One part coming of age and one part Frankenstein's monster, Kiss the Abyss is a film that is more character study than pure horror. Well, at least until the end that is.
Our film starts off with a trio of men driving in a Rolls through the California desert. We aren't really given a 'why.' However, interspersed are a few scenes of one of the men, a young man back home lying in bed with his wife. Slowly, we start to piece things together. After all, she's the only one missing from the car's passenger seating. Along with a distraught look from the young man, you start to think that something terrible has happened.
We come to find out through a continued series of flashbacks that these two young love birds lived next to another couple. The boyfriend was terribly abusive and their daily ritual of shouting matches unnerved our other young pair. On one particular day, he takes things too far and starts beating his girlfriend outside. The love bird couple take it upon themselves to try. But it doesn't come without its consequences. Our enraged drunken neighbor comes over that night with bat in hand but instead of taking revenge with the young man, he accidentally kills his wife.
Flash forward to our 3 men driving out to the desert, they arrive at a small house and are eventually greeted by a crass, cowboy-ish man who holds the cure for what ails them. As you could probably guess, the dead girlfriend is in tow and she's taken out of the back trunk and taken to the man's shed which doubles as his mad laboratory. Our man, who acts the part like a cross between Billy Bob Thornton and Dr. Frankenstein, is given a bag of money by her father and brother (the other two travelers being revealed as such). They are given a strict direction by our mad doctor of 'no return policies.' All oblige and he shoots her up with some sort of serum. She comes to and the small group leave to continue on with their lives. But they soon learn that they're getting a lot more than they've bargained for.
I won't go to much into the rest of the details of the film as I don't want to play the spoil. But as you can imagine, our revived wife becomes too much to handle in her newly 'transformed' state. And our dedicated husband with his undying love is left with a choice to make.
A refreshing film that delicately balances the relationships of all of our on screen characters (without getting too cheesy) along with some really horrible happenings (one scene in particular is pretty brutal), Kiss the Abyss is continued proof positive that original film making and story telling isn't dead.
