Director: Michael Biehn
Cast: Michael Biehn, Jennifer Blanc, Ryan Honey, Danielle Harris, Denny Kirkwood
Running time: 79 minutes
Certificate: 15
Plot: When a police officer accidentally kills his date in the woods, he and his partner hunt down the only witness to the murder, but find they may have bitten off more than they can chew when she seeks refuge with a sinister stranger in a nearby cabin…
Michael Biehn was inspired to make his directorial debut after he appeared in Robert Rodriguez’s zombie-bashing half of GRINDHOUSE double bill – PLANET TERROR. Having played starring roles in a couple of 1980s big budget classics and building on that with a solid enough CV since then, Biehn felt ready to take the reins himself. He wrote, starred in, and directed THE VICTIM on a micro-budget, filming it all in just 12 days.
If you’re shooting a movie on a shoestring budget with the production values of a porno, it’s probably best not to open with a seedy woodland sex scene that lingers on the screen for long enough to make things awkward. Of course, gratuitous sex and violence are all part of the fun in exploitation movies, but this should always be accompanied by a mischievous sense of humour and a smart script, which for the most part, are both unfortunately missing from THE VICTIM.
The plot feels as tired as I was by the end credits; we follow a woman (Biehn’s real life other half, Jennifer Blanc) who seeks refuge in a remote cabin having fled a couple of cops gone bad. Now, clichéd storylines aren’t necessarily a drawback in a genre that often lends itself to satire and silliness, but in order for audiences to be sold on such a familiar old yarn, the script needs to be razor sharp – unfortunately here it’s as blunt as a broom-handle. It feels as though it’s only concerned with driving the shockingly basic plot, when there was so much more room to have fun.
The characters’ motivations are utterly bizarre at times. I’m not sure what lengths the average person would go to in order to assist a damsel in distress, but nonchalantly torturing policeman might be a stretch even for an aspiring psychopath. It’s touches like this however, that make the film so flawed you can almost enjoy it on comedic terms, but for this to be the case it needed to be far more aware of its own ridiculousness.
The performances are so-so across the board; not good enough to elevate the film from the gutter, and rarely bad enough to enjoy ironically. However, I have to admit to appreciating the way that Biehn was committed to inexplicably shouting lines that demanded emotion, a trait that seemed to spread to other cast members throughout like airborne Tourette’s. Having starred in such classics as THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS, Biehn is clearly a more competent actor than he’s leading us to believe here, one suspects he’s either embracing the amateurish ethos of the grindhouse genre by appearing as wooden as a bench, or perhaps more likely he’s bamboozled by his own dreadful script.
It almost feels unfair to be so damning of a film made on a tiny budget and with good intentions at heart, but you only have to look at Robert Rodriguez’s early output to see what great things others can achieve with similarly humble resources and a little more imagination. Biehn is set to oversee a handful more grindhouse style features over the next few years, and while at first this feels rather disconcerting, one hopes that THE VICTIM serves as a steep learning curve, and that things can only get better. Failing that, if the quality drops any lower, we could all be in for a comedic treat.
The Victim will be available to buy on DVD & Blu-Ray on 24th September
