I bought this DVD blind at FACTS last year. When I see DVDs with covers like this one, I usually just pick them up. With this one I just looked at it quickly and thought, hey looks like a great 80’s slasher flick. It wasn’t until I got home that I read on the cover that it said: a tribute to 80’s slasher films. I looked it up on IMDB and saw that the movie is from 2008. Which was a real let down for me. I don’t have anything against newer horror movies, but I just think that after 2000 there aren’t many good ones made. Still I was interested in seeing this. An homage to the 80’s could be a good thing right?
The movie is about 2 rivaling bowling teams. In the first scenes you can already tell they hate each other’s guts, and the groups start to fight. After the bowling alley is closed one of the girls is still there. She discovers that the guys from the opposing team are also still there. The guys get very violent towards her and it ends up with the girl being brutally raped by all the guys.
The next the day is the big bowling tournament. But during the tournament a lot of people start to disappear. And on the score board the name BBK keeps appearing. No one knows what’s going. But you as a viewer get to see that slowly all the people are getting killed by a strange masked killer.
The movie is set in the 80’s and I think they’ve done a great job with that. The clothing, the scenery, the characters and even the music are all very authentic. It’s even filmed pretty gritty and dark, and not with HD cameras. Which really adds to the 80’s feel of the film. All of the gore scenes are done with practical effects, which is a big plus for me. None of that cheesy looking CGI crap. The acting isn’t that great, but this is also something that adds to the feel of the film. The characters are all dumb teens that you know are going to die. There is a lot of gore and nudity in this film. The gore scenes are very explicit and most kills are on screen. There are some real crazy kills going on, with eyes being stabbed out and heads blown off. But I won’t spoil any of that ;). But that’s what this film is all about, the gore. If you want to see a movie with a story and great plot, don’t watch this one. This movie doesn’t even try to be anything more than a 80’s slasher flick. And that’s what I really like about it.
This DVD was released by the Dutch company shock film. I think the overall quality of film isn’t the best. Like I said before I like the dark and gritty image, but the sound is sometimes downright terrible and kind of annoying. A lot of times it sounds like you’re playing a YouTube video on an old laptop with bad speakers. You can understand what everybody is saying, but it just sounds like a low quality mp3 file. This isn’t the case during the whole movie and since there isn’t too much interesting dialogue going on, it’s still watchable.
The DVD has some extra’s on it. It has a behind the scenes documentary which is about half an hour. It’s appropriately called “behind the balls”. It has interviews with most of the cast members and director Ryan Nicholson. They show how some of the gore effects were done, which I think is interesting to see. You can also see a lot of work went into this film and the cast and crew had much fun making it. The DVD also features an audio commentary track for the whole film. And the movie trailer and the trailers of “All About Evil” and “Famine”. It also has 4 photo gallery’s with stills from the film.
Overall I think Gutterballs is a nice addition to my horror collection and I’m glad I judged a book by its cover. Although I probably won’t do that again haha. If you’re into 80’s slasher films or just gore movies in general, you should give this one a try.
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