a review of

𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖕𝖙𝖔𝖇𝖊𝖗 𝖝 𝖓𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖞-𝖙𝖜𝖔: Went in with no real expectations, but still came away disappointed. Barely just barely holds together as a film narrative, let alone a hyper-specific genre exercise like the weird Ken Russellesque erotic thriller this is clearly trying to be at times. Hooper apparently came on to direct late in the game to bail out the production, so I'm not clear on how much footage in this is Hooper's and what might be another director's. I have my suspicions that the Marquis de Sade flashbacks and frequent soft-focus nightmare sequences might be Hooper's primary contributions, because pretty much everything else looks so mundane in comparison. Not even worth it for Robert Englund's dual role as the Marquis de Sade and his utterly boring descendent, who outsources approximately 95% of his sadistic perving to his female second in command and spends most of the last 20 minutes suggestively fingering a retracting bolt gun. We see Englund die twice at the end of the movie, and both times it barely registers as anything even happening onscreen. It seems like Englund phoned in his modern-day parts in response to being otherwise relegated to flashbacks.