Hanger – Review

I feel sorry for the horror fans who weren’t around for the “Golden of Gore”, the early to mid 80′s, when the genre had brass cajones and wore its name on its sleeve. Films like Re-Animator, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Doctor Butcher M.D., and Day of the Dead were all released without a rating and were slapped with the “No One Under 17 Will Be Admitted” moniker. Director Ryan Nicholson is a product of that era, and he is serving notice that he appreciates the wetter, and better things in life.

Rose is a prostitute who makes the error of getting knocked up by one of her regular customers, known as “The John” (Dan Ellis). Instead of going Wayne Brady on her and choking the bitch, her pimp daddy decides to to a back-alley abortion and yanks out the fetus, scaring the baby terribly, and killing Rose in the process. The baby grows up to be a young man named “Hanger”, and with the help of his daddy, seek retribution for the death of the woman they loved.

I find it ironic that Darren Lynn Bousman’s remake of Mother’s Day, which was shot in Ryan’s backyard of Canada, was interruped by the police when they thought a scene in which a couple characters were driving around covered in blood brandishing a gun was the real mccoy. Thank God they didn’t go anywhere near the set of this film, because they would of shut it down for the malicious acts of depravity on display. A baby gets torn out a woman’s vaginal cavity, a close-up of a woman masterbating, and a homosexual rape involving a infected injury that makes the stuff seen in David Cronenberg’s Crash seem like child’s play.

The acting is average across the board and the production value is not something to write home about. That’s not a big deal for me, but I do wish that Hanger would of spent more time on the revenge aspect and less on being gross for the sake of being gross. Case in point is the Asian guy who spends his time trying to add to his collection of heavily bled on tampons. He was funny for a while but became redundant as time went on.

This is one of those movies where you have to know what you are getting into before you watch it. This is a filmmaker who is pushing the envelope in term of graphic violence and does not care if you are offended. Ryan Nicholson makes films on his own terms in The Great White North, far from the glare of Hollywood, just trying his darnest to recapture that sticky 42nd St. era that saw the likes of Street Trash, Maniac, and Combat Shock.

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