Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Marcel Walz
Starring: Adriane McLean, Sarah French, Gigi Gustin, Dazelle Yvette, Adam Bucci
Marcel Walz is a prolific director of low-budget horror movies, probably best known for 2019's Blind and its quasi-sequel Pretty Boy from 2021. Those two movies, along with his 2023 feature That's a Wrap, are set in the glamorous world of Hollywood, their bloody action playing out in very expensive and luxurious homes. For his latest, Brute 1976, Walz trades the Hollywood hills for the desert of the South West, with a sweat-soaked slasher that plays like a lazy mash-up of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes.
The film's protagonists are split into two parties. First up we meet lesbian lovers Raquel (Gigi Gustin) and June (Bianca Jade Montalvo), a pair of models whose car has broken down in the back end of nowhere on the way to a photo shoot. Coming across an abandoned town and exploring its mine tunnels, the girls are set upon by Leatherf...sorry, a masked hulking man wielding a chainsaw.
We then meet another group also on the way to the same photo shoot, including make-up artist Sunshine (Walz regular Sarah French) and Roxy (Adriane McLean), an African-American model set to become the first woman of colour to grace the cover of one of the era's girly mags. When this group decide the very same abandoned town would make for a great photo shoot backdrop, they also run into not-Leatherface and his family of freaks.
As the title suggests, Brute 1976 is set in the '70s, for no real reason other than to evoke the classic American indie horrors of that era. The usual reason to set a horror movie in the 20th century is to remove the narrative inconvenience of cellphones, but given Brute 1976's isolated setting and likely lack of reception, it could just as easily have been set in the present. Aside from some costumes that look they were purchased in a vintage store, there's very little to signify the '70s here, and the very modern digital sheen does nothing to add to the vintage verisimilitude (this really should have been shot on 16mm for an era-authentic aesthetic).
Where Brute 1976 really departs from its gritty '79s forebears is in its line of crass comedy, which makes it feel like more a product of the '80s. The film's regressive humour will likely turn off a lot of modern viewers: lesbians exist solely to provide some titillation; there's an extended gay panic gag; and a cross-dressing villain is a particularly ugly throwback to a less understanding time.
But Brute 1976's biggest crime is that it's unfeasibly tedious. Much of the film is spent in the company of annoying characters as they crack unfunny jokes while wandering around the film's dusty setting. The movie fails to live up to its title with a distinct lack of inventive onscreen slaughter, and those we do get suffer from unconvincing effects, including the most laughable prosthetic private part you'll ever see.
To its credit, the film does pull off a twist I can't claim to have seen coming, but it doesn't really know what to do with this reveal, and most viewers will likely have stopped caring by that point.
Brute 1976 is in US cinemas from August 26th and VOD from September 30th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
