Binge & Purge, also known under the more exploitative & attention-grabbing title of Catwalk Cannibals here in the UK, starts with some black and white footage of the Spanish Civil War from the 30's, the black and white footage soon turns into colour as two fascist soldiers discover a Spanish anarchist happily eating someones intestines, they shoot him... Jump forward to modern day Canada at 6:12pm where two police officers (Brian Clement & Nick Sheehan) are attending a possible two-eighteen, when they arrive they are horrified to discover a well known model named Kami (Terra Thomsen) eating a pizza delivery man's (Jay Walls) intestines, within minutes the Chief of police (Alan Ford) & half the force are on the scene. A special government trained team of assassin's, May (Tanya Barnard), Vanzetti (Stephen Bourke) & Number 11 (Fiona Eden-Walker) are sent in to clean things up. Their subsequent investigations lead them to four more models, Audrey (Moira Thomas), Renee (Melissa Evans), Angelique (Amy Emel) & Sandra (Becky Julseth) who were close friends with Kami. They quickly discover that the models have a disease that makes them crave human flesh, a disease that is quickly spreading throughout the city & it's up to them to expose it & put an end to it, but is it already too late...
This Canadian production was written, edited & directed by Brian Clement & I thought it was alright. The script could best be described as a cross between Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) with the disease that turns people into cannibals spreading through a city, Dawn of the Dead (1978) as they eventually turn into flesh eating zombies that can only be killed by destroying the brain & a political thriller although political thrillers aren't my cup of tea & I can't think of a single one at the moment with a little touch of a cookery program thrown in for good measure, I love the scene when one of the cannibal girls conducts a cookery lesson complete with on-screen captions! The first half of Binge & Purge is very good as it concentrates on the cannibal models & their gory eating habits but about halfway through it almost completely ignores the cannibal models & shifts into political mode as there's lots of government conspiracies & lots of nonsense about fascism & the fact we have no civil rights, which will obviously turn everyone into cannibals as hinted at during the opening sequence. To be brutally honest anyone watching this just wants to see blood, gore & cannibalism & not some heavy handed, poorly conceived ridiculous political message, maybe I'm wrong but I don't think I am.
Director Clements does an OK job on what must have been an absolutely minuscule budget, some of the editing tricks work while some don't. Someone should tell him that it's impossible to stage a revolution using 10 amateur actors & three locations, these parts of the film come across as cheap & boring. There is plenty of gore on show here, there are lots of shots of people eating intestines, a sucked out eyeball, a brain being chopped in half, bitten throats, spurting blood, melting faces, scenes of various body parts being cooked, prepared & eaten plus there is a scene in which a guy is castrated by one of the cannibal girls with a pair of scissors & his severed penis lands on the floor just right for a nice big close-up.
Going straight-to-video technically Binge & Purge is pretty cheap looking, hand-held camcorder type cinematography with poor lighting, dull locations, cheap looking special effects that are gory but not convincing, nothing production values & an overall low budget feel to it. The acting is of a low standard & no-one impresses although the models are attractive to look at.
Binge & Purge started out very well with lots of gore & a pretty quirky story about cannibal models but the political overtones just get in the way & slow it down, the problem is the budget, the talent, the acting & writing just isn't strong enough to do the ideas any justice. Anyway, I thought it was better than a lot of straight-to-video crap that I've seen thanks to the first half, some over-the-top gore & nice looking ladies.
This Canadian production was written, edited & directed by Brian Clement & I thought it was alright. The script could best be described as a cross between Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) with the disease that turns people into cannibals spreading through a city, Dawn of the Dead (1978) as they eventually turn into flesh eating zombies that can only be killed by destroying the brain & a political thriller although political thrillers aren't my cup of tea & I can't think of a single one at the moment with a little touch of a cookery program thrown in for good measure, I love the scene when one of the cannibal girls conducts a cookery lesson complete with on-screen captions! The first half of Binge & Purge is very good as it concentrates on the cannibal models & their gory eating habits but about halfway through it almost completely ignores the cannibal models & shifts into political mode as there's lots of government conspiracies & lots of nonsense about fascism & the fact we have no civil rights, which will obviously turn everyone into cannibals as hinted at during the opening sequence. To be brutally honest anyone watching this just wants to see blood, gore & cannibalism & not some heavy handed, poorly conceived ridiculous political message, maybe I'm wrong but I don't think I am.
Director Clements does an OK job on what must have been an absolutely minuscule budget, some of the editing tricks work while some don't. Someone should tell him that it's impossible to stage a revolution using 10 amateur actors & three locations, these parts of the film come across as cheap & boring. There is plenty of gore on show here, there are lots of shots of people eating intestines, a sucked out eyeball, a brain being chopped in half, bitten throats, spurting blood, melting faces, scenes of various body parts being cooked, prepared & eaten plus there is a scene in which a guy is castrated by one of the cannibal girls with a pair of scissors & his severed penis lands on the floor just right for a nice big close-up.
Going straight-to-video technically Binge & Purge is pretty cheap looking, hand-held camcorder type cinematography with poor lighting, dull locations, cheap looking special effects that are gory but not convincing, nothing production values & an overall low budget feel to it. The acting is of a low standard & no-one impresses although the models are attractive to look at.
Binge & Purge started out very well with lots of gore & a pretty quirky story about cannibal models but the political overtones just get in the way & slow it down, the problem is the budget, the talent, the acting & writing just isn't strong enough to do the ideas any justice. Anyway, I thought it was better than a lot of straight-to-video crap that I've seen thanks to the first half, some over-the-top gore & nice looking ladies.
