Headless

"Headless" is one of those grubby little horror movies that looks like it was made with a few effects, gallons of blood, and people who owed the filmmaker a favour.

It's sickening and tedious in equal measure.

The 'plot' is something to do about a depraved maniac who was kept in a cage by his sadistic mother and now wears a mask and kills people.

The movie is actually less concerned with the 'kills' than what he does to the bodies afterwards. Repeatedly, he decapitates the corpses (hence the title, I guess) and then appears to have sex with the neck hole. He also often removes the bodies' right eye and eats it, the camera showing white fluid from the eyeball running down his mask.

Something else about the movie, which is easily forgotten because it adds nothing to the experience, is that it is presented as a lost film from 1978. The only possible use for this contrivance is that it justifies the movie's dingy production value and the fact that the entire movie seems to have been filmed through mud - as today's filmgoers may believe movies made in the seventies actually were.

Hell, the original "Halloween" and "Last House on the Left" were actually filmed in the seventies and on a shoe-string budget, and they didn't look this bad.

This is the type of film which lends itself to a bullet point review:

1. "Found" as a film was a solid offering with a pretty decent backstory and it led to some unrealistic expectations of "Headless".

2. The first ten mins both identified potential, which was unfortunately not build upon, and demonstrated how long and boring a "one trick pony" film can become.

3. Visual effects was a hit and miss. Some of it was really good (eg deep stab wounds) and some really bad (eg those "money shot" eye popping scenes) 4. Cinematography was often disastrous, especially in as far as angles were concerned. The 70s effects / found footage elements were decent.

5. Acting, in general, was terrible and the dialogue on par with an average porn film.

7. Some of the most extreme aspects of the film happened off camera which somewhat detracted from the entire extreme cinema intention.

8. The total absence of suspense in a slasher film just made it feel long and boring.

9. The score was actually decent but in consequence of the paperthin script, rigid acting and dodgy cinematography, it stood no chance of creating any atmosphere in vacua.

10. Direction was all over the place, but I must admit that the script did not really create opportunities.

Two stars only for two reasons: Some of the gore effects are alright, and the first victim and Jess look hot. Everything else in this movie was terrible. I actually really enjoyed Found, because Found has a message it's trying to send out, and the plot really wasn't that bad. This in other hand was nearly plotless.

The plot makes no logic. A mother and her daughter are torturing her child son, because she deemed him as evil, and cuz her husband left him??? That makes zero logic, and then the sister wants to have intercourse with her brother, and she lets him go? The same man she pissed on, and tortured him with her mom, she lets him go?? Of course he is going to kill you, where's your logic?

Then the screaming, we get constant scenes of the killer just screaming for no reason, and i had to turn the volume down to nothing, and he still yells like a infant. In this movie you'll see eyeballs being pulled out, about 5 times! You know instead of having 5 average eyeball scenes, why not focus and make one good eyeball scene that looks realistic like in Guinea Pig, that eyeball scene was actually terrifying, or Mai Chan Daily Life eyeball scene.

Lets talk about our victims? None of them have any depth, and none of them have any personality. All of them are there for the sake of being there, and none of them seem to care. They are forced into this movie.

What made Headless a sinister good watch in Found, is it was made as a Snuff Film, it was similar to Guinea Pig, Grotesque and The Butcher, here we got a slasher gore nonsense boredom fest. Hey if you are one of the people that likes crap like The Collector and Crazy Murder and slashers in general, this is for you. As for me, no. Really i just wasted my time with this.

This film was everything that a lover of the slasher sub-genre enjoys: gore, nudity, blood, and limbs being sawed off. The film overall was pretty typical, but it held a few pretty unique tweaks that you don't see very often in a slasher film. I wont give too much away, but just how the killer toys with Jess at the end, and the childhood story throughout the film are cool little bits that made this movie stand out. However, the one complaint that I just can't get over is the sub par acting. Now, not get me wrong, I understand that this was supposed to be a lost 70s slasher film (which were notorious for bad acting), but it just got distracting. If you haven't seen the film Found, which this movie is more or less from, I would suggest watching it as it supplements Headless as a whole.

I don't get the hype that some people write about. The movie is average and somewhat boring. The acting and dialogue (for what there is) are not so good. The story is also dull and gets repetitive. But, there are also some good things to say. Practical fx are on point and the music is well done.

Indeed a movie for real lovers of the genre, but it isn't groundbreaking.