The Masturbating Gunman (AKA 'Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In The Lair Of The Naked Bikini').
This film, shot on a shoestring budget with the help of friends and family is a blast of insanity. The titular character is a superhero of sorts. he has crazy Kung Fu skills. he can rip out a man's still beating heart and show it to him. At one point he disembowels a fellow, then uses the intestines Indiana Jones whip style to disarm another foe. He's a deadly shot and can be very stealthy. The Gunman also has a finely attuned sense of smell, much like a blood hound. Well, a blood hound that focuses on panties. He can sniff a pair of underpants and immediately know that owner's height, age, weight, hair color, emotional state and more. He can then follow her scent to find her.
He sounds pretty unstoppable. And he would be, if not for his own private Achilles heel. The Masturbating Gunman's Kryptonite is self abuse, as it were. If he so much as glimpses an attractive woman, he has no choice but to start wanking immediately. He cannot stop until he reaches completion, spraying what looks to be gallons of semen all over (and often on his own masked face). This happens even in the middle of firefights.
The villain of the tale is Helmut. he's a local crime kingpin who leads a gang of thugs who all wear coveralls and ski masks. Helmut needs a virgin to impregnate. He believes that this will create a new messiah, who will overturn the current world order and create some kind of Utopia (it's unclear, but never mind).
His thugs scour the city and find only a single virgin. She's a Nun. She also happens to be the sister of The Masturbating Gunman. When Helmut's men kidnap her, she leaves behind her oddly sexy, silky, panties so that he brother can find her.
We follow our hero as he tries to track down his sister. In the meantime she has plans of her own. I don't want to spoil too much of the ending, as it is the most bonkers thing I have seen in a very long time. There's a Game of Death style sequence where instead of martial art masters, each level is another sexy topless woman slowing our intrepid jerker as he goes. There's semen used as a weapon. There's guns hidden in very unusual places. There's villain monolguing . There's just so much.
If you know the films of Mark Savage, you know that he is a deft and skilled director and that he always takes the work seriously, even when the plots are totally insane. That is apparent here, despite the used car level budget. There are sight and verbal gags galore. The actors are mostly playing it straight, which elevates the entire thing to something approaching believe-ability .
There's a very Takashi Miike feel to some of this. The gallons of semen could be directly in reference to the opening credits of Ichi the Killer but also feel a bit like the breast milk sequence in Visitor Q. The characters giving stoic looks in slow shots as the universe they exist in swirls into manic insanity also feels a little like Miiike and a little like Luis Bunel. Surrealism abounds.
This entire affair should be a disaster, and yet it works. It isn't going to be for most people; not even most people who enjoy low-budget exploitation flicks. But for the right people, the weird people, it's a glorious experience.
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