Brute 1976
On a bright desert highway, hot, dry wind in their perfect hair, girlfriends Raquel and June are stranded, their electric blue convertible having broken down on their way to a magazine cover shoot where photographer Jordy is waiting with his crew, Adam, Ray, driver Charlie, the time ticking away and model Roxy finally doing the high fashion session with makeup girl and location scout Sunshine standing in, one pretty blonde easy to substitute for another.
The shoot concluded they search for their absent friends, stoner Charlie joking that the legends surrounding the area of Nevada where they find themselves was the inspiration for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a favourite film of Roxy’s, and exploring an apparently abandoned settlement clearly marked as off-limits they meet the eccentric Mama Birdy whose welcome doesn’t put them at ease, telling them that in the town called Savage murder was the way of life.
Directed by the prolific independent filmmaker Marcel Walz from a script by Joe Knetter and produced in tandem with the forthcoming similarly titled sequel set a decade later, Brute 1976 undeniably lives up to its title, taking its cue from the extreme horror which broke through in that decade though it calls to mind Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes rather than the iconic Tobe Hooper piece it namechecks, but beyond that low ambition it has little of substance.
Saturated in the colours and fashions of the seventies from kaftans to short shorts, Gigi Gustin, Bianca Jade Montalvo, Adam Bucci, Ben Kaplan, Mark Justice, Robert Felsted Jr, Adriane McLean and Sarah French are the trespassing city dwellers while Dazelle Yvette is matriarch over the dysfunctional brood including Jed Rowen, Bishop Ali Stevens, Alex Dundas and Andreas Robens, both sides looking to a changing future and hoping to shape it to their vision and all the cast committed to their parts and making a fair fist of what they are given.
Churned out like sausage factory cinema and edited with an indifference to pace or tension, Brute 1976 may be a homage to the grindhouse horror of the era it is set but Walz’s misanthropic recreation is slavish rather than knowing with no sign of a critical eye to bring it to modernity, the situations in which the characters find themselves in peril too often dependent on their own lack of awareness, behaviour for the camera rather than anything a responsible adult would do.
June and Raquel wandering into the abandoned Savage Mine and promptly getting naked and Ray sticking his appendages where no sane person would, would it be victim blaming to say these people are asking for everything which happens to them? Horror works when there is feeling for the characters and like In A Violent Nature this desert killing cult is a predictable parade of gory unpleasantness without purpose or meaning; twenty years ago, Rob Zombie did it all better in the company of The Devil’s Rejects.
Brute 1976 will have limited theatrical distribution before streaming from Tuesday 30th September
