Rish Outfield's reviews
Wes Craven of Nightmare on Elm Street fame, Sean S. Cunningham of Friday the 13th fame, and Steve Miner, director of Friday 2, 3, and Halloween: H20, all collaborated on this film in their early days. I have liked all their movies since a lot more (including The People Under the Stairs and Friday the 13th 3-D). BUT...
This movie was sick. It was disturbingly realistic and dealt with subject matter I'm uncomfortable with (i.e. lifelike rape/torture/murder). This may be the first movie we've reviewed that had a castration in it. Not that I feel like celebrating, though. I felt somewhat dirty watching it and looked over at tyranist to see if he wanted to turn it off. Somehow, we made it through. It was just too frighteningly lifelike, brutal, and pleasureless, and I felt like I was watching a snuff film at times. The fact that it was touted as a true story didn't help any. Very amateurish camera-work and lighting added to the disturbing realism. Still, at first, there were moments of clever comedy that worked all-too-well, but got hard to tolerate as the subject matter grew darker.
Best Scare: Just the overall feeling of the film.
I'd Recommend It To: Good question...probably very few people.
NOTE: The Karate Kid's Martin Kove is in this movie as the dim-witted deputy. I was in an elevator with him last year, making him one of only a handful of actors in horror that I have met. Not that that makes any difference to you fine folks.

The tyranist's thoughts
Being the Wes Craven fan that I am it was a must that I see this movie. I sort of regret that lusty attitude. The comparison that springs most easily to mind is with Maniac. This is a hyper-realistic piece about some really sick individuals. It was disturbing in the extreme and was very hard to watch at times. The production values were relatively low which somehow made it worse than it was. The gritty texture of the film stock made the story seem even a little more real and a little more disgusting. It is hard to say much about this, but I will say that anyone even a little squeamish probably shouldn't watch simply because of the realism.