SATANIC SLUTS 3: SCANDALIZED

Or, 'how to milk this Georgina Baillie furore for all it's worth before everyone moves on to the next celebrity scandal'.

The most inspired part of the latest SLUTS vanity project occurs in the first ten seconds, where lots of genuine absurd tabloid headlines from the past are recalled to us: "Zip me up before you go go", "Freddie Starr ate my hamster", etc.

But within seconds, they've disappeared from the screen and we're greeted by the very ordinary Georgina Baillie (okay, rumour has it Russell Brand once shagged her), yawning while reading her daily newspaper.

She promptly falls asleep on the settee, and her dreams begin.

The first dream is of a being wrapped entirely in newspaper pages (they don't look too dissimilar to one of those robots out of the old "for mash get Smash" adverts). Would you believe it, the paper puppet unwraps itself and reveals itself to be a black-haired Goth chick with a nice figure that's been defiled by huge tattoos. She gets jiggy with a fake blonde, both of whom finger and lick each other - possibly - in softcore footage set to a score akin to holding your ear to a seashell.

After bringing each other to climax (dildo enabled, I may add), we see the shocking truth: their tryst was caught on camera and has been made front page news in a paper called Scandal. The headline reads "Lesbian Reporters Sex Orgy Shame!".

Crikey, Georgina, your dreams are spooky, eh? Next up we get one about vampires. Lesbian ones, of course. More of that tedious "creepy" synthesised score ensues as a blonde takes the wrong route home (in what looks to be a London photo studio badly doubling as a dark alley), only to fall prey to a figure in a black cloak and hood.

The jerky editorial style of this vignette nod towards Asian horror in an admittedly competent manner, but any good work is soon undone with more ridiculous softcore lesbo shenanigans that are neither sexy not scary.

But the dreams continue - the tabloid headline "Lust In Space" signifying the next little episode, which I'll concede is one of the more visually entertaining on offer during this 72-minute endurance test. Hey, we even get some minor dialogue in this BARBARELLA-type vignette!

"Blonde Models Dark Fantasies" (sic) follows, which at least offers a bit of sexy bondage and some arse cleavage. But again, dialogue and plot are minimal - not so bad I suppose, given the limited acting capabilities of the Sluts. The only problem is, the erotica is minimal too. Really, this is all so misguided. Dark? No. Silly. Oh yes!

The dreams keep on coming through all 12 chapters of this unapologetic waste of time, each one introduced by Baillie's frowning "deep in dream" visage on the settee as blue CGI wavers unconvincingly around her.

Of the remaining clips, possibly the most successful is of a blonde being ordered to strip by her brunette Army superior. Elsewhere we get a trio of giggly bimbos indulging in a Ouija board session (which culminates in them groping each other ... okay); a woman wanking to softcore lesbo Internet porn; a female couple getting it on in a creepy basement, only to be accosted by a pissed-off Baillie.

Clearly designed as a tool to capitalise on Baillie's unexpected fifteen minutes of fame, SCANDALIZED is crippled by being so obviously just that. It lacks forethought or preparation - it's simply been knocked up to be peddled on a curious audience as quickly as possible.

Fair play to Baillie, director Nigel Wingrove, etc. Strike while the iron's hot, and all that - and, of course, revel in the delicious fact that this DVD will surely shift copies purely because of the media's attention to Baillie's private life.

Indeed, the irony that the subject matter of this film also serves as its reason for being is not lost on me. Conceptually, I think it's an admirably cheeky, savvy thing to have pulled off.

My only grievance is with the content of the film itself. If you own a rock club that likes to play Goth-tinged softcore vignettes on your Plasma TVs on mute while the DJ does his stuff, this would provide adequate background fodder for your drunk and horny clientele. However, if you fancy sitting in front of a good film at home - with the volume on - then this is not it.

This is cheap, sub-MTV dreck with poor lighting, camerawork and editing. The women are sometimes decent looking but never enough to lift the cloud of boredom you're likely to be suffering from beneath.

Nigel Wingrove has done a lot for horror in his time, particularly during the days of Redemption video - that label introduced a lot of us in the UK to a great deal of classic Euro horror. But his limitations as a director have been brought to the fore by these insipid, tame, schoolboyish Satanic Sluts exercises. Please let them end here. Surely no-one's bothered about Brand and Baillie anymore by now anyway.

The film is presented uncut in it's original full-frame aspect ratio. Image quality is fair throughout, with reasonably sharp detail and accurate colours. Flesh tones are well rendered, which is the one blessing you'd hope this film to possess.

The English audio, in 2.0, is serviceable throughout. There's not a great deal of dialogue in the film, and the "score" is mostly a dirge, so it's difficult to comment upon the soundtrack other than to highlight that there were no instances of hiss or drop-out.

The disc opens with a static main menu page (Baillie's face in large, naturally) and from there you can access a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the main film via 12 chapters. Each chapter is designed to look like a page from a newspaper, and are listed as "page 1", "page 2" etc. And, oh look, there's a still of Baillie in a red dress in the corner of the scene-selection screen.

Extras are fairly limited on this release. First off we get a selection of stills - 13 studio shots presented in silence over the course of 92 seconds.

Next up are trailers for KILLER'S MOON, FASCINATION, SAINT FRANCIS and SATANIC SLUTS: THE BLACK ORDER COMETH.

Finally there's a 2-minute trailer for SCANDALIZED set to techno music and presented in full-frame, plus a single-page link to a Salvation contact address.

The disc is unremarkable and the film itself? Fairly desperate stuff.

Review by Stuart Willis