An Australian take on the ‘young troublemakers re-educated in remote torture camps’ future fascist chestnut, with funny police vans, giant chess and other sub-Adventure Game torture devices, compulsory fish-filleting, Olivia Hussey, and a werewolf in a top hat, before it all turns into episode three of The Deadly Assassin.
THX 1139
July 24, 2021 at 3:06 pm
Feels like it should have been a video nasty, but I don’t think it was.
According to the director, Brian Trenchard Smith, he was desperately trying to make the movie as the money men were chipping away at his budget and time, and decided it was getting so ridiculous that it was a comedy. Also features top Aussie heavy Roger Ward. But the werewolf is the best bit, it’s like an X-rated Saturday morning cartoon with him in it.
Tom Ronson
May 23, 2022 at 12:36 am
Because the main antagonist’s name is Thatcher (and gets his just desserts courtesy of a lovely splattery bit of practical FX work), the revived VIPCO label rather opportunistically reissued this in the early 90s with the eye-catching title Blood Camp Thatcher. Whichever title it goes by, however, it’s an unpleasant, sleazy little film that’s not quite good enough to be a cult classic and nowhere near cheesy enough to be a guilty pleasure.
George White
May 23, 2022 at 3:16 pm
Also the werewolf is actually a cat-man, it’s just the makeup isn’t that clear/great.
Sidney Balmoral James
May 23, 2022 at 7:02 pm
This was one of the films which was in the catalogue you would get from Radio Rentals when you hired a video player in about 1983.It seemed to have a preponderance of violent and horror films in it, or at least they were the ones I remember: Virus (picture of a skeleton in a car), Dead and Buried, Scanners. Only non-horror I can recall was Nighthawks. Some of the videos they had on the rack in Radio Rentals were even worse (to this day I am sure there was one which had on the cover a picture of a woman in a bathtub split open down the middle – God knows what that one was).
Tom Ronson
May 23, 2022 at 10:51 pm
Shivers, perhaps, or The Last Horror Film?