minutes of the screen time. Most of the running time consists of large-breasted women with big hair and unappealing moustachioed skinny guys engaging in all kinds of adult acts whilst badly saying some of the worst-written dialogue there is. So if you're after a weird and unintentionally funny sex film then this may be the one to watch. Fans looking for an obscure British horror gem should seek elsewhere, unless you have a fondness for high cheese and a tongue-in-cheek attitude.

I have been reviewing the pre-certificate release of DEATH SHOCK on the ADB video release label, which follows the short feature film with a compilation of out-takes called, oh so hilariously, "It'll Be Alright on the Bed!". Let's just say that if these clips are the 'best' and 'funniest' of the out-takes then I'd hate to see just how boring the worst are.

I liked Death Shock. I thought it wasn't a bad movie. The plot may have been a bit thin, and the acting sometimes wooden, but the sex scenes were very good considering it was made in the UK, and was about as hot and legal as it could be. The female cast are good looking, and included if I'm not mistaken, Virginia Slade, an extremely attractive model and actress. I believe she had a run in at one time with Lord Lichfield over some sexy snaps, and she also acted in various theatre productions in the UK. For me, she made the movie and her scenes were hot. I think the producers could have titled the film better, and I also wonder if there was a harder version made for Europe etc.

'Death Shock' (1981 Video) is an insalubrious looking no-budget DTV 'horror' travesty from Grindhouse Britain, 'starring' that titillating triumphantly twin peaked tabloid temptress, the INFINITELY more salubrious-looking 80s sexpot Linzi Drew! The dung-dense, questionably ribald sex-occult narrative therein proving to be so profoundly complex that it could only be successfully realized with any degree of thematic efficacy by utilizing, not one, but two stalwart directors! Yet even with these two swoggle-eyed, scum-slinging dross-hounds at the increasingly unstable helm, 'Death Shock' remains a slender, sleazily scintillating morsel of richly questionable, fleshly-fabulous, sinfully suggestive Witchgrinder General fare!

Tyro polymath helmsman Frank Thring later 'directed' the subtle, and somewhat introspective work 'Come on my feet please!' Which I understand might well be part of his long-mooted, dialectical triptych regarding the merits of seminal discharge on disparate fleshly parts of the female anatomy; yet Frank Thring's unassailable, filmmaking legacy remains the somewhat paltry, stupefyingly shock-less 'Death Shock', and for your viewing edification, it has been lovingly shot in a gloriously fuzzy analogue haze of murksome 'Umatic video' (probably?), its unambiguously penurious look and grubby, Vaseline-lensed villainy adds a welcome, greasy-palmed verisimilitude to the sordid, multitudinously mucky narrative therein that the more degenerated celluloid Sin-seeker might well find just as boorishly appealing as I did! Forget the fright wig-exposing clarity of HD, I'd like to see a remastered Super-8 version of this bunghole'd B-Movie balderdash!!!!!

I spent 15 years trying to find this film before finally picking up a UK pre certificate tape of it.

Well it was pretty much just as I expected it to be.Lots of soft core action with obscured viewing angles and action just out of screen etc. In fact you could be forgiven for calling this a soft core Ben Dover since the director Steve Perry went on to create the Ben Dover series and this plays exactly like a Ben Dover film. You do get the feeling that there are hardcore scenes that have been removed but I don't know of a stronger version.

Not really worth the £50 I paid for it (uk pre certificate tapes are very collectible) but a worthy addition to my collection none the less.