Director: Richard Griffin

Cast: Michael Reed, Sarah Nicklin, Ruth Sullivan, Brandon Luis Aponte, Alex Aponte

Wild Eye Releasing / Region o / Unrated / 1.85:1 widescreen (16×9) / Dolby Digital Stereo / 80 minutes

Disk Extras: Commentary with director Richard Griffin / Deleted Scene / Teaser Clip / Official Trailer(s) / Wild Eye Trailers

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In 2009 writer/director Richard Griffin (Creature from the Hillbilly Lagoon, Splatter Disco) burst onto my radar with the blasphemously funny and violent nunsploitation flick Nun of That. After seeing what Griffin could do with a pretty worn out sub-genre, I was immediately a fan. In today’s social media world, it is pretty easy to find your favorite filmmakers on places like Facebook and Twitter, so I did. Over the past year or two I have gotten to know Mr. Griffin a little (as much as you can without ACTUALLY meeting) and he seems like a pretty stand-up guy. But aside from that, I have seen the steps he, as an indie filmmaker, has to take to create a movie. From raising money, to casting, to editing… it’s a fascinating look into the inner-workings for a movie geek like me. So when I saw his newest creation The Disco Exorcist being conceived and then born, I knew he has something special between his film forceps.

The movie opens up with tits, fucking, cocaine snorting and a dude getting disemboweled and torn in half in a disco nightclub, all before the opening credits end. Present day; we meet Rex Romanski the disco king, as he is doin’ his thang on the dance floor and a gaggle of ladies are discussing his uh, merits. A woman named Rita is eavesdropping and decides to go over and get some of Rex herself. The two end up fucking; little does Sexy Rexy know but Rita is a jealous psycho who practices the dark arts and she believes him to be all hers. That doesn’t bode well when Rex meets his favorite adult film star Amoreena and the two hit it off. Rita confronts Amoreena on the dance floor and gets smacked down but she will take her revenge on them both after she curses them and decides to raise an undead army of “bitches” to  get her crazy-horny chick vengeance on. Can Rex and Amoreena’s love overcome evil or will they succumb to the demonic possession with the help of The Disco Exorcist?

I didn’t think Griffin could top Nun of That for me, but he certainly did in a lot of ways. The same hilariously offensive humor that is somewhere between early Troma and Kevin Smith is still there. A couple of my favorite lines are (in reference to shooting a porn movie) “What we are doing around here isn’t rocket science, is it?”, “No, it’s fucking” delivered so deadpan it made me guffaw. And in a scene were Rex and Amoreena have just finished fucking, she says “You should probably take it out of me. I’ve got to pee.”… fucking-a. And speaking of sexual content, Griffin and his perverted mind really ramps it up in Disco. So much so I have reason to believe that my TV is now carrying my DVD player’s baby. In every other scene there are some titties or banging going on, something that was lacking in Nun. But god dammit, does Sarah Nicklin (lead nun from Nun of That and “Amoreena” in this one) have a “no nudity” clause in her contract? Not one nipple from the steamy leading lady!

There are also some really well done make-up effects on display.  The gore gags, zombie and possession make-up looked like a movie with a higher budget… Hell, the whole movie did. The Disco Exorcist is kind of like if you took William Girdler’s Abby and put it in a blender with Saturday Night Fever and added the sleaze of a D’Amato or Franco flick. And just because Griffin has only made fun exploitation flicks to date, don’t count him out as a hack director. He has skills behind the camera. He set up some genuinely creepy shots and could totally helm a “serious” horror film. One in particular when Rita is full hot after finding Rex with Amoreena together in the disco, she slowly turns around and only her head is in frame. It reminded me a lot of Brian De Palma’s shot of Sissy Spacek as Carrie after she just got pig’s blood dumped on her. I need to check out some of his full-on horror movies like Beyond the Dunwich Horror, but for now, I will enjoy his specific brand of throwback exploitation homages.

Wild Eye Releasing, the purveyors of such neo-exploitation as Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69 and The Bloody Ape, have given this fucking awesome movie great exposure and a good release. I like this movie so much, I would have liked to see more supplemental material like behind=the-scenes stuff but that just me being picky. What we do get is audio commentary with director Richard Griffin who is always interesting and funny, a 40 second deleted scene in which my girlfriend Sarah Nicklin is surrounded by two topless chicks (’nuff said) and a plethora of trailers for The Disco Exorcist and Wild Eye’s catalogue of films. If you love hilarious, over-the-top, sleazy and sometimes creepy exploitation films (and I know you do), you really need to pick this DVD up. And if it’s your first Richard Griffin film, it’s a great primer to the rest of his movies, so get on it!