Death Shock (1981 Video) User Reviews

Interesting UK adult film - if you can find it

[exorcist1998-1 · 3/10 · 8 January 2008]

I spent 15 years trying to find this film before finally picking up a UK pre certificate tape of it.

Well it was pretty much just as I expected it to be.Lots of soft core action with obscured viewing angles and action just out of screen etc. In fact you could be forgiven for calling this a soft core Ben Dover since the director Steve Perry went on to create the Ben Dover series and this plays exactly like a Ben Dover film. You do get the feeling that there are hardcore scenes that have been removed but I don't know of a stronger version.

Not really worth the £50 I paid for it (uk pre certificate tapes are very collectible) but a worthy addition to my collection none the less.

Awful, just plain awful. But...

[absurd69 · 4/10 · 6 November 2005]

Where to start? Appalling dialogue which is barely audible, 'acting' on a par with a junior school Nativity play, no budget, bad lighting, shocking editing... the list of faults is endless.

The story, of which there is precious little, concerns a group of 6 friends on a journey to Norwich, who's car runs out of petrol in the middle of nowhere and are offered shelter for the night in a country mansion house. And that's pretty much it.

Throw into this heady mix a bit of Devil Worshipping and the obligatory retarded cook/manservant come dogsbody and the slutty maid, and you have a perfectly good idea as to why the British film industry is in such a bad way these days.

80% of the, thankfully short, running time is made up of badly choreographed sex scenes, which begs the question was this made as a short intentionally, or is there a longer hardcore version floating around that was made for international distribution, as at the time, here in the UK, there were almost Draconian laws governing what could and couldn't be shown on screen in an adult movie. Looking at the way the majority of the cuts appear on screen this would seem the case, though on the other hand it could just be a bad movie. Directed by the guy who we all now know as Ben Dover and starring his girlfriend, former Penthouse Pet Linzi Drew, this also makes you think there's more been filmed than the running time listed offers. The remainder of the running time consists of some badly lit Satanic Ritual that could have been quite effective, but like the rest of the film is just poorly executed. While sex movies were all simulated here, home video was wholly unregulated, which in later years would bring up the furore over the so called 'Video Nasties' and the introduction of the Video Recordings Act, so as this movie was made in 1981, a little imagination and a little more money could have made an effective adult chiller.

As a horror film it fails miserably, basically because there is none. Again as a sex film, considering what was going on in the rest of Europe and the USA at the time, it's light years behind the times, but again, that can only be attributed to the laws of the land at the time, but on an exploitative level it very nearly works, it's just the right side of sleazy and cheesy to make it worth trying to track a copy down, if for no other reason than to pick fault with the way certain pieces of music have been put to bad use.

As the credits finish we are treated to a final screen that flashes up 'COMING SOON - DEATH SHOCK II'. Fortunately, 20 odd years later, we're still waiting.

As a horror, this is an epic fail; as a porno, it fares only slightly better.

[BA_Harrison · 4/10 · 13 October 2010]

A lone female cyclist in a very short skirt travels down a country road, coming to a rest at a gated field. As the young woman dismounts her bicycle and climbs over the gate, the camera seizes every opportunity to zoom in on the exposed gusset of her tight white knickers.

Obviously having never been warned of the dangers of walking down a lonely wooded path on her own, the girl then proceeds to do just that, totally unperturbed by the loud Satanic chanting coming from up ahead; before you can say 'devil worshippers', she finds herself being pursued by several naked men.

A quick vault back over the gate results in her skirt being torn, revealing her knickers once again. Unable to remember how to ride her bike, the frightened woman then continues on foot, fails to flag down a passing car (driven by the only bloke in the world who wouldn't stop for a clearly distressed, fit bird in a short skirt) and falls in a swimming pool, before being trapped, stripped, and sacrificed to Old Nick by her assailants.

This trashy pre-credits sequence to Death Shock is so cheap and tawdry that one might easily be forgiven for thinking that this film is going to be a totally unmissable piece of exploitative horror cinema. Nothing could be farther from the truth, though, the focus of the film being solely on arousing its viewers rather than scaring them. Director Lindsey Honey, better known as hardcore porn star Ben Dover, spends the remainder of his scant 47 minute running time cramming in as many sex scenes as humanly possible, but this being a British film, the bonking has been carefully choreographed and edited so as to avoid revealing anything that might break the UK's Draconian obscenity laws of the day (they're graphic enough, however, to suggest that perhaps a harder version was also produced for a less uptight European market). The result is tedious, to say the least.

Shot in 1981 on an ultra low budget, expect all the women to have ugly hairdos and terrible fashion sense (we're talking day-glo Ra-Ra skirts here, folks!), at least one of the men to be sporting a Nigel Mansell style 'tache, and terrible acting from all involved, including a particularly bad but incredibly funny performance from UK sex industry legend Linzi Drew.

Short but not particularly sweet

[The_Void · 5/10 · 23 November 2006]

I have to be honest and say that I haven't got much to say about Death Shock; which isn't surprising since there isn't much of it to speak of. At just forty seven minutes, I'm not sure if it's actually feature length - but feature length or not, it really isn't very interesting. Lesbians and devil worship are good plot themes, but in this film that's all they are. There is a thin basic plot, which follows a group of six friends whose car breaks down in Norwich and they then take shelter at a nearby mansion. From there, it's just sex scenes with a hint of black magic and precious little else going on. The most intriguing thing about this film is definitely the fact that it's British - Britain is well known the world over for being slightly prudish, yet this film doesn't shy away from sex which makes it stand out. This isn't much good, however, when you're sat watching it; as the way it plays out is mostly boring 'seen it all before' kind of stuff, and the fact that the running time is on the short side is a very good thing. Overall, I can't recommend going to the trouble of tracking Death Shock down.

Shockingly bad (but it could have been worse)

[lazarillo · 3 July 2009]

Perhaps it was all the lead paint chips I ate as a kid, but I actually kind of LIKE British exploitation films. This film, however, has a pretty bad reputation even in that generally dismal genre, so after it (quite surprisingly)became available on American DVD, I had to see if it was as bad as people say. Well, it might actually be worse. . .

I have nothing against DIY (do-it-yourself) film-making--I once was a DIY filmmaker myself in the early 90's. But there's a big difference between a true cult film like "The Evil Dead" and a bunch of fools getting drunk and shooting something on video in their backyard. Well, except for the massive amounts of softcore sex, this is actually much closer to a drunken backyard SOV effort. You could best describe it as having all the production values and talent of a hardcore quickie, but being strictly softcore and rather dishonestly trying to pass itself off as a "horror" movie (with a bunch of sex-mad daytrippers running afoul a coven of satanic nudists in the English countryside--or something like that). It's almost impossible really to create an effective horror atmosphere on 80's porn-gloss video, and it's even harder to develop any kind of real plot when everything grinds to a halt every five minutes for a ten minute sex scene.

This movie has a few good points. It's only 50 minutes long, and with that (and all the sex), it's less boring and tedious than a lot 80's American SOV "horror movies" like "Blood Cult" or "Boardinghouse" (I couldn't get drunk enough to shoot a movie as bad as those in my backyard). The girls (like future British porn starlet Linzi Drew) aren't gorgeous, but they're reasonably attractive, and being an American, it's refreshing to hear orgasms being unconvincingly faked in thick British accents for a change (there's not nearly enough "cockney porn" out there). And while it comes just about as close as possible, this movie mercifully doesn't cross into hardcore, so you you don't have those wonderful, out-of-focus extreme close-ups of Ron Jeremy's fat, hairy, and sweaty scrotum thrusting in and out of camera as he does his thing with some poor "actress" (Jeremy isn't even in this fortunately). This isn't really a horror movie, but at least it doesn't delve into THAT kind of horror!

Ben Dover's Debut.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 3/10 · 28 October 2015]

Talking to a family friend about Horror movies that he was after,he mentioned about seeing a hilariously bad trailer for a UK Horror made by British hardcore "Adult" director Ben Dover/ Lindsay Honey.Checking Honey's IMDb page,I discovered that the horror was credited as his debut,and that surprisingly,it has recently come out on an official DVD!,which led to me getting ready to see the horror of Ben Dover.

The plot:

Traveling to Norwich,a group of friends get stuck on a road when their car breaks down.Driving pass,a local vicar offers to give them a lift to a guest house where they can stay the night whilst their car gets fixed.As the group start to settle in the guest house,they soon begin to discover the secret witchcraft events that are taking place in Norwich.

View on the film:

Backed by library music & '80s soft Rock,co-director (along with writer and co-star Frank Thring) Lindsay Honey takes a slightly more restrained "softcore" approach to the title,with putting objects (such as bedposts) in front of the couples having sex.Running at a trim 47 minutes.the screenplay offers the delightfully peculiar sight of seeing middle class British couples take part in sex and witchcraft.Sadly any opportunity for the quirky elements in the tale to be picked up on are dashed by each of the cast giving a horribly stiff performance,and the writers not giving any of the characters the slightest note of distinction.

Final view on the film:

A horror that you should not "bend over" backwards to get.

Death Shock not a bad movie, attractive cast.

[eyeronic69 · 8/10 · 9 September 2006]

I liked Death Shock. I thought it wasn't a bad movie. The plot may have been a bit thin, and the acting sometimes wooden, but the sex scenes were very good considering it was made in the UK, and was about as hot and legal as it could be. The female cast are good looking, and included if I'm not mistaken, Virginia Slade, an extremely attractive model and actress. I believe she had a run in at one time with Lord Lichfield over some sexy snaps, and she also acted in various theatre productions in the UK. For me, she made the movie and her scenes were hot. I think the producers could have titled the film better, and I also wonder if there was a harder version made for Europe etc.

'Death Shock' remains a sleazily slender morsel of richly questionable, fleshly fabulous, Witchgrinder General fare!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 7/10 · 23 January 2014]

'Death Shock' (1981 Video) is an insalubrious looking no-budget DTV 'horror' travesty from Grindhouse Britain, 'starring' that titillating triumphantly twin peaked tabloid temptress, the INFINITELY more salubrious-looking 80s sexpot Linzi Drew! The dung-dense, questionably ribald sex-occult narrative therein proving to be so profoundly complex that it could only be successfully realized with any degree of thematic efficacy by utilizing, not one, but two stalwart directors! Yet even with these two swoggle-eyed, scum-slinging dross-hounds at the increasingly unstable helm, 'Death Shock' remains a slender, sleazily scintillating morsel of richly questionable, fleshly-fabulous, sinfully suggestive Witchgrinder General fare!

Tyro polymath helmsman Frank Thring later 'directed' the subtle, and somewhat introspective work 'Come on my feet please!' Which I understand might well be part of his long-mooted, dialectical triptych regarding the merits of seminal discharge on disparate fleshly parts of the female anatomy; yet Frank Thring's unassailable, filmmaking legacy remains the somewhat paltry, stupefyingly shock-less 'Death Shock', and for your viewing edification, it has been lovingly shot in a gloriously fuzzy analogue haze of murksome 'Umatic video' (probably?), its unambiguously penurious look and grubby, Vaseline-lensed villainy adds a welcome, greasy-palmed verisimilitude to the sordid, multitudinously mucky narrative therein that the more degenerated celluloid Sin-seeker might well find just as boorishly appealing as I did! Forget the fright wig-exposing clarity of HD, I'd like to see a remastered Super-8 version of this bunghole'd B-Movie balderdash!!!!!

Amateur sex film masquerading as witchcraft horror

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 11 June 2016]

This shot-on-video British obscurity is more of a sex film than a horror yarn, in that most of the running time (barely an hour) consists of very '80s looking actors engaging in over the top sexual practices with each other for scenes which drag on endlessly. You know the film is going to be a cheesy delight from the opening scene, in which a barely-dressed girl discovers a satanic sect of naked men in a forest and flees, before being sacrificed, stripped and captured (but not necessarily in that order) by the mysterious cult. Straight afterwards we're introduced to a bunch of really bad actors (two guys and three girls) who have come to enjoy the sunny delights of the English countryside by indulging in a bit of the old rumpy-pumpy, which they do, both in and outside on their car.

Clichés abound as the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and a too-nice vicar takes the group to an isolated mansion, inhabited by an overacting host who screams sinister. There's also a maid whose large bosoms constantly threaten to spill out of her skimpy attire and a sadistic dwarfish manservant who has designs on one of the visitors. The host invites the group to stay the night, which means the plot is put on hold for yet more sexual shenanigans to take place as we bear witness to the (very) explicit activities that take place in the bedrooms. Finally, the finale comes and not a moment too late: the film ends with some cheap and unfunny jokes and a twist ending you can see coming a mile off.

I'm not sure why this has been marketed as a horror film because it really isn't. It's just a sex film with mildly mysterious horror trappings, or clichés should I say. The horror elements are very weak and only take up about ten minutes of the screen time. Most of the running time consists of large-breasted women with big hair and unappealing moustachioed skinny guys engaging in all kinds of adult acts whilst badly saying some of the worst-written dialogue there is. So if you're after a weird and unintentionally funny sex film then this may be the one to watch. Fans looking for an obscure British horror gem should seek elsewhere, unless you have a fondness for high cheese and a tongue-in-cheek attitude.

I have been reviewing the pre-certificate release of DEATH SHOCK on the ADB video release label, which follows the short feature film with a compilation of out-takes called, oh so hilariously, "It'll Be Alright on the Bed!". Let's just say that if these clips are the 'best' and 'funniest' of the out-takes then I'd hate to see just how boring the worst are.