28 July 2008

TTT: Deadly Daphne's Revenge (1987)

Having just watched this a half a year ago (well before this kooky TTT idea came to me), I wasn't really enthused to pop it in again. Color me surprised when I discovered it wasn't as bad the second time around. It's got a lazy Saturday afternoon, movie-you-just-happened-to-flip-to-on-TV feel to it. The film follows four men and the teenaged hitchhiker two of them rape while on a hunting trip. The fallout of that crime results in some decent defense lawyer versus D.A. scenes, a suicide, a hit man, and an unlikely May-December romance between the victim and one of the two not-rapists. There's also crazy Daphne, from the exaggerated Troma-title, but she hardly matters.

One problem: this isn't, in any way, a horror movie. It doesn't belong in a "Toxie's Triple Terror" box set, let alone Troma's library in general. It's just a drama. No cyborg killers or werewolves to be found anywhere. It does come close to having one good-bad movie saving grace: Charlie. Charlie is one of the rapists and probably one of the scummiest characters in movie history. When he's not spewing racial epitaphs or drinking beer, he's lying to his own brother about the rape to save his own hide. He does all of this with a voice strikingly similar to Randy "Machoman" Savage's, except with much more use of the phrase "ma man." That alone is nearly enough entertainment for me to hang onto the flick… almost.



aka The Hunting Season
d. Richard Gardner