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DEATH
SHOCK
DVD region 0. DVD-R.
 Although
he now chooses to remember it more as a collaborative project,
at the time of Death Shock's home video release in 1981
directorial credit was assigned to one Lindsay Honey (aka Steve
Perry, best known now as the man behind the Ben Dover
gonzo series). Indeed, nowadays Perry has distanced himself from
this softcore sex feature and happily bestows the lion's share
of the credit upon its writer/producer Bill Wright (better known
as hardcore director Frank Thring).
The plot is as slight as slight gets. Three young couples (two
male/female, one female/female) are out for an afternoon of al
fresco frolics in the country when their car breaks down. Stranded,
they are picked up by a comedy vicar in a vintage car (this is
British, after all) and seek refuge in an isolated house where
their upper class host secretly spikes the evening meal with aphrodisiacs.
Of course, the delirious guests spend the night copulating furiously
in a variety of combinations. But events take a sinister turn
when one of the girls learns that their host and his friends are
dabblers in the Black Arts...
Shot
on video during the format's relative infancy, Death Shock
starts off promisingly enough with a fun pre-titles sequence in
which a female cyclist stumbles upon a Satanic ritual in the woods.
Regrettably, these first few minutes set up a level of expectation
that the rest fails to meet.
Foremost
in the disappointments department are the sex scenes, which account
for most of the 47-minute running time but are unimaginative and
lamely staged. There doesn't even appear to have been an attempt
to push the boundaries of porn acceptability.
The
dialogue delivery, particularly from the women, is amateurish
and handicapped by that monotonous insincerity that Brit porno
players seem to have worked into a fine art. Of the participants,
only Linzi Drew is recognisable or went on to do anything else
of note; long-time partner of Perry, Drew also had cameo roles
in films like An American Werewolf in London and The
Lair of the White Worm. As a side note, if anyone out there
can identify the cute cyclist in the pre-credits - or any of the
uncredited players for that matter - do please get in touch!
With
precious little in the way of gore or chills to appeal to horror
movie fans, nor anything near sufficient in the way of naughtiness,
Death Shock was pretty feckless upon its original release
and is pretty feckless still. Yet in an unpredictable twist of
irony, those intervening years have lacquered it with a curious
naive charm. In spite of the lambasting I've afforded it, as a
quaint remnant of those early days of Brit-shot smut, it's totally
priceless. In fact, with hindsight one might even take a moment
to lament that Death Shock II never materialised
beyond the tacky Letraset promise on the closing titles!
Never
likely to be deemed deserving of an official release on DVD, the
DVD-R of Death Shock currently circulating should be snapped
up without hesitation, if only for its retro or curiosity appeal.
Lifted from a fairly healthy VHS source, it even includes the
bonus 10 minutes of bloopers (which prove, if nothing else, they
had fun making it) and a trailer for the much earlier Blood
on Satan's Claw that bolstered up the original UK tape release.
TIM GREAVES
BUY
IT NOW (USA)
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