INBRED is a British torture-porn survivalist horror-comedy, and all that said, it’s awesome! Oddly enough, I remember when INBRED was released on DVD back in 2011. I was walking through Walmart’s movie section, and the cover art grabbed my attention. With pictures of characters on it that looked like a cross between THE WIZARD OF OZ and THE HILLS HAVE EYES, my interest was piqued. Foolishly, I didn’t want to take a chance on INBRED, so I put it back on the shelf.

Big mistake.

Luckily, while falling down a YouTube rabbit hole recently, I came across the trailer for INBRED that in turn led me to the full movie. Hooray for me!

INBRED starts out in black and white, in the Victorian era. Okay, weird, not what I expected, but there is tons of gore, so I kept watching. Soon the camera pulls back, and we discover that the black and white film is actually a movie some juvenile delinquents are watching on their cell phone while riding on a bus out to the country. Yes, this is a classic set -up of troubled youth being taken out of city life to be rehabilitated out in the country. This classic genre trope recurs so often because it works.

Once the group arrives at the dilapidated homestead where they’ll be staying, they decide that there isn’t much to do around the place ,and decide to venture out to the local pub. This joint is filled with backwoods hicks. I’m guessing these must be the titular folks the movie is named after. They all look like something out of The League of Gentlemen. One of the local teen boys hits on one of the city girls, she gets freaked out, and the barkeep sweeps in to save the day. He warns both parties to stay away from each other.

It doesn’t take long for the locals and the city folk to get into it again. Unfortunately for the “outsiders,” there’s no refuge at the pub this time. The first of the kids who tries to fight back is killed and sliced up for dinner. There are full-on geysers of blood, very Japanese, very sushi-typhoon. The rest of the group are soon kidnapped, and soon they’re getting prepped for the torture show.

Yes, a torture show very similar to the floor show in HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, but with torture (of course). While trying to strap their first victim to the ground, an actor with stubby little arms crawls over to help. I can’t believe it — it’s the real-life burlesque performer and the likable actor from American Horror Story: Freak Show, Mat Fraser…awesome! Also, I’m not sure if it’s meant to be purely offensive, as with Crispin Glover’s WHAT IS IT?, or if it’s because these are backwoods hicks who believe a show like this one needs to have a minstrel performer, but the ringmaster (or “Grandpa”) character has on blackface. It’s a crude and effective way to elicit a response from the audience. I’ll give them that. There’s even a guy who looks like G.G. Allin playing the organ. Nice!

The first victim in the torture show is held down to the ground and is chewed to death by a horse, and the second victim has raw sewage pumped into his mouth until he explodes. This is meant to be dark, sick humor, and I laughed each time. Herschell Gordon Lewis would be proud!

The rest of the city folk almost escape. They hold up back at the house where they’d originally  set up camp. There is a shoot-out with the inbred locals. This is the point where a lot of people’s heads are blown off with shotguns — it’s super gory and super rad! Hey final girl, watch out for those land mines!

By now it’s evident that INBRED is basically a modern-day British remake of Hershel; Gordon Lewis’s TWO THOUSAND MANIACS. Everything from the characters, the storyline, the tone, right down to the fact that the locals have their own theme song: Call it an homage, call it a rip-off, it doesn’t matter, because the fact is INBRED is fun! The gore is glorious, the jokes are great, and the cast is amazing! Yes, for a no-budget Video Nasty, INBRED has a top notch cast featuring Jo Hartley (THIS IS ENGLAND, DEAD MAN’S SHOES), Seamus O’Neill (DEAD MAN’S SHOES, SIGHTSEERS, WAR HORSE), and Terry Haywood (THIS IS ENGLAND, YOUNG DRACULA).  I really wish I had bought this when I saw it in 2011, because now I can’t find it anywhere. This is one for the gorehounds!

— JEREMY LOWE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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