Gutterballs

A heinous, savage rape, lengthy and repulsive, including physical abuse (these evil bastards demean her in laughter, kick her, throw her onto the floor, punch her in the face, hold her down, grope her, slap her on the ass, gleefully curse at each other while she crawls in pain in some weakened attempt to get away, as members of Steven’s sick gang take turns banging her, forcing her on pool table and the finale has them sodomizing her with a bowling pin) will be the catalyst in a night of slaughter as a killer takes out members of two bowling teams playing against each other.
**½

 Rape Night

Lisa is the victim (Candice Lewald deserves a lot of credit for enduring the scene; she’s quite a trooper considering how her character is mistreated for seemingly ever), and her cries for help (the janitor and operator of the bowling alley was having to tend to the bloody results of the two teams’ leaders scuffling (which includes bruised and battered Steven having to use a beer bottle on rival Jamie to gain the upper hand, breaking it over Jamie’s noggin) go unanswered. I can imagine many viewers will either fast forward through the rape or leave the film altogether…it is wholly unpleasant and sadistic.

The script is chock full of f-words. I sometimes use them myself. But not in every breath. After a while, I was just exhausted at the mere sight of Steven. His grotesque pals (like AJ whose every laugh portrays him as if he were in hysterics, eyes bulging, mouth wide open, hyperactive), except for the nerdy-and-weak Patrick, the typical stooge who is too cowardly to act independent from the boys, following behind Steven despite knowing how immoral this prick is, aren’t any different than him.

The script takes no prisoners. The word “faggot” is tossed around regularly as is “tranny”. A transvestite who wants to eventually have a sex change operation is the constant source of ridicule. He is eventually forced to swallow a bowling pin, afterward receiving that operation in gory detail.

This is as mean-spirited a slasher as you will ever see. One bowling pin, sharpened, is stabbed over and over, while also pressed intensely into a victim’s face until it is bloody sludge. A bowling ball waxing machine (that seems to have artificial intelligence the way it insults various customers) is used to melt a victim’s face as it is being shoved into the hot wax. This film will have you never looking at the sexual act, 69, quite the same again as the killer interrupts a two victims in the middle of oral pleasuring each other, causing them to suffocate…I will not elaborate any further except to say that it shows the guy’s face turning purple while the girl’s mascara runs as she chokes on his penis. Making damn sure to remain loyal to the whole bowling alley theme, the killer wears a bowling bag on his/her head (holes cut to see out of) when using pins as weapons of mass destruction.

One victim is choked to death with bowling shoe strings, tied together, twisting so tight until blood flows, the throat gathers wrinkles, and you can hear her gurgle for air that has ceased. To top all of that, the killer, bowling bag on head, dresses in a suit of armor, two bowling balls (one in each hand) bringing them crashing into the head of one of Stevens “bitches”. The script brings new meaning to the word “misogynistic”. Everyone is belittled “colorfully” at one point or another, and your mother is fair game when insults are shared back and forth. Lots of use of “balls”. The janitor, Egerton, has his moments, cleverly using expletives when the kids poke fun at his age, but often he’s just as obnoxious and crude as they are. Gay slurs are commonplace. I have to imagine the script of this film will be offensive and cause revulsion for certain people. This movie has blow jobs, lots of dick, potential couplings talking all naughty to one another, and attempts at sex intruded upon by the killer.

One thing’s for certain: if you hate Steve, then when he gets his just desserts, there’s *happy, happy, happy* times for you because his fate is brutal (but just considering his actions to Lisa, and the abuse that is constant from his lips and behavior to others, so abhorrent and vitriolic, there’s no denying few will mourn his departure). The ending, where all the bodies are kept in a room in the back of the bowling alley, as Jamie and Sarah try to get out, just descends into squishy sounds as feet thread the bloody floors after a neck is slit open, a head exploded from the neck (barely hanging) and a stomach laid gaping with entrails (both by shotgun blasts) as gushing streams splatter forth, when the killer(s) emerge to bare their identities. It is all just as gratuitous and extremely gory as it sounds, to such an absurd degree, that taking any of it seriously is a waste of time and energy.

The whole movie is unrestrained as you might expect just by the details I’ve given. The characters (everyone) are highly expressive in their speech and facial mannerisms; lewd, profane, and untamed, practically every character is presented as hardly tolerable. The profanity, I can handle, in regular doses, but all the characters go overboard. I had good buddies in high school that swore, but even they could string sentences together without shit and fuck every now and then. There’s a tolerance in horror for that, though, unlike other genres. Rob Zombie’s films wouldn’t be Rob Zombie’s if they didn’t have wall-to-wall profanity. Like Gutterballs, I do often find myself worn out after watching Zombie’s movies. Granted, Alistair Gamble’s kind of character would probably seem right at home with the Firefly family. 

There’s no holding back in Gamble or Nathan Dashwood (AJ) for that matter. Their faces seem to overly convey how they feel about people. The spit flies as the insults target their destination. Gamble’s face seems damn near stuck in this frozen state of bitter anger. Sure his foot is damaged but his temper and rage were present even before Lisa dropped the ball on him. When he gets it up the ass and in the face, I can only visualize a lot of horror fans digging it. He’s a piece of work, Steven. AJ (and Joey, to a certain extent) is just a lunatic. These guys were made for each other. Birds of a feather flock together and all that jazz. While the script gives us reasons to hate the villains (but the heroes aren't exactly the most of likable chaps), Nicholson's film makes damn sure to crucify them in vile ways. I think the gore will be one of the target appeals Gutterballs has in its favor. Gruesome, bloody effects that elaborately depict the kind of destruction that derived from a lot of rage resulting from the rape. I can't imagine (considering the behavior of one character, and this character's often being missing) many will be too shocked at the revelation of one killer, although another two might cause some surprise. I remember Gutterballs gaining a ton of momentum when it had gained availability and as an indie slasher, its reputation as a return to form in regards to the exploitative roots of the genre's past grew considerably; I can also say that it returns to the rape/revenge also prevalent in the 70s and 80s. I'm not particularly satisfied with how Lisa gets the shaft. If anyone deserved to go out of this film in some sort of dignified fashion, it was her considering the horrors she endured. Regardless of what instigated the rape, she didn't deserve that and her own reaction to this seems understandable to me. It would fuck up most people; rape, unless you are into that shit, has a tendency to leave victims never the same. Lisa is certainly discarded in about the same fashion as she was raped at the beginning. Too bad.  The bowling alley setting, the blue neon and music, is certain to remain a viable draw for slasher fans as well. And the explicit sex and cutting/stabbing certainly crosses boundaries that even many of this slasher's brethren failed to cross back in the day (we literally see the creation of a "mangina"; this is not for the faint of heart). Being aware of what you are getting into is important in that Gutterballs has no qualms going way over the edge.