New Zealand was ready to represent when it came to the slasher boom, thanks to this bonkers entry into the canon. It's so violent that it was banned in Australia, a country that was originally made up of convicts.

Director David Blyth's film predates Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, seem as perhaps the first homegrown Kiwi horror film. Blyth has been called "New Zealand's master of transgression" by Fangoria and "one of the great mavericks of New Zealand film" by NZ Listener. He also created the movies Angel Mine, Wound, Transfigured Nights and Moonrise, which is also known as Grampire and stars "Grandpa" Al Lewis.

Years ago, Dr. Howell - a mad scientist trying to prolong human life past death - dealt with his harshest critic by mind-controlling that man's son into shotgun blasting his parents.

Now, Michael Tucker (Michael Hurst, Iolaus from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) has emerged from seven years in a mental ward. He somehow has acquired a loving girlfriend named Sandy and has taken her on a holiday along with their friends Jeannie and Lucas. However, that sojourn is really a front to get him to the remote island where Dr. Howell's clinic is located and gain bloody revenge.

What follows is a descent into the caves of the island, where the doctor's horrible creations live. That's when the film turns into a strange mix of The Hills Have Eyes and Mad Max packed with an equal mix of nihilism and gore.

I really have no category that easily fits this film. It's kind of a slasher. It's somewhat a punk rock biker post-apocalyptic film. And it's also science fiction. It's a glorious mess, all over the place and unafraid to have its hero completely fall apart by the end.

These revenge, gore-fest movies are all a little the same. It starts with no real motivation for the initial actions. The mad scientist is just mad. Still, he seems to have plenty of money for his sick research. What is his product? A bunch of zombie characters. Do we really need some of these? Anyway, the hero(?) drags his pals into his effort to avenge his father and mother's murders (actually, he committed them under the doctor's influence). Then there's the agony and the pain that goes on and on and on. People are dismembered, stabbed, burned, one after the other. I don't get the attraction. Why do audiences want so much of this? In the end, we're left wondering about a lot of things. There are no real answers. Maybe it's just obsession. Who knows.

OK, there is romantic sex in movies, and there's perversion, and when mixed into a horror movie, it just lengthens what is most likely mediocre in the first place. This is the type of already questionable story where the murder of one's own parents by a young man (caused by a shot he got in the butt by his father's scientist partner, and ends up seeking revenge when he gets out of the looney bin. The young man is seen blowing his parents away, twisting and squirming in a straight jacket in a rubber room, then all of a sudden is out joyriding with his girlfriend and friends when he recognizes the man who got him into that jam in the first place.

So I don't expect the usual in a 1970's/80's science fiction/horror film, but I expect some cohesion and sense at least in the story telling. This is some nonsense about ending death as we know it and somehow bringing corpses back in some gory form or another. Real frights come from suspense, and understanding science fiction doesn't need to involve unnecessary gore or constant expulsion of bodily fluids. This had a basically decent idea that just went way too far, and ultimately I didn't give a darn about any of it. This seems like it was written by someone of the target age it was made for. Stupidity has never had such a vile and disgusting face.