Abusive parents suck. They do horrible things to their kids like burning them as punishment, and then their kids grow up and the kids become adults who lure victims into houses and burn and torture and kill them. At least that's what happens in the movies, specifically THIS movie, and it really pisses me off that the vaguely over-religious mother in this movie fucked her son up so badly that he grew into this quiet, reserved adult who associates sex with evil and burning with punishment. It's really sad and twisted. And this is the standard setup for slasher movies of the time (this one was released in 1980); show a kid being horribly abused by his mother, show that kid grown up, then show him killing and torturing women. Audiences will infer that the kid grew
into an abusive, psychotic fuck because his mom was an abusive, psychotic fuck, and that's all you need of a plot really.

I was ready to write a review of this trashy little gem that simply highlighted the trashiness and nothing more when someone referred me to an article published online. He said I'd like the article because it was a movie review that read like a thesis, and that's the kind of review that I like, so I read it. Honestly, it was a really pretentious and boring essay about this movie; one which attempted to claim that the entire movie was a metaphor for the death of the 70s and the new life of the 80s and a bunch of other crap, and while I DO believe that the author believes this position (since he presented a bunch of boring evidence for it) I just don't think those themes are pertinent to a discussion of the movie, particularly not here, but the reason I bring it up is this... those of us who seek out subversive little movies like this, we don't need to pretend that they're high art. I mean, I'm notorious for reading deeply into these movies and finding depth that other people insist isn't there, but I don't think I'd have the balls to claim the movie is about the death of an era and the beginning of a new era. Maybe it is, but when I'm in the mood for a gritty, subversive movie, I want to hear about the death scenes, the gore, everything that makes it taboo and disturbing, not a bunch of excuses for why the movie has value.

I think overly poetic arguments can take away from the fact that I don't have to defend my desire to watch gore and death and nastiness for its own sake. This guy painted the movie as simply a bunch of literary devices; every death scene was a metaphor and nothing was there to be nasty and creepy for its own sake, and I just don't buy it. Grindhouse filmmakers from the angry 70s are notorious for claiming that their movies are responses to what was happening in society. In the 70s everyone was pissed about the war or the decline of moral values or whatever and everyone wanted to do something about it and everyone made movies fueled by anger and outrage and newly found freedom to be graphic and subversive and make money by putting out what people wanted to see (or at least played on these themes in order to get people to watch their movies).

Well, I was disappointed in the gore. This movie had very little gore, considering its subject matter. It's essentially about a man who was tortured with fire as a child, grew into a sheltered adult, is shattered by the death of his abusive mother, and when he feels sexually attracted to a woman in his state of grief he has a psychotic break and drugs her and hangs her by her wrists and kills her with a blowtorch. He equates fire with punishment for sins and sexual desire as a "sin" so he wants to kill women the way his mother tortured him, so he builds a fireproof room in his house, lures more women there, and commences with the burning. The burning scenes are disturbing even without much gore, let me tell you. And the plot has a lot of meat to it even without an appeal to metaphor and high art. History shows that abused children often do grow into abusers themselves, and even if this movie is simply using this device as a vehicle to get asses into theater seats, it's an intriguing premise. The acting isn't bad (especially when compared with other grindhouse flicks of similar stripe) and the conclusion, though derivative, is creepy and disturbing.

When I say "Derivative" I mean you'll be screaming "Quit stealing from 'Pieces' and 'Maniac' you untalented hack!" throughout the entire climax. And like all Grindhouse flicks, this movie has issues with pacing. The movie feels way longer than it is when interspersed with boring sequences that add nothing to the plot and extraneous characters who have no business being in the movie, and there are stupid plot contrivances that might give you a headache when you slap your head in irritation (for instance: if someone knows this man could be a killer, why doesn't he do anything about it for weeks?) Even with these flaws, however, I really fail to see why people hated this movie so much. The term "misogynistic garbage" gets thrown around a lot when deriding this movie, so I think some people think any movie where women get killed is a women-hating movie and they don't bother to look at how killing women fits with the rest of the plot, I don't know.

Those caveats aside, the movie is enjoyable and icky enough to keep your interest. Let the speculation begin!