Directed by Ryan Nicholson

Starring Alastair Gamble, Mihola Terzic and Nathan Witte

A night of late night bowling is interrupted by a bowling bag-wearing killer delivering justice in bowling-related fashion.  Did I mention bowling?

Review

One night, a group of young adults are allowed to play their game late until they get too rowdy by cussing and fighting and the game is put on hold until the next night.  Steve, the preppy jerk who started the whole thing, gets his foot injured by Lisa in the process.  After the janitor kicks them out, Lisa sneaks back in for her purse but Steve and his posse are also inside and then proceed to rape her violently, using a bowling pin to cap off the act. 

This is not the worst thing to happen to someone in this movie.

The next day, everyone shows up after hours, including Lisa who is silent about the incident from the night before.  As the bowlers begin, they notice another name on the scoreboard, belonging to someone called “BBK” though none of them cops to being this person.  However, as people begin to leave the lanes, they are attacked by a mysterious killer wearing a bowling bag with eye holes in it.  He attacks with sharpened bowling pins, bowling balls and anything they can find that’s remotely bowling related.  Ever wanted to know what would really happen to Homer by sticking his head in the shine-o ball-o?  Something similar happens here though a bit more gore, which you better enjoy because this movie contains buckets of it.

You’ve done this before, haven’t you?

Being a little independent film, the filmmakers seemed to have credited most of their budget to the gross out, gag inducing gore effects.  Not content with a simple slasher style of slaughter, the killer with odd choice of mask manages to murder his/her victims in incredibly over-the-top fashion.  Someone gets their head crushed with a pair of bowling balls, complete with brains squirting out of the wound.  Some poor slob gets stabbed in the eyeballs with a sharpened bowling pin.  Bowling pins getting shoved into random orifices.  I actually had to cover my eyes when the killer castrated the tranny character.  Congratulations, Gutterballs, that doesn’t happen very often.

While I’m not the type to knock bad acting, there isn’t much in the way of good acting involved though part of the blame lies with the script (or maybe lack thereof?)  Intentionally done for humour’s sake, I would think, the dialogue is littered with f-bombs and there’s rarely a sentence heard without hearing several “fucks.”  Within ten minutes, I couldn’t like any of the characters, though by the end of the film with all the twists and turns done, there wasn’t much reason to like anyone except the token female heroine who was only slightly less evil than the rest.

You wish.

I can’t say the film doesn’t deliver what it intended to.  Although it’s a mean-spirited film, if you can appreciate the dark humour that lies between the gory bits of violence and heavy doses of nudity and sex, you won’t have a problem getting past the bad acting.  And even if you can’t, there’s still the gory violence and lots of nudity and sex anyway. 

TL;DR

Story: 4 – Well, it’s not as though this type of film hasn’t been done before, just not presented in such a way.  The originality lies more in the kills.

Blood: 9 – There may be bloodier films, but for this type of movie, the filmmakers went all out and delivered an incredibly gory film that will both shock and delight fans of the genre.

Nudity: 9 – There’s a little bit of everything for everyone, especially if you manage to pick up the unrated cut that contains not only close up scenes of everyone’s favourite dangly parts but even sex scenes that go beyond simple humping.

Overall: 7 – It’s a mean movie filled with unlikeable characters, but that just means you’ll enjoy their gory demises all the more! 

Trivia

-The film contains the second most about of “fucks” in any movie, 625, ranking just behind the documentary “Fuck,” about the history and use of the word.

-The MPAA wanted 20 minutes cut from the film just to avoid an NC-17 rating.

-It took three weeks to film, though most of the gore effects were shot in a separate location to avoid getting fake blood all over the bowling alley.