Death by 1000 Cuts (Feature) Review!

Sam Salerno has a wild imagination. He’s the complete cult director package. Not content with unleashing The Darkside of the Womb (see review here) and the absolutely incredible Kiss my Ashes (see review here) he also put out a teasing short last year called Death by 1000 Cuts (see review here) which promised a new darker nastier side to his arsenal of weapons.

So, Sam grabbed this twisted short and transformed it into a swirling manic full feature for our entertainment. Death by 1000 Cuts is a totally new Salerno as I said, so anyone coming in expecting midget fun and such better shake their heads a bit. The first was a complete head-fuck, so let’s see what has been loaded into this already sick cannon of mind buggery.

Our main character, Johnny, sits at the dinner table being scorned by his rather stiff and distant parents (his mum looks like a man in drag which is totally the norm in this world). He wants to get out, get a job, he hates being at home. Walking out he’s met by a being in a blinding light. Oh, we’ve got a touch of the old Sam Salerno here I see.

“Death by a thousand cuts refers to an ancient torture in which numerous small cuts were made on the victim’s body.” states a voice as we witness the grainy footage of a lady howling and crying in a bathtub as a fella wearing a mask performs the said deed. “None of the cuts by themselves were deadly, but the combination would cause the victim to die a slow painful death.” To which our narrator states the psychological terminology to add depth to proceedings.

Johnny finds an obvious toy dead bird in the street, so he films it using his handy cam. “For me,” he says to the camera afterwards discussing his feelings with a psychologist, “Life is a party I wasn’t invited to….” As they talk it is obvious that he’s obsessed by death and a tunnel near the town in which a body was found – as is standard with tunnels near towns throughout the film world.

She suggests hypnotism as the tunnel is a huge factor in his mind. Under the hypnosis, we see him venture in the night to the mouth of the tunnel which gapes wide and black. Within he finds a mannequin wearing an endless array of masks. “Masks are used to hide…” she says to him.

He peels the final mask away after a while and begins a brief nightmarish surreal series of visions, including that of more masks as he finds himself in a house. There’s a tall man swinging a noose, a dead-eyed girl, and a man who is covered by sack cloth telling him how he’s been there before. “Dreadful things have happened in this house, and around the town.” says the sack cloth bloke. “You must discover the truth.” Poor Johnny can’t seem to get out of this realm now. He keeps ‘waking’ into the next level. Finally popping out, he’s confused, unable to remember anything he saw.

He soon begins to remember bits because on the way home, it seems that the dream and reality have linked, and he sees images in the streets he left behind in his head. “They’re not real, you’re gonna be okay.” Johnny tells himself as he films them hoping when he plays the footage back later, they’ll be gone. Suddenly there’s the same house. Prowling around like a good Mystery Team member, he finds a stack of tapes and watches. Sam himself is getting brutalized by some guy who probably saw the beginning of this movie and is kind of making sure Sam doesn’t pull out any of his zany midget stunts this time round.

A recording of a terrified voice, a corpse, and human skin just laid about the place doesn’t really make Johnny feel safe and welcome to be honest. He finds a girl in the bath, tortured and drained but alive. Worse is still to come as two fellas in masks carrying a camcorder let themselves inside.

Afterwards he meets with the survivor at a party (playing screwball music I may add) and they talk. Her name’s Christina. They hang out loads and decide to get closer but have a few hurdles to get over, such as scars left over from their experiences. In a shocking turn of events Christina blows her brains out when faced by her greatest fears again.

From that moment on, Johnny heads down the rabbit hole and we find there’s a lot more involved to this plot than we originally are led to believe. Sam Salerno shows he’s capable of balancing a moody soon to be cult gem without the all-out comedy and gives us an involving plot and characterisations. Horror, gore, torture, ghosts, gothic tones, Death by 1000 Cuts has all of that and then some.

It’s terrific how the old short has been mixed and mingled throughout and in a way that makes sense. I actually thought at the beginning, upon seeing Johnny’s parents then the light he gets caught in that Sam was going for his old school comedy touches which wouldn’t really work well considering the subject matter. Yes, there’s jingling bits here and there, but Death by 1000 Cuts is an altogether dark offering. Wherein the torture was the focus before, it’s only a small part of this bigger creation.

My only one gripe must be actor Brett Burrier. He was fine in the short version, and okay in Kiss My Ashes, but in this he portrays a dull boring bland lead weighted uninspiring person. If this was the aim then all good, but I seriously doubt it. For me, he didn’t hold this lengthy central role together very well. Everyone else does their jobs, well, the psychiatrist grated on me after a while.

Death by 1000 Cuts has its own shelf in the Sam Salerno library, surrounded by darkness. It’s no Kiss My Ashes, and may take some people more than one viewing to totally grasp what is going on, but all in all, and all said and done, Death by 1000 Cuts is a well-rounded venture and as I said, it shows Sam in a different realm.

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Death by 1000 Cuts (Feature) Review!

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