Dying God is set in some unnamed city where hooker Lisa Douglas is found brutally raped & murdered, her uterus found blown open from the inside. Corrupt cop Sean Fallon (James Horan) is put on the case, as the dead bodies of hookers continue to pile up Fallon believes something odd is going on & that he may not be dealing with a human adversary but instead an ancient Amazonian creature with a huge retractable penis that is trying to mate because it has cancer. Fallon teams up with pimp Chance (Lance Henriksen) who has lost several hookers to the creature, together they must face it & put a stop to it's vicious killing & raping spree...
This French Argentinian co-production was co-written, co-produced & directed by Fabrice Lambot & if you read my brief synopsis about a ancient creature with a huge penis running around raping & murdering prostitutes because when it cums it's sperm bursts through it's victims uterus wall you would be forgiven for thinking that Dying God might be some sort of gory sleaze classic. Unfortunately it's hard to imagine that a film about a creature that goes around raping & killing prostitutes could be so dull & uneventful. I suppose the main problem with Dying God is that the raping & killing monster part of the story is reduced to nothing more than a subplot, all the rapes & murders happen off screen & are largely implied (the pathologist saying things like 'she was brutally raped' to Fallon after the event) & the main focus of Dying God seems to be some sort of character study of corrupt cop Fallon & in this sense it actually felt like Bad Lieutenant (1992) at times. We see scenes of Fallon accepting sex from hookers & cheating on his girlfriend, murdering people in his way, using his authority as a cop to push people around & steal money, he steals guns & sells them, generally swears a lot & is in league with most of the local pimps. The final twenty odd minutes picks up a bit as Fallon & Chance in his harpoon armed wheelchair face off against the monster with Fallon fighting it with a circular saw (which just happened to be lying around) but for the majority of the duration of Dying God it's a largely dull affair populated by very unlikable character's who I found it impossible to feel any kind of sympathy for, hell I was rooting for the monster at the end. How can a film about a rapist creature be so dull? I still can't quite figure it out.
The film looks weird, the location is never named but it feels like it is meant to be a city in the US but it doesn't feel like one. It's interesting to note that the IMDb lists a 'Translator' in the 'Writing Credits' section for Dying God which one would imagine means there were communication problems during filming. Most of the names in the credits are unpronounceable for me. There's some decent gore, an exploding head, a head gorily bashed against a wall, some ripped out guts, a gory birth scene, lots of dead bodies with holes in their stomachs, some guts splattered around & a bit of blood splatter. There's some nudity too although not as much as you would expect & as I have already mentioned the rapes happen off screen. The film has that annoying shaky hand-held camcorder feel to it which I just hate. The monster when seen at the end looks alright, it's green & humanoid in shape & yes we do get to see it's huge retractable penis if that sort of thing turns you on. The creatures origins & why it exists are never really gone into other than some vague explanation about it being some ancient Amazonian God.
With a supposed budget of about $500,000 Dying God has reasonable production values but looks cheap like a lot of low budget horror does, at least the special effects are alright & thankfully there's no CGI computer effects. Filmed on location in Buenos Aires in Argentina which probably caused problems since the film was shot in English. Genre favourite & the always watchable Lance Henriksen has a part in this as a wheelchair bound pimp, he probably only agreed to do it for a free holiday to Buenos Aires or at least that's what I hope since he is definitely better than this.
Dying God had an outrageously sleazy plot about a rapist monster but the film never really satisfies in that department & to much time is given to dull character study, it's like some dull cross between Bad Lieutenant & Breeders (1986).
This French Argentinian co-production was co-written, co-produced & directed by Fabrice Lambot & if you read my brief synopsis about a ancient creature with a huge penis running around raping & murdering prostitutes because when it cums it's sperm bursts through it's victims uterus wall you would be forgiven for thinking that Dying God might be some sort of gory sleaze classic. Unfortunately it's hard to imagine that a film about a creature that goes around raping & killing prostitutes could be so dull & uneventful. I suppose the main problem with Dying God is that the raping & killing monster part of the story is reduced to nothing more than a subplot, all the rapes & murders happen off screen & are largely implied (the pathologist saying things like 'she was brutally raped' to Fallon after the event) & the main focus of Dying God seems to be some sort of character study of corrupt cop Fallon & in this sense it actually felt like Bad Lieutenant (1992) at times. We see scenes of Fallon accepting sex from hookers & cheating on his girlfriend, murdering people in his way, using his authority as a cop to push people around & steal money, he steals guns & sells them, generally swears a lot & is in league with most of the local pimps. The final twenty odd minutes picks up a bit as Fallon & Chance in his harpoon armed wheelchair face off against the monster with Fallon fighting it with a circular saw (which just happened to be lying around) but for the majority of the duration of Dying God it's a largely dull affair populated by very unlikable character's who I found it impossible to feel any kind of sympathy for, hell I was rooting for the monster at the end. How can a film about a rapist creature be so dull? I still can't quite figure it out.
The film looks weird, the location is never named but it feels like it is meant to be a city in the US but it doesn't feel like one. It's interesting to note that the IMDb lists a 'Translator' in the 'Writing Credits' section for Dying God which one would imagine means there were communication problems during filming. Most of the names in the credits are unpronounceable for me. There's some decent gore, an exploding head, a head gorily bashed against a wall, some ripped out guts, a gory birth scene, lots of dead bodies with holes in their stomachs, some guts splattered around & a bit of blood splatter. There's some nudity too although not as much as you would expect & as I have already mentioned the rapes happen off screen. The film has that annoying shaky hand-held camcorder feel to it which I just hate. The monster when seen at the end looks alright, it's green & humanoid in shape & yes we do get to see it's huge retractable penis if that sort of thing turns you on. The creatures origins & why it exists are never really gone into other than some vague explanation about it being some ancient Amazonian God.
With a supposed budget of about $500,000 Dying God has reasonable production values but looks cheap like a lot of low budget horror does, at least the special effects are alright & thankfully there's no CGI computer effects. Filmed on location in Buenos Aires in Argentina which probably caused problems since the film was shot in English. Genre favourite & the always watchable Lance Henriksen has a part in this as a wheelchair bound pimp, he probably only agreed to do it for a free holiday to Buenos Aires or at least that's what I hope since he is definitely better than this.
Dying God had an outrageously sleazy plot about a rapist monster but the film never really satisfies in that department & to much time is given to dull character study, it's like some dull cross between Bad Lieutenant & Breeders (1986).
