SHOCK reviews Sean Donohue’s unapolegtically offensive DEATH-SCORT SERVICE.
This will be a relatively short review
Short because a film like DEATH-SCORT SERVICE doesnt ask to be analyzed. It doesnt want you to like it. It wants you to be offended. It wants to be on the cover of GOREZONE magazine. And I would have seriously considered doing this, if I was still running that particular periodical
The film is co-written and directed by Sean Donohue, a nice guy from that hot bed of trash cinema, Tampa, Florida and whose previous picture, DIE DIE DELTA PI, was a no-budget sleazeploitation throwback slasher thingie that was actually rather charming (and one that I DID cover in GOREZONE). DEATH-SCORT SERVICE is not charming. Its revolting, cheap, ugly and grimy, filled with explicit nudity and staged sex and loaded to the nipples with repellent, endless and goopy murder.
In other words mission accomplished boys!
The film is a kind-of NEW YORK RIPPER riff that takes place in Las Vegas but presumably was shot in Florida, with some quickie footage of Vegas exteriors spliced in as establishing shots. Various strippers and tattooed Suicide Girl-types (along with at least one legit porn star) appear as a coven of hookers whose home looks like a cheapie motel set and who keep getting murdered (usually in the shower so as to not stain the motel linoleum) in sickening ways by a black gloved killer. Not a leather-gloved killer, mind you. This killer wears dollar store stretchy gloves. Yes its that cheap.
But DEATH-SCORT SERVICE wants to be cheap. It revels in its cheapness. The FX (by the wizard Marcus Koch, along with Picardo Limbo and Shelby McIntyre) are plentiful and shot with a perverts eye. There are impromptu pole dancing scenes. There are close-ups of anuses. Theres a scene where a dirtbag John goes down on a hooker only for her to unknowingly begin to menstruate, covering his face in blood and angering him enough to try to kill her. Its non-stop yuck.
Id think most people would say that DEATH-SCORT SERVICE hates women. But really, I dont think it does. After I shut it off, went for a walk and cleared my corrupted head, I quickly realized that DEATH-SCORT SERVICE functions primarily as an attempt to keep the carnival-scumbag vibe of vintage H.G. Lewis, David Friedman and Doris Wishman alive and well. I think it is well aware that its acting is pitiful, that its production values have none and that its transgressions are kind of an art-house experiment in bad taste.
I think I appreciate DEATH-SCORT SERVICE. I appreciate its defiance. I appreciate its enfant terrible desire to offend.
And Ill never watch it again
Have a look at the trailer below. An NO it is NOT safe for work!
