CarlB1961
Terrible low-budget shot-on-video horror movies fall into three distinct categories: so bad it's good; so bad it makes you want to tear your own eyes out to remove the vileness forever imprinted upon your retinas; and so bad it makes you want to tear the eyes out of the unscrupulous sobs who made and released this godless monstrosity upon the world. Sean MacArthur's opus "Experiments In Torture" falls safely into that third category.The title is all too apt in that "Experiments In Torture" is indeed an experiment in torture; the only ones who should watch this abomination are blind people, terror suspects, and people who feel the need to atone for some sin they committed in the past.A bunch of vapid, slutty, amoral strippers (as opposed to "virtuous strippers", I guess) agree to be a part of some mysterious rich guy's fetish film and head out to his remote lakeside cabin for the weekend to make some quick cash. Little do they know they're actually being set-up by three sadistic killers who are in actuality making a snuff-film...I think. I don't really know, this thing is such a muddy, jumbled, poorly shot mess I might have missed a "plot-point" (for lack of a better term) or two along the way, but I think that's pretty close. The only ones who can save them are the hot-headed, overprotective brother of one of the strippers, the bouncer of the nightclub where they work, and some random guy who has some unexplained foreknowledge of the killers. Naturally, one of the three is in cahoots with the killers and things don't go too smoothly for our heroes, leaving the job of saving the day up to another stripper who had previously escaped the psychos after they killed her friend and she threw acid in the face of one (for some reason she didn't tell the police and ended up in a loony bin instead, or maybe she did tell the cops and they didn't believe her and that's why she's in the loony bin).There is not a single redeeming feature in this truly Godawful excuse for a film. The lighting is so terrible that most of the time you cannot even tell what's going on. The sound is atrocious, the make-up effects impoverished, the story ridiculous, the acting... nonexistent. Never, ever EVER in ten+ years of watching low-budget movies horror and otherwise have I seen such terrible, terrible acting. There is not a single professional actor--or even a remotely talented amateur--to be found in this dreg. The strippers are such a vacuous bunch of unlikeable airheads I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out they were really just a bunch of strippers the production crew hired to be in the film (but unfortunately weren't paid enough to do what they do professionally (get naked) on screen). No "stripper with a heart of gold" here; they'll all just a bunch of skanks and whores. Characterization? Physical features are about all there is in terms of personality.Things happen without any explanation of any kind. It feels like entire scenes are missing or were just never filmed because they ran out of time or money or both.I'm all for independent cinema; compared to most of the mainstream crap that comes out of Hollywood it's a welcome departure and sometimes can be genuinely entertaining and tell a good story. The invention of the digital camera in the 1990's opened a new door to an entire generation of wannabe filmmakers. Unbareable crap like this, which is all too common, is the downside of that. For every diamond in the rough, there's just a bunch of cat turds. For every truly talented young filmmaker, there is a Sean MacArthur, who apparently dropped out of the Burger King school of Film-making and then decided to made "Experiments In Torture" one day because they shut off his cable and he was out of macaroni & cheese and his mom wouldn't loan him two hundred bucks to pay his light bill and because, darn it, there just wasn't anything else to do that day!
dtbaker2
I waited for some (other) fool to return this film so I could rent it, that I might review it in hopes of getting some ideas for a paper on horror genre films. (only one copy at video store - I now know why.) Absolutely the worst film I have ever seen, worse than Attack of the Killer Tomatoes...which was at least honest in its sense of mockery.Yet worse than every collective film featuring Diane Keaton's deadpan, mouth breathing camera invitation - worse even than Woody Allen, who somehow convinced the director to allow Scarlett Johansson, in "Scoop," to hop onto a stool in the restaurant scene, while the voyeuristic Woody glared at her boob-shake (magnificent, by the way) and admire their turbulence - for the benefit of only the camera - with nary a thing to do with the story line.This is yet worse.Perhaps you have heard of Liverwurst, a sausage product that might be enjoyed on hearty German bread, often served with hot mustard.Then, there is "Braunsweiger" the Americanized food-factory version - it is a meat mixture "spread"(yum) made of pork liver and pork parts.Imagine pig-face meat and various organs blended together with dried milk, corn syrup and a multitude of chemical additives, extruded from a factory blender into a plastic tube wrapper, which absolutely fails to approximate true liverwurst.This film is worse than Braunsweiger.Now, imagine drinking a thirty-pack of crap American beer (which I would never do, but, just for now...imagine the pain....)Then imagine awakening to a hangover and to a breakfast of a sloppy Braunsweiger sandwich on white bread and yellow hot dog mustard - while watching "Experiment in Torture."Now, if you are that gullible; you will have experienced...MOVIEWURST.For the love of God, how the hell did this ever make it onto DVD?I produce wedding videos. This movie is more insufferable than the canon of every wedding/reception, chicken dancing, garter tossing foolery than I have ever filmed.The screenwriter and director should have their eyelids propped wide and be made to watch this mess.Now, there is an "Experiment in Torture." Wow.Bad.
D-Sligar
This movie started out OK, at least for a B-movie, then they lost the only good thing about it... a little skin here and there. Come on, they're strippers, they could have at least kept them showing every now and then to keep us occupied when the story got really slow.But then there's the story, as one person put it "A muddled mess." Things were all over the place with some things happening for no apparent reason. And what was up with that one stripper who looked like a guy? I could swear I kept seeing hints of a mustache. But I guess most of the chicks were fairly decent, provided they didn't get hit with bad camera angles.Avoid this movie, it's really not worth it even for a low-budget torture-porn flick. Check the user ratings, they don't lie.
gavin6942
A group of strippers is invited to film a "fetish film" at a large house outside of the city. For some reason, they agree to do this despite never even meeting the man who hires them. After spending the afternoon having fun and the evening playing Truth or Dare, things start to go badly as the girls one by one get sick or injured. Is there any escape? This movie comes to us from first-time writer and director Sean MacArthur, who has no future projects officially scheduled yet. And what a relief that is! This film is such a sloppy and boring piece of film. While it does have some extensive nudity (especially in the beginning strip club scenes) and some gore, it's largely girls sitting around doing pointless things filmed very grainy and with no proper lighting.Even the plot, which is pretty simple, doesn't add up, once we throw in other people who are involved: a bodyguard, a brother and two local drunks. Somehow they all manage to find this house and get mixed up with it. I can't explain how they find it or what the point is. And there's a scene in the opening that has little to do with anything else, really throwing me off.And here's the worst part: the camera seems to enjoy following around the ugliest stripper the most. I don't recall her name, but she has a very manly bone structure and it looks like she has a mustache (though that may be the lighting). The hottest stripper doesn't go along on the trip, and of the hottest one who does, we rarely see her on film. The guy who directed this really went out of his way to screw this up: if you have no substance, at least give us something flashy. This was a waste of film.My recommendation is obviously to not watch this one. It's not enjoyable, not even with friends or alcohol. If you're going to get something off the straight-to-video wall, make it "Flight of the Living Dead" or something. This film joins the ranks of the worst of the worst.