Joe (Pierre Agostino from The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher) is a soldier who gets separated from his unit in Vietnam and witnesses a woman being brutalized and raped. He then returns home a disturbed individual and sets out to blow up couples necking in secluded areas. Eventually, Joe takes to only blowing up the dude after sex so he can have his woman all to himself. When he accidentally blows up a woman and her young son, the cops double their efforts to apprehend him.
The Ravager is kind of like Taxi Driver if the guy was bald, didn’t drive a taxi, and didn’t write longwinded journal entries. Agostino, with his Michael Berryman haircut and creepy demeanor, makes Nosferatu look like a Chippendales dancer in comparison. Because of that, he makes for a pretty good psycho.
Unfortunately, some of the sex scenes are chopped all to hell, which probably means this was a hardcore (or at the very least X-rated) flick at some point before being butchered. The sex scenes do get longer (and somewhat) better as the movie goes along, though. One highlight is the scene where the lesbian couple frolics in the desert. They get a pretty good tryst on a boat, which is followed by an effective scene where Joe ties one of them up and burns her alive. This sequence is the exception rather than the rule. Another scene where Joe is “reduced to being an ordinary peeping tom” was probably footage from another movie used to pad out the running time. (Another tip-off: It’s also the best scene in the movie.)
Ultimately, Joe spends more time in his room fiddling with his bombs than spying on couples and blowing them sky high. Also a problem: Most of the time, we see more of Joe’s reaction shots to the sex than the sex itself. Also, I’m not sure why it’s called The Ravager. “The Blower-Upper” would’ve been more accurate.
Director Charles Nizet later made the excellent Help Me… I’m Possessed.
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