Cons: The movie wasn't even finished, what more can I say.
The Bottom Line: The incoherence and pure fantasy egotism makes for something that you just can't look away from, but even still, don't waste your time.
"Doctor Gore," aka "The Body Shop," is a flat, incoherent mess of a movie, which contains one of the biggest and most irresponsible flubs that I've ever seen in any kind of a motion picture. Odds are I'll probably rant a little more about that later on. But it was only after buying the thing and watching it that I found out why it was that flat incoherent mess that I passionately claim it is. This is, by dictionary standard, an unfinished film. Yes, when you buy "Doctor Gore," released by our friends over at Something Weird Video, you are actually purchasing a movie that was never ever completed. What's next, a double disc DVD release of Orson Welles' "The Deep"?
Serving as writer, director, and unfortunate leading man is J.G. "Pat" Patterson, who began as an assistant to a number of films by gore legend Herschell Gordon Lewis. Oddly enough, Patterson's film comes across looking a little bit more budgeted that Herschell's, but that isn't really the point. The point is that the heart and sheer love for camp that made Herschell's movies so memorable is completely missing in this humorless schlock fest. While Herschell gives us scenes such as a man being thrown down a hill in a nail piercing barrel or a woman crushed by a mega-sized rock, Patterson simply shows us a series of scenes where someone will eventually get a limb cut off.
Patterson plays a well known surgeon named Dr. Brandon, who has just lost his popular and beautiful trophy wife. He goes through a frenzy of loneliness until ultimately he decides to create his own woman by seducing and kidnapping beautiful girls, then taking the body parts that he feels are their best qualities. You'd think since Dr. Brandon seems to have the power to seduce these women, he would just stop right there, but no, he is a fool. By the end, he has created the perfect woman, who, yes, is pretty damn hot in technical terms. He teaches this woman everything that he wants her to know, so basically what it boils down to, is that Dr. Brandon has made himself a brainless sex slave.
Since we are talking about a "mad doctor" movie here, I cannot forget to go into some detail about the "Igor" type sidekick, who goes by the name of Greg. This cigar chomping little hunchback probably is the only fairly decent part of the movie, even if he comes off as a little annoying a time or two. He doesn't really have any lines in the film, he just kind of stands around, looks shocked when he needs to, and mutters jibberish while sounding like he is about to have an asthma attack. Greg gains some laughs by simply looking like a 4 foot Harry Knowles (though I'm sure Greg wouldn't have recommended Episode I), but there's this really awkward scene in the film where Greg is taunted dangerously by Dr. Brandon for what seems to be no reason whatsoever. It doesn't come across like we are watching Dr. Brandon acting like a sadist, it feels like we're watching Dr. Brandon in a movie made by a sadist. But throughout all of these Greg scenes, I kept wondering to myself, just where does someone like Greg come from? If a scientist or a doctor hires someone like Greg, does that automatically deem them a psychopath? Could someone like Albert Einstein get away with having a tiny sidekick? And I kept imagining a house somewhere in the woods where all of these Greg like characters live, where a phone call is made and one of our tiny friends is sent away to live with his new scientist/doctor master. That would have made for a much better and insightful film than "Doctor Gore" could ever be.
With the power of Something Weird on its side, the movie advertises itself like it is a lone pioneer of the gory films that circulate today, but that isn't what I got out of the film at all. The movie is just plain awkward to watch for so many reasons. It all seems to be made out of the pure fantasies of a director who looks a little bit like Hume Cronyn mixed in with Woody Allen. In Woody's films, he kind of goes along with the old Groucho Marx premise that someone like Groucho Marx can get a cover girl as a sex object, and that works for the Woody films. But in this movie I did not buy it one bit. Woody Allen and Groucho Marx are funny, witty, and insanely clever entertainers. Patterson has the vibe of a lonely man who mysteriously lurks around all girls schools while dressed as a janitor. That weird and distracting feeling just makes "Doctor Gore" seems like some sort of celluloid masturbation for Patterson.
But aside from all of that, there is a fair share of gore in this film, as if that were to be a big surprise to anyone. Limbs are cut off and then sewn back on, a plot factor that is repeated on and on throughout the film. If Patterson had learned anything from Herschell, I wish it would have been to mix it up a little bit. The movie received the cherished "X" rating solely for the basis of gore, but nothing in this movie, as far as gore is concerned, is worth writing home about, of hell, even writing a review about (making everything having to do with this movie, then and now, a complete and utter waste of time). Everything in this film has been done before and has been done better. You wanna watch a movie with limbs being sewn off, watch "Buio Omega," "Pieces," or even "May." At least those films give you something else, be it shocks, laughs, or sadness, all of which is missing from this film.
I mentioned of course that this is an "unfinished" film. It is very evident too, even though that fact didn't really show until about the last act in the film, where I kept scratching my head because I seriously thought that someone had knocked me unconscious and burglarized me somewhere in the midst of all this mess. I was absolutely confused as hell. Scenes didn't add up, nothing made any sense whatsoever, plot devices came and went without any explanation. In one scene a character is perfectly fine, while in the scene they are in jail uttering crazy phrases. I don't even know how we get to the point to where Dr. Brandon's new wife became a notorious truck stop prostitute. Truthfully, I had no idea that the movie was unfinished until after I was done watching the thing, making it the only "thrill" that I got out of it. So, that probably means I'm quite the jerk for ruining that for all of you.
But then there's this, the most irresponsible flub that I have ever gazed my suspicious eyes across. In the movie, you can actually see, clear as day, a man marking the scene at the beginning of a take. I'm not talking about just a split second shot of the guy clicking, I'm saying that this guy is present onscreen for a good five to ten seconds. The dialogue from the actors present are heard, but they are not moving their mouths because they're looking at the camera and waiting for their cue. Once the cue is given, the audio matches up. I seriously thought all of this was a joke when I saw that. Apparently it wasn't. Apparently it was just a flub. But it seems like way too big of a flub though. I don't care if this is "Doctor Gore," that is a huge huge goof. It would have been better it the dialogue was just plain out of sync for a take, although I guess it did give me something to talk about.
Something Weird Video has the natural power of taking something like dung and talking it up as if it were found in the vaults of Fort Knox. There are vast amounts of extras on this DVD, some of which are rather worthwhile. As far as extras go, Something Weird has never really ripped me off in that field, whether the movie is good or bad. There are a bunch of great trailers on the disc, most of those being for other movies. There's alternate opening credits to the film, and best of all, an introduction by none other than Herschell Gordon Lewis from when the film was first released. Like all other Something Weird discs too, there are some short subjects that I'm sure were at some point considered for "Mystery Science Theater 3000."
A lot of time has been put into releasing a movie that is now and always has been completely worthless. It's like that old cliched saying about not looking away during a car accident, but what makes it worth mentioning in this case is not that you simply can't look away from the thing, but it's more so the style of the accident. Like a man fully engulfed in flames who sits in a car that only has a couple of dents, or better yet a clown car crashing into the caveman mobile from the Mutley cartoons, you just wonder how something like that could possibly have happened, making it a car accident like none other I've seen. Atleast those accidents would have been finished though.
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