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
these days 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
