Michael Biehn, who you’ll know as Hicks from ‘Aliens’, wrote directed and starred in this offering, which I thought was terrible, but on reading up on it that may have been the intention.
Filmed in 15 days the film is Biehn’s attempt at a grind house film and although it doesn’t hit all the marks, it was good fun as a piece of disposable trash. At the start a ‘Based on True Events’ caption came up. Having seen the film that seemed an outrageous claim, especially as you’d ask who’s telling the story?, but a rewind showed that the word ‘Not’ flashed briefly in front of the caption. I was glad to have watched it thinking it to be a true story as every unlikely twist made it seem even more outrageous.
The film opens with a nice POV walk in the woods…what’s this we find? A cute kitten? Some pixies? No it’s a man doing a hooker doggy style over a tree stump. She’s not being raped but not particularly enjoying it either. Her committed lover doesn’t like her lack of engagement in his dirty talk so he breaks her neck.
We then cut to Biehn getting his shopping and his trip home. This drive takes forever and it is either to demonstrate how far out into the woods he lives or to pad the run time which only amounts to 82 minutes in total. He barely gets his coat off when a woman in hooker gear appears at his door, begging for his help. He’s a bit of a hermit, but a gullible one too, so he lets her in and lets her tell her tale in flashback.
She tells him that she and her friend went to party with two policemen friends in the woods. The friend is the one from the opening scene, so we know it doesn’t end well. Anyway the murderous policeman calls his friend to help with the body whilst he gets it on with the door knocking lady, and amazingly he goes! The lady then overhears their plans for her and flees, ending up at Biehn’s cabin.
Back in the present and the two renegade cops are at the door and Biehn manages to shoo them away. The lady, Annie, who is a stripper, refuses to call the cops as this goes way to the top - the murderer is in line to be Chief of Police so she suggest they go and look for her friend’s body. Amazing Biehn agrees and after not finding it, the stripper and the aged hermit have gratuitous sex in many positions. Annie was played by Biehn’s real life wife so fair play to him for sharing. The murderer cop breaks in to the love shack, but is subdued and tortured into a confession. The happy couple then go to the promised location of the body but Biehn and Annie get captured by the cop‘s accomplice.
Who will escape next and who will survive? - and what relevance are those serial killer reports we keep hearing?
This was a cheaply made effort that had some risible acting and dialogue but to be honest I quite enjoyed its honest rubbishness. Biehn shouts a lot, presumably because he has been watching the daily rushes. His wife was a terrible actress and I can only assume she got the job because of two things - that she was his wife and was punctual.
The ‘happier times’ flashbacks were pointless but good fun as the two stripper friends tried on a variety of skimpy costumes and watched seemingly irrelevant news reports.
The two cops lacked any menace or personality but to be fair they were given all of the worst lines of dialogue and the most ridiculous situations to try and make believable.
The violence was quite graphic with one head smashing particularly gruesome - at least his face healed up in time for the burial! Lot’s of clichés were in attendance such as the dirt thrown in the face during a fight. Old and hackneyed or a grindhouse tribute? You decide!
I did like that the ‘victim’ of the title wasn’t the dead stripper but the idea that “you take life by the balls; don’t be the victim”. Fair enough, but coming from the murderer it can hardly be seen as sage advice.
It was clearly not a film to be taken too seriously which was just as well as it made no logical sense whatsoever. It was competently made for the most part, so it’s not on a par with ‘The Room’ but you will have to go far to see a more trashy and ridiculous offering than ‘The Victim’
The Tag Line : If You Go Down to the Woods Today… 51%
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