Film Review: Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006)

SYNOPSIS:

The gruesome tapestry of psychological manifestations of a nineteen year old bulimic runaway stripper-turned prostitute as she descends into a hellish pit of Satanic nightmares and hallucinations.

REVIEW:

Emetophilia. Those who know the definition of that word will probably be able to decide if Slaughtered Vomit Dolls is for them without reading any further. For all of the (fortunately) uninitiated, emetophilia is more widely known as vomit fetish. And if there is one thing this movie has plenty of, it’s vomit. Lots and lots of vomit.

Released by Unearthed Films (a movie house most celebrated for their fantastic release of the Guinea Pig films as well as Philosophy of a Knife and Cannibal), Slaughtered Vomit Dolls is the first film in the Vomit-Gore Trilogy directed by Lucifer Valentine (most recently the director of the spiritually uplifting documentary on heroin junkies, Black Metal Veins). In case you were wondering, the next two films in the trilogy are called Re-GOREgitated Sacrifice and Slow Torture Puke Chamber. Luckily, the slow torture of part one only lasts about seventy-one minutes.

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls might be about a girl who sells her soul to the devil and undergoes horrifying torture and pain as a result. It might be the hallucinations of a seriously ill young girl. It might be a little of column A and a little of column B. It’s hard to say, as there is not any semblance of a linear story being told in this experiment in patience. We do know that the main character, Angela (Ameara Lavey), says that she ran away from home after burning down the local church. She resorted to stripping and later prostituting herself for money. She often is seen with multiple bruises and other signs of abuse all over her body, and she forces herself to vomit. A lot.

Aside from Angela, we are shown a handful of other, often nameless and usually description-less characters who either force themselves to vomit, are brutally murdered, or a little of both. While the story may be lacking (or possibly altogether absent), there is some intense gore throughout this movie. Aside from the vomiting (some of which, by the way, appears to contain blood), there are body parts torn off and blood splattered on a regular basis. One girl has her eyes poked out with a screwdriver, and the scene is very graphic and very drawn out. It was a scene straight out of The Gore Gore Girls, but without any of the dark humor. Not satisfied with the results of a naked woman crawling around with blood pouring from vacant sockets while we see her eyes sitting on a nearby table, Valentine pushes the envelope and has her then force her fingers down her throat and unknowingly vomit on her detached eyes.

In fact, there is puke added to every “cool” scene in this movie, something that I imagine will lose a lot of people who otherwise might revel in the gore content. We have a face removed slowly from a chained up woman, a head cut open with a saw, an arm cut off. We are talking blood everywhere and some very realistic, very well done effects. But then there’s the puking. Every time an actor vomits, a gore aficionado loses their interest. It’s as if Valentine didn’t know when enough was enough. A girl’s arm is severed, then in the ultimate “adding insult to injury” act possible, she is handed a guitar and a microphone. This alone would have stood out, but then we get some dude forcing himself to puke on the severed limb. He even fills a mug with his own sick and drinks it back down, causing him to continue vomiting longer.

Outside of the vomiting (have I hammered this vomiting point home hard enough yet?), the rest of Slaughtered Vomit Dolls is very much an experimental, “artsy” type film. The editing is done in a way that makes the entire experience feel like a nightmare, with quick cuts and slow-motion scenes alongside back masking and ever-present weird sound effects in the background. If a woman is introduced, the odds are high that she will be predominantly naked throughout the rest of her scenes, often in distress and sobbing. A word of warning (as if this entire review hasn’t been one big word of warning): often the cuts are so jumpy, and the camera work so intentionally unsteady, that they may cause a feeling of motion sickness. If you thought Blair Witch Project was nauseating in its camerawork, don’t even bother taking a look at this one, trust me. If you need a movie to have some form of a linear story, don’t bother with this one. If you are tired of seeing women constantly berated and insulted and shown as weak and scared, don’t bother with this one. And if vomit isn’t your thing, yeah, definitely don’t bother with this one.

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006)