"Gorgasm" (1990) d/ Hugh Gallagher

I think that I shall never see a sight as lovely as stage blood splashed upon a cup, sized D. If boobs n' blood are your bag, Draculina editor Hugh Gallagher serves up plenty of both in his 1990 directorial debut, which I passed on the first time around, after seeing an advertisement for it in Film Threat Video Guide, despite the impressive pair of nineties-styled buh-hubbas on the cover art. I attribute my snub to P.V.S.S., or Porn Video Sleeve Syndrome, when the cover girl is perfection personified, nearly bringing a guy to half mast in the video store, then you take the tape home and the girls all look like they oughta be cackling over a big black cauldron, bubbling over with vaporous gunk over a fire in the blackness of a forest somewhere. That, and I'd pretty much outgrown the cheap softcore thrills of nudity on film once I'd seen my first Swedish Erotica (Oh, Vol. 6, how I adored you) waaay back in Junior High.


"No, wait, don't strip in front of me ! I don't particularly groove on the misogynist exploitation of women..."
After some all-too-familiar video tracking problems across the bottom of the screen, we see a cigarette-tuggin' rascal waxing philosophically about life and death, followed by a particularly awful metal song with female vocals over a title montage of the layout of a candid personal ad in a sleazy d.i.y. sex zine called Xciting, which is then printed up on a vintage sheet-fed press. Then it's a pedestrian white guy, bound and gagged in a kitchen chair, while the pillowy good Tara (Gabriela, who would later appear in things like Anal-Sperm Power and Willenlos Anal...obviously broad physical comedies, those.), a rather fetching brunette with Love Hewitt-esque bobblers, cuts her way out of a sheer negligee with a butcher knife to an even worse hair metal track, before lazily spinning around him in her knicks and cutting his throat, halfheartedly licking the bloody blade afterwards. Then it's our bad metal-loving detective from the intro and his "Sarge", a middle-aged woman who looks like she's just walked out of a Sears portrait, artificially fumbling through lines of dialog in front of some wood paneling. While laughing at the deviant sexual want ads in the zine he discovers at the crime scene, his eyes transfix upon one, in particular, that promises the "ultimate climax"...


"What's the big idea?? I wanted Black Flag bars!"
There's domestic violence in the form of comical kicks in the nuts that send another mook looking for a titular gorgasm, while our badged hero browses a depressingly barren porno shop to the sounds of another band that wasn't any good, before road-tripping to "Gore-ville, Ill." to grill Xciting's publisher about you know, how one goes about setting up a gorgasm. A dumpy blonde in bondage gear intrudes on Tara electric weed whacking her boyfriend's eye out in the sack, leading to a lazy catfight on the rug/extension cord asphyxiation. The publisher is a balding, nearsighted basement dweller in a Hawaiian shirt who wags his arms in the air every time he delivers a line, and sounds a lot like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons with a hokey Brooklyn accent. There's a garage door opener-decapitation, and more bad metal, leading up to the inevitable showdown between topless machete-wielding Tara and the badge, which ends in severed hands and shot up vadges, green slime skeletons concealed in hanging dummies, forced maniacal laughter, and end titles that feature more clips of Gabriela with her hams out, and a title track that's probably worse than all the rest in the movie. Fittingly.


Topless at the sight of a Ted Bundy's body t-shirt. My kinda gal.
Gallagher would follow this one up, with not one, but two more, in the form of 1993's Gorotica and Gore Whore, the following year. As easy as Gabriela is on the eyes, her sputteringly lifeless delivery of lines had my ears prepared to geyser blood like a vein-strike. In her defense, the rest of the cast is equally bad,  and their bad is augmented, in turn, by a perfectly atrocious compliment of  odious soundtrack cuts by bands I never want to hear again. All of that bad combined very nearly translates to good, in some cases. But not this one, by a long shot. Still, besides the obviously choice sweater bombs of the lead, there's some interesting editing here, and a strong retro-'80s amateurish S.O.V. slasher vibe going on too, and for that, it earns a single nostalgic Wop.


His weeds she whacked, while bloody and stacked, then it all went black...