Hanger

Debbie Rochon, that beautiful Queen of low budget horrors, plays a pregnant prostitute who gets a ton of shit from her boss, a pimp who’s such a huge asshole that he decides to give the poor woman a back-alley wire hanger abortion. He throws the mutilated baby in the trash can, but is rescued by the prostitute’s only friend, played by Don Ellis. The John takes care of the baby until he grows up to become Hanger, a mutilated freak of a huma nbeing who wants to do good, but people have treated him so bad that he just can’t adapt to normal society. Things get worse for him, as the man who killed his mother comes back and wants to finish off Hanger once and for all.

Parts black comedy, parts exploitation grindhouse flick, this is a definite step up in the productions of Plotdigger Films. Live Feed was a cool flick and Gutterballs was awesome fun, but this movie is definitely closer to a work of art than the previous two films. It’s mostly because of it’s excellent screenplay, which is able to mix it’s grindhouse ideas and goals with a really touching and humane point of view. Like Basket Case and Freaks, we’re able to feel real sympathy for the freaks in the film, even after they do some truly horrible things to each other. Must be the horror fan in me but I really liked the freak characters. The performances are also excellent, particularly Don Ellis, who steals the show here the same way he did in Gutterballs, playing one helluva mean son of a bitch who does evil shit but with good intentions. Nathan Dashwood, who played the obnoxious AJ in Gutterballs, plays Hanger, and he is able to give the character a lot of real drama and pathos, even under the heavy makeup effects. He’s also good in the vicious sequences.

Now, don’t get scared, this isn’t all sappy and tragic, after all, it’s a Plotdigger production so you get what you’re expecting. There is a ton of sick and violent gore, right from the beginning when poor Lloyd Kaufman (as a tranny) gets his cock roasted. The most cringe-inducing moments, however, are the wire hanger abortion, which is realistic to the point of being way too sick for anyone, and when one of the inbred workers starts fucking Hanger in his shit hole. That was pretty fucking nasty. We also get the uber-sexually explicit sequences that Gutterballs also included, strangely enough with the same actress, Candice Lewald. Here her sex scenes are much more erotic than they were in Gutterballs, with her staying on top of a table butt naked and masturbating with everything from a pen to a Hello Kitty vibrator. Wish I met an actress as brave as she for my movies! So yes, this movie is very explicit and very gory, but if you give it a shot, you might find something that, hidden beneath it’s mountains of grime, has a lot of heart. Another great production from Plotdigger Films, keep them coming guys!