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Of all the modern throwback slasher films I’ve seen (and I think I’ve caught almost all of them by this point), Ryan Nicholson’s Gutterballs is the one that most perfectly encapsulates why I love stalk-and-kill movies from that era. Where movies like Hatchet ape the aesthetics of the golden era of slasher movies (while modernizing them in the process), Gutterballs revels in not only the style that defined these films, but the gore, sleaze, and over-the-top excess. To the uninitiated viewer, Gutterballs could very well have been made when Reagan was still president. It’s the kind of flick you expect to see on VHS-in a giant cardboard box with the logo of a company like Wizard or Gorgon on the label.

The simplistic plot could have been ripped out of almost any body count flick of the era. A group of teens (who all look like they’re 30…) are meeting up for a bowling tournament to be held after hours at the local lanes. One team is comprised of the obnoxious jocks (with a dorky guy thrown in for good measure), the other the artsy new wave kids (who lack the dork, but raise with a transvestite). There’s a lot of animosity between these two factions-and when it threatens to spill over into violence, the resident pin monkey sends everyone packing. Unfortunately, Lisa forgets her purse inside-and when she goes back to get it, she’s raped by the jocks (in a scene nearly as brutal as the one in I Spit on Your Grave-but not quite as rough as Irreversible). The assault culminates with a bowling pin penetration. Ow.

The next night, it’s like nothing happened. The two teams meet up at the bowling alley again (with Lisa in tow) and the match begins-only there’s a third player, a mysterious character calling himself BBK (which stands for Bowling Bag Killer)-so named because he stalks people in the alley while wearing a bowling ball bag on his head…) whose every “strike” shows up on the scoreboard as a skull and crossbones. Soon, people are disappearing. Who is this BBK?

I must admit that the idea of setting a slasher film in a bowling alley was pretty damn inspired. I’ve always had a fondness for putting genre films in this locale-probably because I really dug Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama as a younger horror geek. Nicholson makes great use of his setting-he’s punched it up visually with a lot of neon (which works in creating that ’80s vibe) and the place is large enough that people can wander off to be killed without being missed right away. Nicholson also fills the soundtrack with ’80s rock-which only adds to the period ambiance.

What turns most people off when it comes to Gutterballs is either the acting or the extreme nature of the project as a whole. The acting is pretty awful. Nicholson’s screenplay apparently didn’t concern itself with dialogue because most of the exchanges between characters in Gutterballs feel poorly ad-libbed. The actors aren’t up to the task of improvising dialogue, so most exchanges are padded with countless profanities. There are more F bombs, C-words, and other assorted vulgarities in this film than there are in Tarantino’s entire filmography. Fuck is dropped so casually and often that it makes The Big Lebowski’s constant use of the epithet seem tame and quaint by comparison. So, the acting and dialogue stylings (where every line is shouted for impact) aren’t exactly top notch. The thing is, acting and dialogue in the classic slasher flicks wasn’t exactly Oscar-worthy material, either.

Other people have been put off by the graphic tone of the film. Gutterballs is not only crass in its dialogue, it’s brutal in its gore and it never shies away from a nearly pornographic level of sex. The film opens with a shot of Lisa leaning forward to bowl in a micro skirt-sans panties. It’s a full on beaver shot right from the start. A later sex scene finds two characters being murdered while engaged in a graphic oral sex act (although I think the penis was a prosthetic). I understand some people being offended by this sort of thing, but really-you rented a flick called Gutterballs, which features a girl on the cover in a half shirt where the bottom half of both breasts are exposed. What did you expect?

Personally, the extreme nature of the film is what I like about it as a whole. Nicholson has tackled the idea of rape/revenge before in his brutal short film Torched, so I knew what to expect going in. The gore is no less impressive-there’s a squirm-inducing sex change scene, heads crushed by bowling balls, rape by sharpened bowling pin, and the coup de grace, a head forced into the bowling ball shiner. Nicholson, who’s also an FX technician, gives the gorehounds what they want in this outing-old school gore FX without any CGI. It’s just one more way that the film heralds back to the good old days…

You could spend all day arguing about the things that are wrong with Gutterballs (there are no sympathetic characters in the entire film, the acting is rough, the subject matter is extreme, etc.), but in reality, you’d be missing the point. Nicholson wasn’t trying to create an art film-he was too busy having fun aping the classic slashers and exploitation films of an earlier era. Viewed in this way, it’s a successful artistic endeavor. Gutterballs may not have any redeeming value in the eyes of highbrow film fans, but for folks who love sleazy exploitation cinema, it’s time well spent.

Horror Geek Rating: 3 out of 5

Tags: exploitation, Film Reviews, gore, Gutterballs, Ryan Nicholson, Slasher movies

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 7:18 am and is filed under Gore Movies, Reviews, Slasher movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.