Lust for Vengeance [DVD] [2001] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

You are warned at the beginning of this movie that its scenes will be out of chronological order, something that I thought worked brilliantly in "21 Grams" but collapses into confusion here. In one of the extra features (which are extremely hard to navigate), the filmmaker Sean Weathers says the audience at an initial screening were confused, so he rewrote one of the early scenes to make the plot clearer; the result is that it tips you off to the ending and spoils the little mystery he was trying for, and as I said the rest of it is still confusing. Most of the dialogue among the five main characters is tedious and pointless and doesn't really build to anything. Weathers, who wrote, directed, and did the score, seems to be trying to show that each character has a personal problem--eating disorder, drug addiction, etc.-but the presentation is trite.

The notice at the beginning also claims that this is the "first and only true Giallo movie made in the U.S. to date," but it has way, way more softcore sex scenes than any of the dozens of Italian Giallos I've seen, and the storyline, if it could ever be put back into chronological order, is more like a simple slasher flick. Weathers's notion of the Giallo genre seems to focus on stylishness of photography, and I didn't mind the copious use of color gels as much as some other reviewers did, but the choppy motion (described accurately by another reviewer as if every other frame had been deleted) undermined any sense of cinematic style for me.

In short, five young women who know each other and have lots of boring scenes in pairs or three at a time wind up being surprised by a masked killer, who pulls his mask off in the last scene and doesn't surprise us. There is no character development, poor lighting, and some obscure camera angles. As in Weathers's "Maniac Too," there are no consequences for the perpetrator.

Holy crap, okay at first when I put this movie in I'm like okay it's a low budget and clearly shot on video so I'm kinda iffy off the bat, but then the story starts dragging me into it. It's about these 5 chicks who all have their own issues and stuff and this psycho killer who's out there plucking them off 1 by 1. After the first chick gets knocked off then business really starts to pick up, the casual sex and drug use in this movie was unbelievable. It seemed like every other minute someone was having sex or doing some kind of drug and don't get it mixed up it all looked very real it looked like these actors were really having sex and doing drugs on the set of this movie. I watched this movie several times pausing and rewinding at key moments and I'm telling it's all real man! The movie clocks in well under 90 minutes and it goes at a pretty brisk pace. None of the characters seem to over stay there welcome as a focal character gets killed off another supporting character jumps to the forefront. Other notes, the movie has a psychedelic look to it as each scene seems to have it's own color and for those of you into foot fetish, feet seem to be a theme in the cinematography as well. Overall I'd say this movie is well worth the 12 dollar price tag it's going for, this is one buy you won't regret, this Sean Weathers guy is a hell of a director.

This might be interesting to would be film makers for technique but the story is broken up, slow and hard to follow. The dialogue is not interesting almost as if read. The sound quality and picture quality are poor. Took 3 tries to suffer through to the end.

picture quality is poor cuz its an old movie and the sound is also horrible. Story line was good thats why it got 3 stars.

At the start of this film, an announcer tells us that this is the first Giallo movie made in the U.S.A. I don't know if that claim is true or not. I do know that if it is true, we here in the states should be ashamed of ourselves. I took lots of notes while viewing this film. Unfortunately most of them were about the audio and video quality, and not about plot and character development, because there was really none to speak of.

The movie starts out with a black gloved hand writing out four or five girls names (its hard to tell) on a list titled "payback". So you know that 4 (or 5) girls are going to be getting some payback during the (Short) running time of the movie. This film is not told in the traditional linear fashion. It follows the killers order of preference, which makes things more than a little confusing. At some points in the film you see characters who were dead suddenly back in the film, as the plot focuses on a different victim. There are a couple of moments in the film that instill some mystery of who the killer might be. The girls are spoken to by an investigator (who horribly overacts) about their grade school friend who was recently killed. They tell him about a boy whom she rejected who came back to terrorize and rape her. The boy was remanded to a juvenile detention center, and years later escaped. The girls wonder if he is back for revenge for what happened to him years earlier.

The biggest problem with this film isn't the story line (although it can be confusing), or the acting (which is average at best). No, the biggest problem is the different color filters used throughout the entire film. We have scenes awash in red, blue, green, or faded hues. Some of these are bright to the point of hurting your eyes, and all of them are bright and distracting enough to make it hard to see some of the characters and some of the important action going on in the film. The jerky movement style of filming is irritating as well. It looks like they snipped every other frame out of the picture resulting in the actors looking like they are jerking around. If this was a cheap way to try for the stylish film work of the Giallo pictures, it failed miserably.

This is the 10th anniversary explicit version of the film, which means you can expect a lot of softcore sex scenes that add nothing to the plot, but may be the only enjoyment that you get from the film. There was a decent story trying to get out from this film, but the horrid color filters ruined any momentum that the plot had going for it.

The film is shot in widescreen and even though this is a 2001 film, the color filters used during the film makes the print look terrible. There should have been an option to have them turned on or not. The extras include a featurette, an outtake, trivia and trailers.

Not recommended for anyone except fans of the director. 1/10.