Mustang Sally (Iren Koster, 2006)
I watched this movie a couple of days ago, and have been letting it marinate in my head since then, trying to figure out how many different ways I can describe how horrendous it is without repeating myself. I'm a big fan of bad horror movies, and therefore, I see a large number of things I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. So far in 2009, Mustang Sally outdoes them all for sheer, unadulterated crappiness.
A great deal of this has to do with the fact that this is a movie that, for most of its length, can't seem to figure out whether it wants to be a slasher movie or a softcore movie. It obviously takes as its spiritual ancestor rape-revenge flicks like I Spit on Your Grave, but one of the things about such movies that made them marginally bearable was that any sexual content in them was expressly filmed to be as far from erotic as possible given the expanses of naked flesh on the screen. Mustang Sally is far more interested in making sure we're titillated by these girls. But wait, I'm getting well ahead of myself.
After a confusing (until the end) opening, we start to get some semblance of a plot when six guys--layabout Josh (Mark Parrish from Home of the Brave), geek Seamus (Sean McGene in his first film role), jock Toby (Sonny Marler in his first acting role), boy next door Ryan (Al Santos from Jeepers Creepers II), and Mike (Erik Fellows) and Luke (Cutting Room's Garrison Koch), for whom I don't feel like coming up with adjectives, are hanging out in a local diner when they overhear three bikers talking about a new brothel in town, Mustang Sally's, and how hot the women are up there. They decide they need to get in on the action, and when they get there, it seems custom-made for them; Sally herself (Better Off Dead...'s E. G. Daily) runs a stable of, just coincidentally, six girls. And yep, you guessed it, they're all easily summed up by adjectives as well. I'll refrain, however. They all pair off, and everything seems fine, except that opening scene lets us know that things are not at all as they seem.
For the first three-quarters of this movie, however, things are just as they seem, and that's the huge problem here. If you're going to make a horror film, one quick flash presaging violence and a couple of fumbled attempts at foreshadowing do not a horror movie (or even a bad slasher film) make. If you're going to make a softcore movie, you probably shouldn't be foreshadowing death and destruction. If you want to make a mix of the two, it needs to be much better blended than this. I actually liked Succubus better, and that's saying something. (half)
