CUT

CUT (2000)
Directed by: Kimble Rendall
Written by: Dave Warner
Starring: Jessica Napier, Kylie Minogue, Molly Ringwald, Sarah Kants, Simon Bossell

The Australian slasher from 2000 that die-hard genre fans will remember had Kylie Minogue in the Drew Barrymore role….

Much like Halloween before it, the success of SCREAM in 1996 caused a mini Slasher boom, not quite on the scale of the John Carpenter classic, but did cause a wave of imitations, all wanting a piece of the bloodiest pie that Ghostface himself started the moment he arrived in Woodsboro.

For every fan favourite like Urban Legend, we had to endure the likes of The Clown at Midnight, that saw Christopher Plummer and Margot Kidder being terrorised in an old opera house, a slasher that demonstrated that end was in sight for that particular cycle of popularity.

CUT probably fits in-between the two in terms of quality. Released in 2000 and a slasher I haven’t seen for over twenty fours years, it was a delight when I stumbled across it on AMAZON PRIME this week, not that I remembered too much about it! The Kylie Minogue opening scene and when the killer looks at his potential victims on the cinema screen, were the only moments that have stuck in my mind over the years and the memory of actually owning this on VHS – damn that seems a lifetime ago.

The film, much like when it was released will never threaten the TOP 100 of Slasher films ever made, but it won’t grace the worst list either and even now its still a whole lot of fun, with a decent killer and script that doesn’t follow the 90’s blueprint of “Guess whose behind the mask?”

Kylie pops in for the standard Drew Barrymore “kill” moment, playing Hilary Jacobs a director in 1985, trying to finish her Australian low budget horror film, “Hot Blooded,” and rather not happy in how its going. One outburst too many makes the film’s bogeyman actually decide to kill for real, murdering poor Hilary before being stopped in his tracks by the film’s main star Vanessa Turnbill, played by no other than Molly Ringwood.

14 years later and the film itself is now supposed to be “cursed” to those who watch the reels of the unfinished film, but that of course doesn’t stop a wave of wannabee film-makers who decide to finish the slasher, even convincing Ringwood’s Vanessa to come back to Australia after all these years to carry on with her role.

Its when the crew sit down and watch the uncompleted film on the big screen, that the slash begins, the memorable scene of the killer-named Scarman- looking from his own film to those in the movie theatre shows just how bad an idea this was from Jessica Napier’s Raffy, the student filmmaker who along with Vanessa, eventually becoming one of the final girls, as she realises what they have released this idea!

The killer, holding a modified gardener sheers, goes about the killings with effective manner, heads being chopped off, slit throats, its all pretty standard for slash fans, but as the gore porn genre hadn’t hit yet, its all tame 90s blood work that you’d expect from a film in this era.

For a film within a film concept, there is not much of the clever self awareness you’d expect, especially with Craven and Williamson on the doorstep, showing the way back then, as CUT is more interested in getting the masked killer from A to B, until someone stands up and fights back, with the added laughable special effects at the climax being so awful that it only brings more charm to the proceedings.

In a time where slashers were aplenty, this Australian offering will even now like it did back on its release, bring howls of disarray from horror fans, but slash purists will sit with a smile, getting enough kicks – and kills from a genre they love – something CUT does in abundance – despite the low quality on show!

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