a review of 惨杀古城

HOOPTOBER, NIGHT THIRTEEN: Not a whole lot to this one, it starts off as a pretty tame exploitation pic and turns into some campy (though not especially gory or sexy) proto-torture porn. Although the movie starts off with the promise of spooky supernatural shenanigans, the villain turns out to be a hilariously overdubbed Mickey Hargitay, playing a bodybuilder turned dumped boyfriend turned narcissistic incel. He's convinced himself that he's the reincarnation of a long-dead sadist (NOTE: This movie questionably marketed itself as being based on the writings of de Sade) and is all too ready to test out all of the various mothballed implements of pain left behind in his castle's stuccoed dungeons. It's a deeply silly movie, but also sort of excruciatingly drawn out in its final minutes, as the movie slows down to give us a long, cartoony sequence of Hargitay strutting around in his full wrestling-heel torturer outfit and enacting Alice Cooper-esque punishments upon the remaining cast before getting his just deserts. It's basically the definition of gratuitous, but at the same time it's also not quite enough to really make an impression.