Hostel Part III   Starring: Kip Pardue, Brian Hallisay, John Hensley and Sarah Habel Sony Pictures Home Entertainment RRP: £15.99 CDR67443 Certificate: 18 Available 23 January 2012

It’s an age old problem of planning a stag outing, things can often go wrong. When Scott bids farewell to his fiancée, Amy, to take off for his pre-wedding bash in Vegas, they plan a trip of hedonistic pleasure, but their trip takes a wrong turn into hell...

Hostel: Part III (2011 - 1 hr, 24 min, 10 sec) is a horror movie in the torture porn series. The film was directed by Scott Spiegel from a Michael D. Weiss script.

Whereas, the first Hostel film was controversial, pushing the bounds of taste with its depiction of torture and violence, the second followed the set template. However, this film disappointingly does not produce something which shocks, nor does it cover any new ground.

The whole reason for these films existence is the elaborate and gruesome death scenes, so I’m not really sure why the money spent on the special effects would have looked dodgy fifteen years ago. This may have meant to be ironic as the film attempt to go down the road of dark humour, rather than a gore fest.

However this, and the way the film was shot, makes it look a lot older than it should. A film like this would not have been unusual decades ago and certainly lacks the visceral power of some of the genre's greatest examples.

We have a face being cut off, mostly from either viewed from a long distance or from the victim’s point of view, so you don’t really get to see anything. Another dies from cross bow bolts into the body, an easy one this as it involves only the trunk and so relies on blood and definitely no gore.

The cast are personable, but they are only there to get bumped off, so little time is spent in gaining the audience empathy, so we don’t have any emotional investment in the characters as one by one they snuff it.

For all its faults there are some great twists in the film, including the opening and closing sequences, some enigmatic last words from one of the victims and a great costume worn by the woman who wields the crossbow. Especially effective is her face prosthetics/makeup. I wasn’t sure if she was, or just looked like an effective demon.

On the DVD the picture is fine for the type of content, though a bit grainy in particularly dark parts of the film. There are five European language tracks with an even more extensive subtitle list. The only extra is a full length commentary with director Scott Spiegel and Kip Pardue, who plays Carter McMullen in the film. It’s certainly an exuberant affair, though short on technical information, also given their reaction to the death scenes, they have either led very sheltered lives or they were commenting on something I wasn't watching.

5

Charles Packer