UKM: ULTIMATE KILLING MACHINE

Four teenagers from disparate backgrounds sign up to join boot camp. There reasons differ: Walyon (Mac Fyfe, THE SKULLS) has joined to avoid a spell in prison; Zoe (Victoria Nestorowicz, REBIRTH) is a homeless junkie looking for a fresh start and a roof over her head; Carrie (Erin Mackinnon) has joined to escape her abusive father; nerdy Buddy (Steve Arbuckle, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) simply loves the gung-ho promises of life in the army.

They undergo an initial medical examination and answer questions that range from "Do you take drugs?" to "How often do you wet the bed?". After which, all four are taken to Millhaven Academy to begin their training.

What they don't know (and what we were privvy to in the rousing pre-credits sequence) is that Millhaven Research Facility has been disused since an experiment on decorated soldier Sgt Dodds (Simon Northwood, DIARY OF THE DEAD) resulted in him being transformed into a psychopath with superhuman strength, who crushed a fellow soldier's head with his bare hands.

Before too long the teens start to realise all is not right - there's only four of them who appear to have been accepted into "boot camp", and once shown to their beds they're locked in the room. When Major Blevins (Michael Madsen, RESERVOIR DOGS) arrives to do further medical tests on them, they're feeling decidedly uneasy about what lies in store for them.

Blevins introduces the teens to doctors Stroheim (John Evans, BANDITS) and Lena (Deanna Dezmari, MAGIC FLUTE DIARIES), who take each teen away individually - returning them to the room as shaking, zombified messes.

When the teens later awake, they have been strapped down to their beds. Each has a curious hole drilled into their necks, as part of Stroheim's ongoing experiments to genetically produce the ultimate soldiers.

When Blevins' right-hand-man Delroy (Billy Parrott, RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE) attempts to rape Zoe, she manages to break free from her straps and kick the shit out of him. She unties the others and they determine to escape from the camp.

The kids go on the run around the camp's labyrinthine corridors, with Blevins' heavily armed troops in hot pursuit. Waylon and Zoe split from the other two, and are chased by an irate Delroy - but they find something even more scary waiting in a remote cell - and unwittingly free Dodds to cause mayhem in his hellbent quest for revenge against Stroheim. On top of that, the kids start to realise that Stroheim's experiments have left them with unusual amounts of strength ...

Just the title should be enough to signal that UKM is bunkum. If not, that synopsis has surely forced the point home. But as bunkum goes, it's quite entertaining.

The young cast are amiable enough, and turn their stereotypical characters into far more appealing propositions than the majority of teens in horror films these days. Fyfe is the "cool" one, but adds to this by giving his character a vulnerable, almost at times humble, side. Arbuckle's nerd is made more interesting by being the army-loving patriot who goes nuts. The girls don't have much to do, other than act surly to any authorative figure and occasionally come on to the boys at the most ludicrously inappropriate times. But, hey, that's to be expected ...

Elsewhere on the casting front, it's always nice to see Madsen in a meaty role (he gets some great, risibly macho dialogue here) and Dezmari makes a convincing bitch. Evans provides unintentional comedy with an appalling accent.

Dodds is an interesting monster - a product of someone else's tampering, a victim of naivety and therefore not purely evil at all. He's formidable in physical presence, but the audience will find themselves hard-pushed not to sympathise with him.

UKM is daft. It makes no sense, and the script seems to be okay with this - there's no attempt to cover the huge plot holes or pretend to be intellectual with convoluted scientific lingo. It's just a fast-paced, cheap gore movie that exists to entertain. Hell, director David Mitchell (SHRED) is even happy to have the teens run around with drillhole marks in the sides of their necks, even though he clearly shows the drill entering the BACK of their necks!

Bloody and fun, and boasting a good rock soundtrack, UKM is the type of film probably best appreciated if caught by accident one evening on the Sci-Fi channel.

The disc offers the film uncut in anamorphic 1.78:1. The transfer is sharp, clear and colourful - a sterling job.

The English 2.0 audio is fine throughout, as are the easily readable optional English subtitles.

Static menus include a scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 12 chapters.

The only "extra" is a 2-minute trailer.

One to rent, or catch up with on TV at some point.

Review by Stuart Willis