Friday, October 27, 2017

Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill!: Worse Than 31

They are like the meta women hardcore glam punk equivalent of the Monkees, except they will not be around for long. The band Kill Pussy Kill (played by indie scream queens, but credited with at least one song on the soundtrack album) is about to be kidnapped and taught a less in sacrifice by a Jigsaw like “Mastermind” in Jared Cohn’s Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill! (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

Oddly enough, given the lurid echoes of the title, Kill! Kill! does not proudly fly its Russ Meyer influences. You could maybe force some parallels, but in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, it is the women who are the abductors, whereas in HPTKK, they are the abducted. Kill Pussy Kill were on their way to a career-making gig, when a creepy gas station hick with the name Dale stitched above his pocket kidnaps the women, so they can serve as pawns in the wheelchair bound freak’s game of life and death. Before they can advance to each new room (and supposedly closer to freedom), one band member must die.

Based on the prologue, we are given good reason to believe the sadistic psycho is actually a former Special Forces veteran, who had his face cut off by Jihadists. Basically, that means Cohn rips off Rob Zombie’s 31 and Raze, but adds character assassination of American military service personnel as an extra added bonus. HPTKK even takes place on Halloween night just like 31, but Zombie’s film, featuring the gothic warehouse setting and the Eighteenth-Century costumes donned by the sicko audience, is more ambitious and distinctive looking. Frankly, I never thought I would use the words “ambitious” and “distinctive” to describe the soullessly violent 31, but here we are, thanks to HPTKK.

None of the bandmembers has much personality, not even their leader, Amber Stardust, played by Sara Malakul Lane, who has to start turning down some of her fiancée’s projects and get back to making terrific genre films like Sun Choke and Beyond the Gates. Problematically, the most sharply delineated and proactive character is former bandmember DJ Speed, who we first meet while attempting to force himself on another bandmember. Still, it is pretty mind-blowing that Richard Grieco, from the original 21 Jump Street, plays gristly, knuckle-dragging Dale. To his credit, he certainly chews the scenery.


Yeah, not good. This a brutal but derivative film that has no reason for being, except to sell a soundtrack album. Not recommended under any circumstances, Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill! opens today (10/27) in Los Angeles, at the Arena Cinema.