Horror Off-Season: Splatter Disco

I picked up a DVD of Splatter Disco at the Chiller expo a few years ago, and really wasn't expecting much except "enjoyably retarded".  The featured indie movie that year was heavily promoted at the show and was called Late Fee, which was trying to be a clever anthology but was just really bad and thrown together.

Splatter Disco markets itself as the first Slasher Musical and the DVD cover features a furry wielding a knife overlaid onto a disco ball, so it's easy to understand where my initial expectation came from.  However, it's actually a really cleverly written and well-crafted low budget genre movie.

Released in 2007, Splatter Disco was written and directed by Richard Griffin and stars Ken Foree, Trent Haaga, and Debbie Rochon.  It's got a decidedly low budget Troma-films feel and Trent even got his start with Troma.

The basic story is that Kent Chubb (Haaga) is the owner of the Den 'O Iniquity, a fetish dance club in a small New England town, and is forced to contend with the corrupt city government trying to shut down his club (for being immoral), his dying father Shank (Foree), and his wife (Rochon) running off with his drugged out lawyer.  All while a psychopathic killer is picking off his patrons.  There's also a terrifyingly endearing B-plot concerning one of the clubgoer's efforts to stand up for himself and win the affections of a cute girl who's dating a jackass.

It's a low budget movie so there is definitely some awkward acting and sets, but it's still really funny.

The musical numbers are often pretty tongue-in-cheek, including a really interesting rendition of Cole Porter's Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love featuring a horde of yiffing furries.  There's also a number which is actually a drug trip in the mind of Kent's lawyer as he attempts to defend Kent in court immediately after dropping acid and includes a singing Angel.

Towards the last act of the movie the killer plot takes a more center roll with all the characters banding together to save themselves, which is a nice contrast to standard slashers which typically only include a single (female) survivor.

There's not a whole lot of gore, just suggestive blood effects.  There is some T&A, but being as low budget as the movie is it's not all good.  And really it's not often focused on, the movie is more interested in playing sex for laughs.  I like that they play fetishes lightly and laugh at the absurdity of it when you really look at some of it.  It's more judgmental of the "moral crusaders", while the people at the fetish club are just doing what they like and enjoying the acceptance.

I've seen this movie a few times since first watching it after Chiller that year, and it's still a really fun, campy, genre flick.  Well worth checking out.

--PXA