The Goth Club

A.K.A. Dr Butcher MD…

With a cover like this, it has to be awesome, right?

No, it really is also known as that. It says so right on the cover.

You see, there are some movies that are absolute classics that they deserve a place on your shelf, wherethey can easily be accessed for repeate viewing. This isn’t one of them…

Ummm… ok. But there are some movies that are so cheesy, and with special effects so woefully bad that they have to be seen, at least once, like a Troma film… Right?

Right, but this isn’t one of them.

Fuck… So why is this movie being reviewed? Oh yeah, because it seems to show up in every fucking bargain bin you ever see so you may as well give in, because serendipity is going to rape your eye balls.

And because there are some movies that are so cheap ($1.99 bargain bin at the news agent), and happen to have all the right words on the cover (i.e. “zombie” and “holocaust”) as to push your buttons, and they look like the worst cross section of grind-house and exploitation flicks and snuff, that you think to yourself maybe it’ll be so bad that it’ll be awesome. Like anything starring Dolph Lundgren.

Now, with a cover and title like that, and a being cheaper than a cheeseburger, you’d think it’d have to be an awesome movie. And you’d have to be high to think that. Which is likely what I was at the time.

Now, let’s be honest here. How hard would it have been to come through with any of the promises on this cover? Let’s break it down.

1. Zombies – There’s a word that always deserves a second glance. Zombies. You always know a movie is good when it has zombies! Which is why it’s amazing that this movie has almost none of them. It has Cannibals. An entire island tribe of them. If it had been called Cannibal Holocaust, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. And those bastard producers knew it!
2. Holocausts – Yeah, no, not happening. You’d expect a few hundred, if not tens of thousands of zombies in something where the word “holocaust” comes right after the word “zombies”. I think there are like three. And they’re actually kind of really lame.
3. Explosions - There’s kind of a lame fire at the end… but nothing blows up. I’ve had house parties where I blow up more shit than gets kerploded in this film. And with the word “Holocaust” in the title, I’m either expecting some seriously fucking huge explosions, or a lot of Jews getting turned into soap… And there was more of the latter going on in Fight Club.
4. 

   "The zombies kept eating the hands when they tried to facepalm, so they got me for this pic instead"

   Naked Polynesian dudes – In all fairness, the movie actually delivers on this… Although in many of the scenes, a lot of the naked Polynesian dudes are very obviously actually naked Italian dudes. For a start, Polynesians tend not to grow handle bar moustaches. Especially if they’re still backwards cannibal tribes. They also don’t tend to paint their bodies like native American war chiefs.

5. The movie not trying to be cleverer than the audience that would willingly buy it – Unfortunately, this is where it all falls apart (Edit: Are you fucking serious? – Ego).
   There are a few scenes where the badly dubbed Italian actors begin to talk like they actually know what the fuck they’re doing (as opposed to “I’m an experienced sailor”, and then trying to start an outboard motor that’s half buried in sand on the beach). But whilst it shows they’re using logic, they’re still fucking it up. “How did the doctor know which island we were on, when Molotto took us to the wrong island?”… Uhhh, because it was Molotto that took you to the wrong island, so if you ended up on the right one, which you did, the doctor knows you’re actually on the fucking island! GAH!
   If that’s not quite bad enough, there’s also the whole ritual sacrifice of the horror movie standard blond chick. Not only does she willingly go to get sacrificed after kicking and screaming whilst being dragged away, the sacrifice then stops for no apparent reason, and the previously loyal-to-Dr.Butcher tribe decide to suddenly turn on him, andthe zombies they so feared… with no explanation what so ever!

So, if you find this flick in the bargain bin for under $4.28, then sure, buy it for someone you don’t like very much, or have a horror movie night with drinking games – every time the characters do something you didn’t actually expect (like make a sensible decision, or make sense, or just decide to calmly go along with being sacrificed), take a shot!

I give this film half a spinning blue penis… a limp one at that!

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