So far I’ve enjoyed the output Wild Eye Releasing has dropped on movie lovers laps. “Blitzkrieg” was a fun and salivating homage to Naziploitation from the grindhouse era and now we have “Gothkill,” another neo-grindhouse bonanza that recalls the satanic thrillers of the seventies with its tongue firmly planted in cheek. At a merciful hour and nine minutes long, Connelly’s satanic horror comedy seems to be here only to present us with the finest and most unique satanic and gothic performance artists of all time from fire breathers, to magicians and fortune tellers, all of whom are included in the film for lip service in a story that is not only much too convoluted to understand at times, but seems too long even at the length of an average television special.
Connelly and co. seem to have a sheer love for performance art of all kinds and like the old musical romps from the sixties, the acts are thrown in every few minutes to act as buffers for a movie that obviously only has about a half hour of story in it. Character Nick Dread (yet another performance artist Flambeaux) stars and narrates in hell as this man chronicling the moral and satanic undoing of two shrill and obnoxious college students who never seem to go to class at all and take it upon themselves to go the local goth club. Protagonist Annie discovers this club called The Scorpion Society is in fact a vampire club and we’re forced to sit through about twenty minutes of acts as the women walk around the club discovering the assorted flavors of the vampire characters who watch them and smile at their presence.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this club has all sorts of evil misdeeds taking place and the women are soon captured and harangued by the club denizens. And I never sympathized with them in the least since they’re two of the most irritating heroines I’ve ever seen in an independent movie. The synopsis describes this as a horror comedy, but there’s nothing really funny about this, it’s more based around lunacy and morbid black humor that only serves as a means to enhance the overall atmosphere and insistence that these two women will assuredly serve as a sacrifice or… as brides or something. I was never honestly sure what the point was. One of the few bright spots of this sub-par genre entry is Flambeaux who is ridiculously over the top and chews the scenery like he hasn’t eaten in a week, yet is surprisingly entertaining to watch.
From his hilarious introduction murdering cult followers to his breaking of the fourth wall extrapolating the end of these women with grimaces and psychotic gleams that’d make Malcolm McDowell roll his eyes. Though both scenarios seem disconnected, the Scorpion society has played in to Nick Dread’s hands by using his book as a way to transfer souls and he’s come aboard young Annie’s body prepared to wreak total havoc on us again. Scaring the ever loving soul out of these vamp wannabes we’re forced to sit through the origin of Nick Dread that’s there only to showcase more acting from Flambeaux who you cringe watching but just can’t turn away from. Overall, through poseurs and Goth morons, real evil is allowed to manifest yet again, and Nick Dread makes these idiots pay dearly for a life he led starting as a just man who descended in to Satanism.
After the film has logically finished its narrative (fifty minutes in), we have to yet again watch more stretching of the film with Dread and his brides killing locals and inhabiting the bodies of poor saps across time. Through this Dread gathers the alliance of the Scorpion Society and rules once more as a Satanic lord… of some kind. And I’m wondering how I can garner my own satanic concubines. My experience was mixed with “Gothkill.” I wanted to love it, then I decided I despised it, and then midway it wins me over considerably as a guilty pleasure. While it’s no masterpiece existing primarily to showcase local performance artists, it definitely has its charms and star Flambeaux keeps the movie afloat with his insanely over the top performance. Plus, I sat through it for her. What can I say? The devil made me do it.