Directed by François Truffaut
Written by Jean-Louis Richard & François Truffaut
Original novel by Cornell Woolrich

Bastille Day calls for a film by François Truffaut. My choice is a classic yet seldom viewed tale of revenge: The Bride Wore Black. This tiny wonder has jagged edges and a wicked sense of humor. It has inspired countless filmmakers (including Brian de Palma, who influenced Quentin Tarantino), and was itself inspired by the suspense movies of Alfred Hitchcock. The Bride Wore Black was originally a novel by god of noir Cornell Woolrich, who also wrote Rear Window.

Screen legend Jeanne Moreau plays Julie, who is suicidal when we first see her but soon rallies and decides to go on an extended vacation. Julie's idea of a vacation would delight Aileen Wuornos: Wherever she appears, bad things happen to men who are not quite good, but surely can't be bad enough to deserve their fate.

Glamorous Julie bewitches men with her charm and her fashion sense. The costumes for then forty-year-old Moreau accentuate her odd beauty. This is a woman who does not need youth, to complete her mission. She allows herself to slip into an emotional coma from time to time, only stirring again as she remembers how to please a man, and bring him along, and then do whatever she wants with him.

According to Wikipedia, Truffaut was not proud of The Bride Wore Black. If that's true, it's a shame. The film is cruel and delightfully malicious, with no redemption, even in the flashbacks that show us what set Julie on her deadly adventures. Even when we know the truth, it doesn't justify the action. And that is so rare that I cherish it wherever I find it.

Vive le France!

Directed by Dario Argento
Written by Franco Ferrini & Gianni Romoli

Fear me! I am Dario. You will know me by my oversaturated night sky, my weird soundtracks, and my terrifying children!

Logic, I scorn you.

Exposition, you are not my type. Admit it: We never get along.

Obsession, I know you so well. Give back my lens cover.

Human nature, I like you best when you wear that black dress with red high heels, and carry a razor blade between your teeth.

The rest of you--run! Run as fast as you can! Or Dario will bring the special effects--the severed heads--the pool of gore--the blood--the blood!

There must be something very wrong with me. The more Dario Argento films I watch, the more I love his work. He is--how do you say--insane. I admire and cherish that in an artist working in such an ordinarily money-driven form.

Unfortunately Trauma is not among Argento's best. In this case, the auteur has put a damper on his imagination. It's hard to say if this is due to the personal nature of some of the film's material, or if this was an attempt at a more commercial American product. The result is a sluggish and murky tale of decapitation, insanity, and anorexia. Two of Argento's favorite tropes--the girl in danger and the killer on the loose--lie stranded on opposite sides of a lackluster story.

Trauma lacks the verve and ingenuity of the director's best European work. His heart is not in this thing. Nor is his cinematography, his bold colors, his crazy camera angles, or his signature, shrieking music.

What Argento has given of himself to Trauma is his daughter Asia Argento, as sixteen-year-old Aura Petrescu. Aura is the bulimic daughter of a psychic who's had her committed to a nefarious clinic for therapy. Aura wants to return home to her weird parents, but they insist that she remain in the care of Dr. Judd (Frederic Forrest), who is clearly cracked. The reasons for all of this will become apparent in time, but by then you probably won't care.

Asia Argento is one of cinema's more fascinating creatures. The appeal of her visceral and boundary-defying presence is similar to that of Klaus Kinski or Angelina Jolie. Who knows whether their acting is great, good, or just all right? It's elemental. They are forces of nature that leave you speechless in their wake. In Trauma the wake is a small one from a teen actor just beginning to realize the effect she can have on an audience.

Trauma has special effects makeup supplied by Tom Savini, and a few moments when our director breaks loose. At one point a character looks up at the ceiling and shouts:

"WHY?! WHY?!"

No one will ever adequately answer that question, for the character, for you, for me.

Finally, in a climactic scene at a hospital during a whopper of a lightning storm, we get the sort of grand opera-style "Eureka!" moment that would look more at home in Suspiria. Speaking of which…

Little Spoilers Here and There, But So What?

I watch more thrillers and horror films than I review. My standard reason for choosing not to review a film is the mood I am in when the final credits roll. If I've just spent an irretrievable portion of my life with a DVD that made me say "eh," I think: Why pass along the mediocrity?

Sometimes, though, a film is almost good, close enough to warrant a short review. In this case, the deciding factor can be a bad performance by an actor I usually like, or a good story that goes wonky in the third act, or even a lame title. In the past week I've seen three films that qualify for that last category. So, I thought: Why not lump them together and be done with it?

Interstate (2007) is worth watching for one reason: The no-budget noir suspense has been created around the detritus of Route 66. The famous freeway provided generations of families with a cheap road trip vacation. Here the gigantic statues and hideously tacky motels of Route 66 have been shot with a melancholy that shows just how far the characters are from reaching the American Dream.

The hero is a nice guy, the kind of guy who offers to drive his destitute girlfriend from Montreal to Los Angeles so she can audition for a role in a TV show. The kind of guy who feels guilty when the car breaks down, and makes up for it by spending most of his remaining cash on a bus ticket for the girlfriend, who thanks him by waving bye-bye through the bus window as it pulls away--leaving him stranded.

Our hero promptly hitches a ride, and guess what? The driver is weird. There's a killer on the loose. The weather is lousy. And the two girls who show up out of nowhere need a ride, too.

Most of this doesn't amount to much by the end, but it's fairly suspenseful and the camera work is elegant enough to bear a passing resemblance to classic David Lynch. Interstate is a perfectly respectable little noirish film you will probably enjoy scene by scene, and then never find again in the video store because you cannot remember the title to save your life.

In the Blood (2006) had me guessing for a while. Then it got really silly, and the final "oh no, it is happening again" moment made me guffaw. I hate to guffaw.

A college student in denial about being gay finds that he is opposed to his best friend dating his sister, all out of proportion to the situation, of course. The best friend is a womanizer. And the sister is a blond virgin. And guess what? There's a killer on the loose, who preys upon blond virgins! Oh no.

When our hero starts having chronic nosebleeds, his middle-aged swinger aunt shows up out of nowhere to break the news that everyone in the family is psychic. Yeah. Was Sissy Spacek's Carrie or Amy Irving's character in The Fury the first to make nosebleeds de rigueur for budding teen psychics? I don't know or care. I just wish it would stop.

It seems that the protagonist's family can see the future. Ooooo. But it only happens when they achieve orgasm. Yes, in order to see what will happen to his blond, virginal sister, the hero has to come out, because sex with a girl ain't gonna do it.

That joke is the best thing about the film. The rest of the story trudges along without making a lot of sense. And when it stops trudging, it dies.

Which brings me to the big budget fare with the worst title of all.

Untraceable (2008) is one of those race-against-the-clock movies, in which the protagonist (played by the ever likable Diane Lane) must locate the villain before more people are killed in grotesque and outlandish ways. This might be fun if it didn't come equipped with a MESSAGE: That crazy Internet can be dangerous, people! So watch out what you watch, or you, too, might be complicit in a horrible crime! (Of course, it isn't a crime for which anyone can be prosecuted, so don't get all sweaty about it.)

Lane plays Jennifer Marsh, an FBI agent who monitors Web activity looking for good people doing bad things and bad people doing anything. Marsh is a character with a history that can only come from too many Hollywood lunches.

Filed under back-story pre-tragedy, Marsh is the widow of another FBI agent, who was killed in the line of duty. Still grieving, Marsh has a young daughter whose schedule she tries to match by working the graveyard shift. She lives in a magically cute house in an idyllic suburb of Portland. And she is fit, attractive, and still plausible as a love interest.

For good luck, one of the writers or producers has tossed in Marsh's live-in mom. In this truly thankless role Mary Beth Hurt does an admirable job. She takes her six lines of dialog and returns with a woman I would have liked to know better. Too bad the character is a mere token in a movie by boys who have no interest whatsoever in the lives and accomplishments of older women. She exists, for them, as a red herring and a convenient babysitter. Shame on them, because Mary Beth Hurt is awesome and fascinating and deserves much better roles than this. (See the Shock Room review of her sparkling performance as the quintessential 1950s mom in Parents.)

Marsh has the usual problems: She has to find out who is broadcasting torture scenes on the Web. Then she has to find out why. Then she has to explain to her daughter why she has to cut out on her birthday party. Then--guess what? The latest victim is someone Marsh recognizes. Out of nowhere... OK, never mind.

The villain here is supposed to be tricky. What he could use is a shard or even a shred of plausibility. We're supposed to pity and despise the fiend--yet another criminal mastermind with limitless time and money, and electrical engineering skills. But because the people who made Untraceable don't know when enough is enough, this little Hannibal has a social cause and a plan so over-complicated only a well-paid screenwriter could dream it up. And if you care about that cause by the end of this twisty plot, you're even more desperate for entertainment than I am.

Pop quiz: Without cheating, try right now to name all three of the films reviewed in this post.

Yeah, I'm laughing. Not guffawing, but laughing.

Directed by Tony Krantz
Written by Erik Jendresen and Thomas Schnauz

Otis begins with a promising idea, gains speed, gets interesting, jumps the track, and gradually glides to a halt. Not a conclusion, merely a halt. The final scene is implausible, even for these characters. The letdown made more sense after I watched the DVD extras and saw the truly awful, alternate ending. The director and his writers simply ran out of good ideas before the third act.

Otis Broth is a serial killer hunted by the police. But he's misunderstood. He probably wouldn't kill the teenage girls he abducts if they would play along with everything he says and does. All he wants is to keep a pretty, blond girl locked up in his idea of a cheerleader's bedroom, make her wear a series of high school outfits, take her to the prom, and call her Kim. Oh, and she has to fall in love with him--300+ pounds, bald scalp, and wicked temper. The first girl who satisfies his fantasy gets to live--maybe.

Riley Lawson is Otis Broth's new Kim. She's an A student with a loving family distraught over her disappearance. And she is smarter than the average Kim, so you can guess what happens.

Riley's family is well cast and charming. But their early scenes don't support the mayhem of the later ones. There is no dark edge to this family, even if Riley's brother is into surveillance and porn. (Note: for dark-edged domestic horror comedy, see The Quiet Family or Parents.) Nothing serves as an adequate foundation--comedic or otherwise--for the gruesome and silly actions taken by Riley's family.

The leading actor, Bostin Christopher, is interesting, and the rest of the cast is both capable and likable. But the story bleeds with every plot twist, until there's nothing left. In an interview, writer Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers) says the original script by Thomas Schnauz (The Lone Gunmen, The X-Files, and Reaper) was much more straightforward. Jendresen and director Tony Krantz decided to make it satirical, but their grim view of the suburban American family isn't new or fresh. Serial Mom covered this ground more humorously a long time ago.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Maybe I'm just in a snit because I wasted time figuring out a good back-story for the central character. I gathered all of the clues scattered by Otis and his brother Elmo:

1. We see a high school photo of a football player, but never closely enough to be sure who it is. Elmo gripes that the coach didn't put him in the game enough, but this doesn't prove the identity of the player. It could be Elmo, or it could be Otis.

2. Elmo keeps calling Otis an idiot, and says he has lost all the jobs his brother helped him get. (The security uniform Elmo wears makes Otis' collection of surveillance equipment plausible.) The relationship reads unexpectedly bitter, as if Otis has not always been the way he is now.

3. Elmo's wife is named Kim. (If the name obsession is nothing more than an over-developed Eminem joke, this is a waste of ripe material.)

4. The whole fantasy constructed in the basement of Otis Broth's home may suggest his brother's popularity in high school, a normalcy Otis longed for. Or, in my theory, it could suggest a reality that Otis lost, for example--

Otis was a popular jock in high school, a little bit mean and a little bit slow, but all right. His girlfriend and all the perks of his life fell away suddenly when Otis either suffered an injury on the field, or (more likely) crashed his beloved car following drunken prom night debauchery with Kim, who went on to marry his brother.

Nice, eh?

Well, don't look for it in the film, because none of the clues, hints, nuances, or mementos add up to anything. Otis is nothing but a big, slow, angry, abused guy who wants to pretend he's a high school hero.

I like my version better.

If you enjoy Otis, or most of Otis, or the premise to Otis, you might like the Masters of Horror episode "Family" (2006). Directed by John Landis and written by Brent Hanley, who penned the 2001 beauty Frailty, it stars George Wendt as a new neighbor with secrets.

Directed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry

The Signal is released on DVD this week after a fair number of critical accolades. But if there is one thing I've learned about highly touted horror flicks, it is to keep an open mind no matter what other people say. The genre has many sub-categories, and some fans don't cross over. One fan's delight is another's five dollar trade-in value.

This technically expert study of mass violence is divided into a three-part structure with a different writer for each segment or transmission:

Trans 1.0
Crazy Love
written by David Bruckner
A married woman says good night to her lover and leaves him distractedly watching TV, while a signal keeps jamming the picture, reducing it to a flashing kaleidoscope. The woman returns home to her suspicious, TV-viewing husband, who is involved in an argument that will soon escalate.

Trans 2.0
The Jealousy Monster
written by Jacob Gentry
The characters from the first segment intersect with their neighbors down the street. The neighbors have been preparing a New Year's Eve party, unaware that violence has erupted outside. Some characters realize what is happening, and others are in denial.

Trans 3.0
written by Dan Bush
Escape from Terminus
Characters from both previous segments try to outwit one another--and separate reality from their delusions--long enough to make their way out of town.

In theoretical terms, the structure is interesting. New and strange twists of fate might occur with different artists creating portions of the narrative. But forty-five minutes in, horror lapses uneasily into farce, in Trans 2.0, and leaves the blood-stained surviving characters washed up in a mundane setting.

After fumbling through a bunch of brutal, domestic misunderstandings, all is well. That is, we finally get back to the action. But the film never regains its original momentum.

In the absence of that momentum, I fall back on petty gripes:

Gripe 1.1
The heroine is slow-acting to the point of being catatonic. OK, she's traumatized. But more internal stress, and more external movement, would have been more fun to watch. To be fair, none of the characters act quickly on instinct. They seem anesthetized by shock, which (again) is a better idea in theory than practice.

Gripe 2.1
The description on the DVD cover and online says that a mysterious transmission is invading every cell phone, radio, and TV. But in the main story line we only see it transmitted via TV.

Gripe 3.1
A lot of the people who receive the signal do not become violent and we never learn why some people do and some do not.

Gripe 3.1a
To understand the effect of the signal, we need one example, but the film offers one after another, without adding anything each time. The characters hallucinate, but their visions seem limited by their lack of imagination. Good idea, not that compelling to watch.

SPOILER WARNING

Gripe 3.1b
Allowing for the real possibility that I'm just too stupid to get the whole thing, I don't see any reason to have an imagined, false ending if you're not going to change it the second time around. What if Brazil came back to the starting point for the last scene again, and then offered no indication that the story would go in a different direction? Mm-hmm. It made me wonder, but not for long. When the film was over, I had finished thinking about it.

The Signal is pretty evenly divided among several characters. Each section has its humorous and engaging moments, but over-all the story suffers from the lack of a central protagonist. It wavers between social satire and love story, and never reveals enough about any one character to make their survival matter.

The DVD offers deleted scenes as well as extra transmissions, which are complete sequences taking place in other parts of the city while the main action occurs. If you want to view the story as an active landscape in which many dramas happen simultaneously, the extra transmissions add depth and complexity to the picture. But if you want to identify with someone, and if you're looking for dramatic tension in the narrative, the extras won't help.

Phenomena and Tenebre

Anchor Bay offers several DVD titles by Dario Argento. Two new editions are worth mentioning this month.

Phenomena (released in 1985 as Creepers) is the story of Jennifer, a girl sent by her famous actor father to a boarding school in Switzerland while he is incommunicado shooting a film in South America. The girl's only contact back home is her father's agent/attorney. On the drive from the airport to her new residence, Jennifer has a brief conversation with one of her teachers:

"People call [this area] the Swiss Transylvania," the teacher says, apropos of nothing.

"Why?" Jennifer asks.

"Oh, I don't know. They just do."

That last bit represents the director's attitude and should prepare the viewer for a horror film about a pubescent girl with a supernatural affinity for insects, a film inexplicably including: Donald Pleasence as a wheelchair-bound Scottish entomologist; a chimpanzee as his loyal assistant; a headmistress who probably should not be left alone with children; an eerie music score with a mind of its own; and a roving serial killer.

Yeah, I said chimpanzee assistant.

And you'll never guess the name of the girls' school. Think big, operatic, bombastic… That's right.

Actual voice-over:

"And so Jennifer arrives in Switzerland from the New World to pass her first memorable night at the Richard Wagner International School for Girls."

Only Dario Argento, right? That's what I love about his work. Long after the crazy, screechy soundtrack stops pounding in your ears, and you stop giggling at the chimpanzee scenes, and the gore and guts and gushing stop, you will still be amazed and perhaps delighted at the audacity of the whole thing. If a film could be schizophrenic, it would look and act like this.

Jennifer Connelly plays Jennifer with a poise and assurance beyond her thirteen years of age. In one of the DVD extras Daria Nicolodi (who plays Frau Brückner--not kidding) explains how she talked the girl's parents into letting her do the film by showing them only those Argento film clips that seemed appropriate. I'm guessing that reel ran about fifteen seconds.

Further extras reveal how the impressive special effects were achieved way back in '85, and there is a pretty funny interview with Argento on an American talk show promoting the film's theatrical release. Nicolodi describes the perils of working at close range with a weapon-wielding chimpanzee; one of Argento's daughters explains how she managed to do what he wanted without being decapitated by a dangerous stunt; and there are a couple of bizarre music videos.

But no one explains the Richard Wagner International School for Girls Who Apparently Are Not Even All That Musical.

Ah, Dario!

Tenebre (1982) features Daria Nicolodi in another key role, as the long-suffering personal assistant to a famous novelist played by Anthony Franciosa. The novelist has arrived in Rome to promote his latest book, just in time to cross paths with a murderer who takes an interest in the writer's friends and associates.

It's a little bit Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and a little bit Columbo. But the style is pure Argento, in this giallo murder mystery. The mystery part doesn't matter too much, which is fortunate. This movie has been imitated and referenced so many times on film and TV, you'll probably identify the killer in the first ten minutes. But there are some nice twists and turns along the way.

The beginning of Tenebre is deceptive. I was going along, thinking: Gee, this is not that gory, for an Argento movie. Then--whoa! How did they get that red stuff to spill sideways across the walls? Man!

In the extras the special effects wizards explain exactly how they did it. And Argento gives himself some much-deserved credit for inventing the often-imitated shot of the protagonist reaching down, out of the frame, to reveal the killer standing directly behind him. This is not a spoiler. Trust me, when it happens, you will still jump. And then you will say, "What?"

This is the beauty and the joy of Argento. Don't worry about it. Yes, it's all crazy, yet so much bloody fun.

Directed by Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
Written by Alexandre Bustillo

A critic is quoted on the DVD cover of Inside, calling the recent French thriller: "One of the scariest movies I have ever seen in my life." Granted, the last few scenes will leave you breathless. The realism of the special effects is counterbalanced by the intensity of performances by Béatrice Dalle and Alysson Paradis. And some moments are quite disturbing.

A lot of people will find this film particularly agonizing because the protagonist, a photojournalist named Sarah (Paradis), is overdue with her first baby. She has made arrangements to check into the hospital in the morning, to have labor induced. And now someone who knows Sarah's name keeps coming to her door, in the middle of the night, asking to come inside.

The conclusion and the secret were easy to guess. But then, I've read several articles about the particular obsessions the movie explores. Despite a couple of over-the-top images and being able to figure out the characters' connection early on, I was riveted by the acting of Dalle and Paradis.

Directed by Kit Ryan
Written by Derek Boyle & Eamon Friel

Have you ever had the feeling, while walking out the front door in broad daylight with a suitcase full of stolen diamonds, that maybe the heist went a little too easily? Trust that feeling.

Ritchie (Stephen Dorff) owes his gangster benefactor a lot. It seems the guy helped Ritchie's mother get out of the Soviet Union years ago. Now Ritchie, who would just as soon forget his Russian roots, has to make his benefactor happy by breaking into a penthouse apartment in Moscow to steal a religious icon that belonged to the first czar. Only there's a bit of a problem with the elevators. And the basement floor. And the security system. And...

Botched starts off as a typical heist gone wrong, and quickly develops into a hilarious low-budget cat and mouse game involving Ritchie, a grouchy Russian sidekick (Jamie Foreman), a sleek beauty named Anna (Jaime Murray, Lila on the Showtime series Dexter), a religious fanatic named Sonya (Bronagh Gallagher), and another entity I won't even try to describe.

Extra characters, of course, provide extra gore. And once the game hits full speed, it's every comrade for himself. But the script and the mostly British cast continue to surprise with plot twists and hysterically human moments of equal parts ingenuity and stupidity.

If you liked Severance, 2LDK, or Murder Party, you will probably find Botched as amusing as I did. Enjoy!

Directed by Viktors Ritelis
Written by Olaf Pooley

The first time I watched Crucible of Horror it was a late night feature hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Despite the frequency of TV ads, Elvira's derision, the bad reception, and the cheap beer, I found the movie entertaining. Dumb, confusing, and sort of slimy--yet fun.

A few years later I saw a used copy of Crucible of Horror on VHS for $1.99 and I bought it. Over the years I probably watched it four or five times. Then, last weekend, I stumbled across the DVD on sale for three bucks. Guess what?

I'm not sure what it is about this dreadful 1970 flick. It's funny, but not hysterically so. There are a couple of moments of suspense, but they fly right by. As for horror--other than the sight of a half-naked English aristocrat, there isn't much. And the DVD looks like it was made by pointing the camera at a TV screen. Yet I find it irresistible in a slightly dirty, Gothic, psychedelic way.

Originally titled The Corpse, the film is about a nasty family of four. If you want to get fancy you can say it's about the difficulty of overthrowing a corrupt patriarchy. (Go on, write a thesis about Crucible of Horror. I dare you.)

When mother and daughter (Yvonne Mitchell and Sharon Gurney) decide they've had quite enough of the incest and the S/M and the spying and the arbitrary rule against wearing wigs at the dinner table, they set out to do away with dear old Dad. But the job proves more challenging than they expect.

Crucible takes a few elements from much better films like Les Diaboliques and Games, toys with them, and then throws them out the window. Buried deep in the discarded pages of a script by Olaf Pooley, there might have been a cleverly devised plot. But somebody decided the film would be better with an extra dollop of ambiguity. So, every time a bit of exposition is called for, instead we get a dreamy montage. By the end of the film it's impossible to say what has happened.

Did Dad figure out the plot, and foil it? Did he die and come back? Was the murder plot simply a fantasy or a nightmare? Is the son helping the father, or is he just a decorative dolt? I don't know. The director doesn't know, either.

One thing is certain, though: Dad's habit of touching the seat of his daughter's bicycle after she returns home from a long ride is icky. Very icky. Icky enough to keep me watching. And the riding crop scene may be ridiculously over-the-top, yet it captures the creepy essence of domestic violence, and justifies the actions of the mother and daughter.

Michael Gough plays the ghastly patriarch. Gough's six-decade career includes the role of Alfred in three Batman films. Gough's real life son Simon plays his doting offspring in Crucible.

As if the incestuous implications of the movie were not enough, Sharon Gurney, who portrays Gough's mistreated teenage daughter, went on to marry Simon Gough and have four children with him. Apparently, Gurney quit film acting in 1974 to raise a family, but I will always remember her as the doomed Laura Crich in Women in Love (1969). The most famous image from that film is of Laura and her new husband, both drowned, their arms entangled in a final death embrace.

Who says true love can't be horrifying?

Directed & written by Xavier Gens

The splatter film is not my favorite sub-genre, but I like any well-made horror. This French production is an above-average example that should satisfy anyone who liked Calvaire.

Five young friends have stolen a large sum of money during a violent political protest in Paris. Driving two vehicles, they flee from the police and head out to the country, planning to rendezvous at an inn or hostel and continue their escape. But their plans change when they encounter one of those lovely families you only find in oddball news items on the back page, and in movies like this one. (I was immediately reminded of the Fritzl family saga from Vienna.)

The success of this picture depends on striking a balance between inventiveness and plausibility. I give this film higher marks for plausibility than inventiveness. Any horror movie that introduces a Nazi element needs to justify itself, and Frontier(s) does a better job than most. The irony of these particular punks ending up where they do is a clever variation on the sub-genre, but it doesn't automatically make everything work. For that, director Xavier Gens (Hitman) relies on a fast pace, pretty good acting, and special effects that are guaranteed to make you squirm.

Unfortunately, one of our protagonists cries incessantly. This is a minor gripe, but I honestly felt like smacking her a couple of times, and I'll bet that isn't what the director intended.

Anyway, if the meat hook and buzz saw are your props of choice in a horror film, you will probably get a kick out of this bloodbath-at-the-country-inn story. The social overtones are a bonus.