Main Cast: Molly Ringwald, Jessica Napier, Kylie Minogue, Simon Bossell, Frank Roberts
Release Year: 2000
Country: AU
Run Time: 80 minutes
Plot
Molly Ringwald stars in this Australian Scream-like horror flick that lodges a tongue in the cheek as much as a knife in the gut. The film opens in 1988 when director Hilary Jacobs (Australian uber-icon Kylie Minogue) is working on a slasher movie called "Hot Blooded" starring plucky American icon Vanessa Turnbull (Ringwald) as a teen who is being chased by a psycho with a mask and some wicked cutlery. After the climactic scene is shot, Jacobs shouts "Cut!" and then harangues the actor playing the killer. That night, the actor stabs the director and almost offs Turnbull. The film is never completed, and when a male director who takes over the project ends up dead too, "Hot Blooded" achieves a hallowed status in student film legend. Fast forward to the present -- Jacobs' assistant director Lossman (Geoff Revell) teaches at a film school and tells his favorite students -- Raffy Carruthers (Jessica Napier) and Hester Ryan (Sarah Kants) -- of his experiences on the doomed set. Raffy, who is itching to be the next Jane Campion, sets out to finish the notorious flick. She enlists Hester as a producer, assembles a crew of fellow students and manages to get Vanessa Turnbull, who hasn't worked much lately, to revisit her role as the film's main character. Of course, as soon as shooting commences, the killing begins anew. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
What you have here is your basic Scream template: young adults with satiric senses of cinema besieged by a costumed murderous stalker with a secret motive. It's hardly as unoriginal as it sounds: The film is shot through with the kinetic Aussie twists that Down Under filmmakers seem incapable of avoiding. The energy is real even if the horror is hokum, and that alone keeps one watching. Molly Ringwald gamely goes where countless scream queens have gone before, bravely cashing in on her cult icon tiara for a few laughs at her expense, proving she's quite the sport after all. She saves the movie although she can't redeem it. Cut, with its frequent distracting grainy shots -- evidently the filmmakers saved the budget by using inferior film stock -- and predictable musical score, is nothing to go out of your way to see, but if you somehow end up with it sitting atop the telly, there are worst things you can do with the next 80 minutes. On the other hand, after seeing the fadeout where the presumably dead monster appears behind the next person to lay eyes on the film (don't worry, that's not a spoiler), perhaps you might want to opt for something safer. ~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide
Richard Hobbs - Art Director, Anna Lennon-Smith - Casting, Julia Overton - Co-producer, Kimble Rendall - Director, Henry Dangar - Editor, Gary Hamilton - Executive Producer, Mikael Borglund - Executive Producer, Rainer Mockert - Executive Producer, Guy Gross - Composer (Music Score), Steven Jones-Evans - Production Designer, David Foreman - Cinematographer, Bill Bennett - Producer, Jennifer Bennett - Producer, Andrew Plain - Sound/Sound Designer, Glenn Boswell - Stunts, Dave Warren - Screen Story, Mark Lamprell - Screenwriter
In 1988, during the golden age of slashers, a film crew were making a classic style splatter film dubbed "Hot Blooded!". Fed up with Brad (Frank Roberts)'s on-screen antagonist's foul-ups, his director, Hilary Jacobs (Kylie Minogue) publicly humiliates him and fires him on the spot in front of onlookers. Her further degrading of him (as he comes hoping for one more chance) in her office causes this actor to go berserk, mutilating himself before cutting out her tongue using the modified prop shears as his real-life signature weapon. Before he could harm anyone else, his co-star Vanessa Turnbill (Molly Ringwald) gives him a makeshift tracheotomy which ends in Brad being seemingly electrocuted as P.A. man Lossman (Geoff Revell) looks on. But as Brad dies it seems he curses the source of his misery: Hot Blooded and all who would work on it. Now in present-day Australia, Lossman is a teacher is using his personal experiences as warnings to his students that any attempts to complete filming or even screening of Hot Blooded! has ended up with lives being lost in mysterious and disturbing ways (like a producer being suspiciously electrocuted in an editing room or a director mysteriously discovered with his throat slit). But some of his pupils decide such a chance is too much of a temptation and despite his better wishes they decide to do what others could not... by finishing off the film complete with its only surviving original star (lured back by the notoriety), with fatal results.
