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Released by: Bayview Entertainment
Released on: February 24th, 2015.
Director: Emanuele De Santi
Cast: Monica Muí±oz, Riccardo Valentini, Santiago Ortaez
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
Italian filmmaker Emanuele De Santi, the man behind 2011's low budget gore-fest Adam Chaplin: Violent Avenger, is back with Taeter City: City Of Cannibals. Another low budget gore-fest made in his native Italy, this picture has many of the same pro's and con's as that earlier movie did.
The story takes place in the future where a dictatorship called The Authority has taken over the massive metropolis of Taeter City. They control the population using 'the Zeed' which is some sort of radio wave transmitted into the city that keeps the people who live there docile. This also has an effect on the city's criminal population in that it somehow alters their brain waves and forces them to commit suicide. Once they've done that, a squad of elite military police types called 'The Bikers' show up, take the bodies (or what's left of them) and bring them to a huge industrial sized slaughterhouse where they're ground into raw meat and then shipped off to the fast food joints that feed the masses.
When things start to some sort of mutant guy (played by De Santi himself) winds up being hunted by some of the Bikers. Oh and there's a buxom biker lady zipping around too and some random guys in random masks attempt to look scary but wind up looking goofy.
That's more or less what happens here, there's not so much a story here as there is a series of post apocalyptic themed gore set pieces. Admittedly these set pieces are well done - De Santi has an eye for framing splatter that does work to the movie's advantage but like Adam Chaplin he puzzlingly insists on tinting the whole thing in a dark blue. Is this to make things look cold and futuristic? Maybe, but it doesn't do that so much as it just… makes things look blue. It's distracting, as are the animated sequences put into the movie to pad out the running time (which, as it stands, is just over seventy-two minutes in length). That doesn't give us a whole lot to go to here, we really only get hyper-stylized splatter. The futuristic setting could have offered up plenty of chances to take on big government or make some sort of social satire out of the story, but again, it never goes there.
By the time the movie is over you'll have wished that there was a good story here, or even a mediocre one, but that never happens. The gore is shocking at first but before the half way mark you become immune to it because without any character development at all it's impossible to care about what happens to anyone. So yeah, that guy gets his head crushed, but who was that guy in the first place and why does he matter? De Santi has a good movie in him and one day he'll make it. Sadly Taeter City: City Of Cannibals isn't it.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Taeter City: City Of Cannibals arrives on DVD from Widowmaker/Bayview Entertainment in a 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that probably looks as good as the source material will allow for. This is a rather ugly looking movie, colors and contrast are consistently blown out for stylistic effect and while in a sense that works in the context of the story being told, it sometimes means the visuals are kind of blah looking. The transfer seems to replicate things pretty accurately though. Detail is okay, never great, particularly in the darker scenes but this seems to stem back to the photography.
The English (dubbed) language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is fine. The levels are properly balanced and there are no problems with hiss or distortion to note. The English subtitles are free of typos and easy to read and generally this mix gets the job done without any issues.
Extras are limited to a trailer for the feature, an FX Special (a ninety second look at some of the effects used in the movie) menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
If gore is what you're after, Taeter City: City Of Cannibals will probably do the trick, but outside of the splatter factor it's tough to really get behind this one. There are cool ideas at work here and the effects are great but the overcooked visuals take away from things and the story is meh. The DVD looks and sounds fine, but it's light on extras. Your mileage may vary.
