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It had been a while since I sat down and watched a straight-up unpretentious slasher flick, so it pleased me to pop Cut into the player and get some gore on. Okay, that’s not exactly true. I had an ulterior motive. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Molly Ringwald’s boobies. Who can blame me? I grew up in the eighties, and she was the subject of a few masturbatory fantasies. She was all John Hughes and everything, you know? So, yeah. I was hoping for a nice portion of Rack O’ Ringwald. Damn Sixteen Candles for making me think bad thoughts!
Nothing. Nada. That’s a big ten-nothing, good buddy. And that wasn’t the only disappointment to be had with this movie, which really wanted to be Australia’s answer to Scream. Unfortunately, it succeeded.
Stereotypical Girl is all alone in the house. She’s taking a shower and rocking out to Split Enz. The bathroom is steamy enough to obscure the use of a body double (dammit, dammit, dammit!). When she gets out, the phrase “Now you die” has been written on the steamed-up mirror. Stereotypical Girl doesn’t panic, blaming it in on her little brother. But no! It’s a creepy guy in a creepy mask, with a pair of hedge trimmers that are serrated on the outer edge. She runs for her shrieking little life, but when the bad man catches her, he throws her into the wall too hard… and the director yells, “Cut!”
That’s right, it’s a movie-within-a-movie. The director, plucky Hillary Jacobs, played by pop princess Kylie Minogue (I’ll pause momentarily so you all can say, “What the fuck?” Okay. On we go.), gives the guy playing the killer a hard time. He’s not scary and he can’t take direction. We’ve all heard that in the bedroom, haven’t we? Later, in Hillary’s office, the actor comes in to beg for his job, but Hillary will have none of it. So the actor promptly puts on his mask and cuts the director’s tongue out. Stereotypical Girl and the A.D. come in right afterwards. The killer grabs the poor girl, but with ninja skillz, she grabs the hedge clippers and shoves them into the killer’s throat.
Flash forward twelve years. The A.D. is now Dr. Lossman (Geoff Revell), a university film teacher. His senior class decides to finish the movie, “Hot-Blooded.” That’s the movie Lossman was working on with all the murders… you know, in the prologue! He strongly advises his students to leave that movie alone because it is cursed. Anyone who has seen the surviving work print has been murdered. But that doesn’t stop aspiring director Raffy (Jessica Napier) and her producer, Hester (Sarah Kants), from acquiring the rights to “Hot-Blooded” and beginning production. They even manage to get the actress who played Stereotypical Girl from the original shoot, Vanessa Turnbill (Molly Ringwald), to come over from the States for a role.
It doesn’t take long for the crew to start dying off in horrific ways. Someone doesn’t want this movie made! Shocking secrets will tumble out of the closet and blood will flow across the nice hardwood floors. The race is on to find out who the killer is before its final cut for all involved.
Wow, I just spent four paragraphs expositing the plot of a slasher film! That’s impressive.
Okay, let’s start with what’s bad about Cut, which is mostly everything. The only thing that keeps the acting from being incredibly sub-par is the fact that I’m a sucker for accents. I like Australian accents. You could remake Ishtar with Aussies and Cockneys, and I would watch it repeatedly. The acting still sucked, but they sounded really cool.
Doing a slasher film was an interesting career move for Molly Ringwald, who went the opposite way of most actresses. She got famous first, then did a shitty horror movie. Take notes, Eliza Dushku! Molly is awful in this movie. You can sort of tell she’s embarrassed to be there and her face is all squinched up, like she just realized she stepped in dog shit… again. Her voice is shrill and she has a scarf wrapped around her head, like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. And, I must reiterate, she did not get naked, no, not once! Damn The Breakfast Club for making me think bad thoughts!
I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, but there is an integral plot twist that is so unbelievably bad, you almost have to see it to believe it. I thought, “Are they really attempting this? Are they actually trying to pull this off?” Yep, they are. And me with not a drop of liquor in the house, nothing to numb the pain of this one very horrible, ludicrous thing that stuck in my craw. I actually want to tell you, but I’m not allowed to give away pertinent plot twists. Okay…think Sphere and you’re sort of on the right track.
The best part of Cut is the makeup. It is outstanding. No CGI is to be seen in Cut, which is always a joy for me; it’s just latex and goop. The killer, Scarman (Frank Roberts), bears more than a passing resemblance to Freddy Krueger, which is a rip-off, but the effects for the kill scenes are great. Director Kimble Rendall didn’t skimp on the blood. He sure skimped on the tits, though. No bare bubbles in the whole thing. Damn Pretty in Pink for making me think bad thoughts! Be that as it may, fans of old-school makeup effects are in for a treat.
I also appreciated some of the little throwaway dialogue bits. Writer Dave Warner is obviously a fan. When one of the characters attempts to fight Scarman, he says, “Let’s have a little stand-off, Wes Craven style!” Nice. It’s not an overbearing reference, and if you don’t get it, then you don’t get it. The script has a few nice moments like that, all delivered in rich, enticing Australian accents, which makes them even better.
The little niceties don’t make up for the terrible plot twist, the bad acting and the lack of scenery, considering Cut was filmed on location at Mt. Molly. As I always say, all the gore in the world won’t fill up holes in your story. Cut’s story has craters. Only fans of gore effects need apply here, and only if the fast-forward button on the remote works.
Molly could have been a great scream queen, given the right material. And I would have liked that material to be see-through. Oh! You get it? Damn Fresh Horses for being a shitty movie that also didn’t have Molly naked! I hate you all! When is someone going to care about my needs?
