John Stockwell, the director of this unlovely and unlovable horror film, does have a certain diabolical talent in another disreputable field.
As the progenitor of such gloriously stupid entertainments as Blue Crushand Into the Blue, he has demonstrated that he is eminently capable of placing a camera before a lady in a bikini just before she jumps into a rock pool. It is not, I guess, as tricky as performing heart surgery or composing operettas, but the task may, perhaps, involve nuances beyond our understanding.
Paradise Lost- a film that would, most likely, have only limited appeal for John Milton - attempts to meld Stockwell's brand of shampoo-commercial cinema with the intestinal horror popularised by Eli Roth in Hostel. As in that picture, the story concerns the dissection of a party of largely ignorant, largely American tourists by inhabitants of some stubbornly foreign locale. Swimsuits rarely being worn in Slovakia, Mr Stockwell has taken his bevy of idiots to Brazil, where, after being involved in a bus crash, they get abducted by a greedy doctor in search of organs for transplant.
To be fair, some of the scenes that are actually supposed to be offensive achieve that aim comfortably. The forced removal of a kidney belonging to one previously perky young lady may, in particular, cause even hardened horror fans to cover their eyes.
For the most part, however, Paradise Lostis revolting by accident. The gestures towards socio-political commentary fail miserably. The reduction of the locals to either victims or psychopaths is embarrassing. And the director's obsession with nude midriffs - never particularly healthy - takes on sinister dimensions when those sections are being repeatedly sliced open by scalpels.
What did the devil say in that other Paradise Lost? "Better to rule in hell then serve in heaven." On this evidence it seems unlikely Stockwell will manage either.
