‘The world is changing. I can feel it – don’t you?” says black model Roxy (Adriane McLean), before donning her stars’n’stripes bikini and getting fabulous with white colleague Sunshine (Sarah French) for an American bicentenary magazine covershoot. This overcooked 1976-set slasher flick tries to bake in progressive political comment from the start, but it’s clear from the chainsaw-toting maniac in the prologue, and a reference to a then-recently released film, that director Marcel Walz really pledges allegiance to the flag of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – and that this will be essentially a throwback affair.
Makeup artist Sunshine is stepping in front of the camera after first-choice model Raquel (Gigi Gustin), seen ill-advisedly nosing around a set of desert tunnels with her girlfriend in the intro, fails to show. On the hunt for locations, the fashion squad – also including caftaned photographer Jordy (Adam Bucci), pothead driver Charlie (Robert Felsted Jr), and assorted hangers-on – stumble into prime ruin-porn in the wreckage-strewn outpost of Savage. The name prompts tittering meta chat about what things might happen to them there, and they ignore folksy bystander Mama Birdy (Dazelle Yvette) when she gives them the lowdown on the town’s violent past.
With its blaxploitation-styled hero and bevy of queer characters, Brute 1976 gets points for bringing diversity to grimy 1970s-style exploitation. But the subversiveness runs dry: intercutting the all-American photoshoot with a sequence of Savage’s inbreds cavorting with the intestines of their first victim isn’t exactly Borat-grade state-of-the nation satire. And, given actor Ted Levine’s recent mea culpa about Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, it’s probably best to not closely examine the bodypart-collecting, gender-fluid super villain who oversees this manhunt.
Signposted by camp dialogue as obvious as desert billboards, carnage is of course the priority. The main disappointment is the slapdash delivery of everything en route: ersatz-looking wardrobe and props, too new-looking or too hokey (the masked yokels come across like a Wicca-themed wrestling team); the awkward staging of most of the kills in Walz’s messily managed abattoir; and illogical, self-sacrificing character choices. Amid this farrago, the political critique comes over more like accidental backspatter than meaningful statement – though putting a power drill to one poor bloke as he exposes himself through a glory hole is definitely doing something to the patriarchy.
• Brute 1976 is on digital platforms from 3 May.
