GUTTERBALLS

Gutterballs

With GUTTERBALLS, Ryan Nicholson has created first class exploitation that is also z-class filmmaking. Sounds a bit paradoxical, doesn't it? Well, before you scratch a hole through your skull trying to decipher what I mean by that, allow me to explain. "Exploitation film" was first used to describe a certain kind of film; that is, a film created solely to cash in on a big success or market demand. In those regards, the HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchises were all exploitation films, as was the entire slasher sub-genre. But so was every single teen sex comedy that came in the wake of AMERICAN PIE. So was every romantic comedy that came in the wake of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. Taken broadly enough, you could view virtually every other film released to theaters as an "exploitation film".


In it's more common genre film parlance, "exploitation film" means something very different. It is basically a summation of the content of a film. If a film is violent, sexual, disgusting, disturbing or transgressive, it is classed as an "exploitation film". It has little to do with the "why" of a film and more to do with the "how". When we judge a film to be "exploitation" or not, we don't have to look any deeper than the body count and the number of nipples bared on screen.


Gutterballs

So when I say that GUTTERBALLS is "first class exploitation", I mean that it offers up a near-constant barrage of everything considered to be under the blanket of "exploitation". The nudity is frequent and graphic, offering up both male and female frontal nudity. The sex is a mix of fumbling softcore and genuine hardcore. The violence is explicit and squirm-inducing. It has everything exploitation fans crave but it all takes place in a 80's slasher parody with so little else going for it that it qualifies as "z-grade filmmaking". It exists not to tell a story. It exists solely to wallow in the depths and excesses of exploitation.


Gutterballs

GUTTERBALLS is a mix of narrative elements from the rape / revenge flicks, the giallo film and the slasher film. It is set inside a bowling alley where two very different groups of annoying teens meet up for a bowling competition. The first group consists of four preppie assholes. The second, a group of standard "teenage rebel" types - two punk rock chicks, a cross-dressing gay man, a rocker-type, and the town slut and her black boyfriend. The bowling alley is run by a foul-mouthed, shotgun-wielding hick with a severe distaste for his teenaged clientele. After a scrap breaks out between the two parties, they're booted from the alley. Lisa, the stuck-up, vagina-exposing objet de convoitise, goes back inside, alone, to retrieve her purse. She ends up being viciously assaulted and raped by the four preppie assholes - a disgusting bit of film that ends with her having a bowling pin shoved into her vagina. The next day, the two groups meet up to finish their game and are systematically bumped off by a killer wearing - I shit you not - a bowling bag over his head.


Gutterballs

That's really all there is in terms of narrative. And, to be honest, that's really all the narrative you need for a slasher film. Slasher films work because of their simplicity and their execution. We have all the slasher film elements in place from a narrative point of view: isolated setting, the "traumatic event", a group of nubile teens, and a masked killer knocking them off one-by-one. But this is a "horror comedy" remember, and Nicholson forgets to add to the mix is what is necessary for a comedy: likeable characters, relatable situations and jokes that elicit laughs and not groans. The execution fails miserably here thanks to a script that is completely overdone and completely at odds with the surrounding material - something which also sank Adam Green's HATCHET. Nicholson seems to expect his audience to laugh at the slasher elements simply because they're slasher elements, confusing what is dumb with what is funny.


Had he decided to play this film seriously, GUTTERBALLS would have been a much better film. Unfortunately, Nicholson decided differently and his inability to write comedy, plus the actor's inability to play comedy, sinks the narrative completely.


Gutterballs

Of course, none of that matters if you're looking at GUTTERBALLS as a piece of exploitation cinema. If I were judging it by those standards, I would have to say the film was a success. It is a disgustingly unpleasant film to watch. The murder scenes approach Fulci level excess - though I don't think even Fulci would have tried the postmortem penis splitting scene from this film - and the sex and nudity come fast and furious once the film gets going. At times, GUTTERBALLS feels like an effects reel. The murder set pieces were clearly what Nicholson was most looking forward to filming and he films them with the appropriate - if that's the right word to use - level of gusto. So if watching someone have the sharpened end of a bowling pin shoved up their asshole is the kinda thing that amuses you, jump right in. The rest of you might want to look elsewhere.


At the end of the day, I don't really know how to feel about this film. It was awful, true, but it amused me quite a bit in just how far it was willing to go. I can imagine myself enjoying this film a lot more if I were 16 or 17, but now, at 31, I've heard this joke once too often and I'm really not interested in hearing it again. It stopped being funny in 1994.


Recommended for exploitation diehards only.