Deadly Weapons: “The Texas Vibrator Massacre”

"Despite the circumstances you found yourself in," says the detective, "you still found pleasure in this vibrating machine?"

"Yes," Roxy Deville says.

"So some good came of it."

Rob Rotten's "Texas Vibrator Massacre" is as good, if not better, than any American International Pictures release or Roger Corman movie, both low-budget drive-in fare to be consumed like popcorn, filled with summer scenes in natural lighting and lots and lots of skin. But "Massacre" is better, simply because it has more skin.

Fans of Tobe Hooper's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" already know the plot (and the twist ending) of this movie, and can probably guess what the application of the vibrator will be. If so or if not, a fan of one makes a fan of the other.

A gang of bickering California slackers gets lost on a Texas back road. We don't know why Roxy Deville and Seth Dickens are a couple, because they sure act like an old married one as she nags and belittles him for getting lost. Meanwhile, two of their passengers have sex in the back of the truck.

They pick up a sketchy hitchhiker, who proceeds to stab the first sex-having couple, thus linking "Massacre" with every great slasher picture in that it makes sex punishable by death.

Deville escapes. She is wearing short shorts and no bra. Good. She makes it to a rustic cabin festooned with bleached cattle skulls, where she is immediately captured by a Leatherface-looking dude. Here her very credible wails and lamentations do her no good but, again, unlike this movie's non-porn inspirations, the audience gets a better view of the heroine.

Dickens and the van's other female survivor, Bella Lynn, make it to the cabin where they are greeted by Daisy Tanks and Jamie Elle, who are excellent as inbred tweaker sisters. Elle hypnotizes Dickens with her lollipop, and creepy Rob Rotten emerges to double team Lynn with Tanks.

Not all of the cast is up to the job, though, and when one performer phones in her lines, a la any other porn movie, it takes the viewer out of the scene. And so it is with Lynn. But she still looks good.

And she also pays the ultimate price; after her tryst with Rotten and Tanks, Leatherface grabs her and justifies the title. She is fucked to death.

At this point I thought about how much of this movie would have made it onto DVD if Rotten had brought the raw footage to Adam & Eve and its council of psychiatrists.

Meanwhile, Deville and Leatherface are heading into their endgame, but for one of them it goes horribly wrong. Deville is a great scream queen; America will love her because she is not afraid to get dirty.

The movie loses focus toward the end. Herschel Savage appears as a detective who debriefs a hospitalized Deville. We go through the whole movie again before Savage is revealed to not be on the right side of the law, again similar to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

Aside from a spotty performance or two and the unnecessary wrap-up, "Texas Vibrator Massacre" is a really good B-movie. The title indicates something a little less substantial than the movie actually is and, unlike much of its competition gunning for mainstream respectability - whatever that is - Rotten's movie wouldn't be laughed down at, say, a horror festival.

- Review by Gram Ponante

. . .

The Texas Vibrator Massacre

Studio: Punx Productions/Metro
Director: Rob Rotten
Cast: Roxy Deville, Daisy Tanks, Ruby Knox, Bella Lynn, Jaime Elle, Rob Rotten, Herschel Savage, Seth Dickens

· Metro Interactive (metrointeractive.com)
· Rob Rotten (punxproductions.com)
· Buy "The Texas Vibrator Massacre" (gamelink.com)