While not all the films are great…honestly, not all of them are even good, there are some amazing efforts here, and with a few exceptions these films are trying to do something original in a market polluted with Prom Night remakes. But when I was checking out the sixteen films from 2006-2007 at my video rentals the other day, I noticed something strange. In 2007, there were nine films. But my theatre only screened eight. Where did this last one come from?

    This was where I discovered Frontier(s), a gem by French director Xavier Gens that, sadly, was denied a theatrical release with the other films of the series. Why? Because they couldn’t get it below an NC-17 rating, and Lionsgate doesn’t release unrated films. The spot for Frontier(s) was given up to runner-up Nightmare Man instead. Through the glory of unrated DVD’s though, this movie has been given a second life, and horror fans a chance to check out how demented the French can get (have you read the Marquis de Sade? They can be pretty hardcore, mes amis).

    What you can expect from this film is a movie that doesn’t bring a whole lot of new concepts or imagery to the table, but does excel at mimicking and using the best elements from a series of other horror classics to scare and/or gross the hell out of the audience.

    The story is much like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but with a twist to fit the French social scene. A group of toughs use the riots around some election night protests to stage a robbery. Their need for a place to lie low forces them to bed down in a derelict hotel that has all the amenities, fresh food, clean sheets, hookers, Nazis…wait, no.

    Yep, the victims of this slash-fest have wandered straight into a Neo-Nazi hotel, where the inbred inhabitants are just waiting to kidnap and impregnate fresh young girls to refresh their bloodline. Oh, and as if their being Nazis wasn’t enough, the bad guys are also cannibals. Its an interesting statement; in so many of our horror movies, we use hillbilly cannibals, and in France, they use Nazis. I suppose to our respective societies, both groups represent outdated ideas and reflect the worst aspects of our continental culture. Either way, the Nazi angle is used to disturb the audience, and even get a laugh at their goose-stepping antics, once in a while.

    Aside from the TCM references, Gens also used many techniques found in Neil Marshall’s The Descent. Seems the family keeps the most inbred and deformed of its progeny in the sub-basement, and the kids have to crawl through a series of claustrophobic caves to escape. Those tunnels tighten up quickly, in some of the most intense moments of the movie, as the albino Nazi kids crawl through them with rat-like agility. And if you need yet-more movie bang for your buck, there’s lots of Hostel-esque brothel humor earlier in the flick. So you’ve got the best styles of Roth, Marshall, and Hooper all rolled into one highly kinetic production.

    Of course, I can’t say the film is perfect. In many ways it can’t live up to the legacies of the films it emulates. As I said before, it doesn’t add anything new to the table, but the elements inside are copied so brilliantly, I can excuse most of that. After all, I watch zombie movies because I love zombies, not because there’s much new material being added to them (Andrew Currie’s Fido, a beloved exception to that rule). It runs into problems in that it tries to cover too much ground by emulating so many classics. Gens had to set up cannibals, Nazis, riots, rat-kids, the tunnels, the whores, the butcher shop, and, oh yeah, the characters. There’s so much going on here that the viewer can barely process it all, and some of the more important character and story bits are weakened under the girth of the other materials. In fact, if it weren’t for IMDB, I couldn’t even tell you the name of Yasmine, our main character, played by Karina Testa.

    Yasmine, our heroine, comes off tragically as our weakest character. We know so little about her. She spends most of the movie quietly crying, or quaking spasmodically in shock over her predicament. This is who we’re supposed to be rooting for? I found myself attached more to the campy Nazis…perhaps in the same way so many find themselves rooting for Leatherface… but either way, the star of the show really ends up being Eva, played with amazingly creepy beauty by the young Maud Forget. She starts the movie stalking in the shadows dressed like a cupie doll, and ends wailing with a shot-gun. Her moments are the best in the film.

    Its flaws aside though, what you can look forward to is a film that, while slow to start with the gore, is pouring buckets of blood onto our heroine’s by the end. We’ve got tendonslicing, buzz-saw cutting, guns-blazing action; its not as real or intense as some other films out there (Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible is a shining example of how powerful and emotional onscreen brutality can be), but it doesn’t ever flinch away from the violence, practically pushing your face into every open wound. You can tell the creators expected a battle with the MPAA and went with a more comical, over the top effects approach with the violence, much like Paul Verhoeven tried to do with Robocop, but it doesn’t really distract from the brutal, insane entertainment that the film offers.

    Overall it’s worth a look. It was definitely my favorite of the Horror Fest films this year, and we can only hope that in future years, we can get unrated films added to the theatrical slate. It seems unlikely, but with quality like this in the line, it’s a shame to think that other worthy films might miss their audience. Check it out now on DVD.