Hardcore Straight-to-Video Snuff Film Action With Video Violence!

That I would review this one was natural if not inevitable. I have written on any number of reviews of films that involved the making of snuff films as a major plot element (8mm, A Serbian Film, Cheap, Hardcore, and the documentary Snuff: A Film About Killing on Camera) and horror films so low budget that they were shot on video and not film (the Necro Files), plus the Guinea Pig videos the first two of which were mistaken for real snuff films and shot on video. The 1987 film Video Violence was shot on video and the plot is about, you guessed it, people making snuff films. Brad "the Cinema Snob" Jones, who made Cheap, reviewed this one and gave it a terrible review. With all due respect to Brad Jones I'm not sure I agree with him about Video Violence. I'm more and more drawn to this type of ultra-low budget, shot-on-video horror material as an aesthetic. The most obvious thing to say about it is that it has a camp appeal. However, to say that this is the only reason would be reductive. There is something truly perverted about the quality of the shot-to-video. The homemade, low budget look evokes old pornography.The film has a feel which is beyond sleazy and better described as scummy. The plot line of Video Violence is very simple with an extremely predictable ending. The man in a new couple which has just moved into a small town has started a video store. The video store owner realizes something is amiss because the locals (all of which are pretty much cut-out non-charceters) all seem to rent only slasher films or occasionally porn. Then, he notices that someone appears to have accidentally dropped off a real snuff film video. The couple, of course, try to uncover the mystery and in the end, of course, the towns people were all in on it, and at the end of the film, the death of the couple has become the new snuff film. The acting gives new meaning to the word wretched, none of the violence and sexual content in the film is extreme, and the special effects are putrid. This is not say I didn't enjoy the film, I did. Video Violence is some truly mongoloid and decrepit excrement, but at the same time is laugh out loud funny. I have a kind of inverse set of aesthetics by which that really constitutes a great film.