Nikos the Impaler sees Andreas Schnaas treading pastures new. Instead of Karl the Butcher a new legend of the terrible barbarian Nikos, instead of forests, hills, bunkers the city, a museum and the mean streets of new york. Instead of German actors with subtitles or hilariously poor dubbing, actual American actors speaking in the English language and instead of Schnaas' traditional svelte 75 odd minute run time, nearly 100 minutes. Basically its a big step up in the world, ambitious stuff. And does he manage it? Well, yes and no. To a certain extent. Kinda, somewhat, almost. Not his best and not his worst, Nikos the Impaler is basically worthy. Newcomers may be mildly amused and it may hopefully inspire them to check out the better of Schnaas' work, this is probably a good gateway film, but its far from great and it won't turn the heads of anyone who isn't already into trash-gore flicks, nor will it especially invigorate existing Schnaas fans. The big problem is the run time, there simply isn't enough useful material to fill it. The opening and the ending drag, the former through setting up characters in more detail than they need given that their only purpose is as meat puppets, the latter through the pointless introduction of ludicrous Hitler, Eva Braun and ninja appearances, handled in utterly perfunctory, unimaginative fashion. And so with a film basically dragging, the good stuff has a tough job to keep it all moving. Fortunately the acting is committed despite some awful dialogue, so the lovely Felissa Rose puts on a good show, Joe Zazo is suitably heroic (and handles the worst of the dialogue) and Brenda Abbandandolo brings more sympathy than expected to a thankless just above cannon fodder role. Schnaas himself plays the evil Nikos as is his wont, clad in armor and swinging a sword he makes for a decent villain. The gore is cool too, abundant stabbing, decapitation and limb lopping mostly. The grue is never especially elaborate or sadistic though, and not quite regular enough for the expanded run time. In the end the whole film sags a bit, never less than watchable but it gets a bit tired a ways before the end, never unlikable but its good to see it go. Worth a watch for guru's of this sort of thing or those looking for a relatively un-frightening entry to this sort of thing but otherwise skippable, 5/10 from me.
Review of Nikos the Impaler
