Mainstream character actor Marc Lawrence found himself blacklisted during the '50s and was forced to flee to Europe for a decade. On his return, he found himself producing and directing all kinds of low budget fare including PIGS, his only horror movie. This ultra-bizarre tale was made on a shoestring budget and pairs not one but two psychopathic characters in a very slow moving tale of murder and madness that's pretty predictable. Bizarrely the film fell foul of British censors although I don't really see why. The gore effects that pop up throughout the movie are shoddy and unrealistic with severed body parts oozing bright-red fake blood, although the cockroach running through the grue is pretty artistic and original.Beauty Toni Lawrence (daughter of the director) stars as Lynn, a girl who starts off getting raped by her dad. She murders him in self defence and is carted off to an insane asylum, escaping about five minutes later far too easily. Lawrence goes to live in the country, where she meets would-be suitors and inevitably ends up butchering them when they try to have sex with her or alternatively when she's reminded of her father. The film tries to get inside Lynn's mind and explore her disturbed character, so throughout we're subjected to cheesy childish rhymes and lots of disturbing squealing from the filthy pigs which send her insane. Lawrence isn't bad at all as the lead and is pleasing on the eye to boot.Her new housemate is crazy old Zambrini, played with sleazy relish by the director himself in an excellent little performance. Zambrini goes out grave robbing at night, finding corpses to feed to his beloved pigs. The pigs of the title are actually pretty disturbing, especially when they run around in the dark terrorising people, and the exploitation angle is played for all its worth. Unfortunately the rest of the characters are a bunch of stock clichés, like the dumb sheriff or the asylum guy, and the acting apart from the two leads is appalling. Generally, PIGS is a difficult film to sit through due to the snail-pace story and the poor production values. It's one of those films where everything happens in the dark and you end up with eye strain through trying to watch it. Irritating music and a stupid twist ending adds to the overall effect but PIGS not without charm; it manages to be disturbing and dumb in equal measure whilst the loony tag-team of the central pairing is enjoyable to watch.
... View MoreLadies and Gentlemen, the hall of 70's exploitation obscurity proudly presents "Pigs", a movie made by, made for and of course largely revolving on Pigs! Just in case you're looking for a totally incompetent yet strangely fascinating and one of a kind drive in class-sick, I warmly recommend this movie which Marc Lawrence (supportive cast member of such acclaimed classics as "Key Largo" and "The Asphalt Jungle") wrote, produced, starred in and directed entirely by himself! "Pigs", which is a much easier and equally appropriate title to use instead of the official "Daddy's Deadly Darling", blends two main story lines that are typical 70's exploitation guff (meaning: absurd and utterly tasteless), yet the wholesome feels refreshing and unique. The opening sequences introduce Lynn Webster. She's a beautiful and impressively voluptuous young girl who has just slain her father because he couldn't keep his hands to himself and a certain other body part inside his pants. One minor problem, however, Lynn refuses to accept her daddy is dead and she even escapes from the asylum to search for him. Why she desperately wants to be reunited with the guy who physically abused her is just one of the many weird kinks in the plot that remains unexplained and neglected. I guess it's because she's mentally unstable and those people tend to desire weird things. Anyway, she arrives at a remote countryside diner where funny farmer Zambrini employs her as a waitress. Zambrini has a couple of issues of his own, though. To a corpse he stole from the local morgue he explains how his pigs accidentally developed a taste for human blood. It started when they devoured a drunkard who fell asleep in their barnyard, but now they exclusively crave human flesh. The rest of the film is pure but amusing nonsense, with Lynn gradually losing whatever's left of her sanity and Zambrini desperately collecting corpses to keep his porkers satisfied. Jesse Vint stars as the handsome Sheriff investigating the odd events at Zambrini's farm and, like any other male character, he falls for Lynn's gorgeous rack. "Pigs" guarantees 80 minutes of uncompromising and demented 'Rednecksploitation' fun! Naturally it's a horrible film, complete with amateurish acting performances and dialogs that appear to have been written by the pigs, but trained admirers of cinematic 70's smut won't be able to resist it. The camera-work looks hideous, Marc Lawrence clearly never heard of editing and the make-up effects wouldn't even scare a child. "Pigs" also features a misfit but incredibly catchy theme song called "Somebody's Waiting For You" (misfit songs were almost obligatory in 70's drive-in classics) and the endlessly repeated "La la lalalla la la" tunes. Marc Lawrence donated the role of Lynn to his real-life daughter Toni, presumably to launch her career. It must have been awkward, for the both of them, to shoot all the sequences where she wears a revealing and too tight nightgown. Do I sense incestuous undertones? Sure, why not Everything goes in the wondrously twisted world of 70's exploitation, right?
... View MoreThis movie started out interesting. Kinda like "Chainsaw Massacure" with it's erieness of the way the characters played their parts and the way it made it looked like everyday life on the farm with a man and his pigs. Then it made a turn when the farmer tried to make the pigs eat a dead man. This dead man looked all too real and his makeup was terrible. Then another switch when an escape mental patient dicides to take a drive and ends up at the mans farm. Then the whole theme about the man feeding dead people to the pigs changes to the lady living at the farm and going phyco. Now whos the crazy one? The man or the lady? Thats when the film lost my intrest, it's all too strange how an old strange man that lets his pigs out at night squeeling to the neighbors has a young pretty lady hiding out in his barn. this movie has one too many flaws and twists.
... View MoreThis movie is about as simple as it gets. Basic, simplistic: the cinematic equivalent of a pair of white socks."Daddy's Deadly Darling" (or "Pigs", as I know it) deals with a psychotic young woman who escapes the asylum and works at a restaurant where the owner keeps man-eating pigs in his back yard and feeds people to them on occasion. This isn't a movie plot: it's a bad (like early '80s SNL bad) comedy skit in search of laughs. Sound scary? Moody, at best. Well-written? Like a Pauly Shore movie (and only HALF as entertaining). Acting? WHAT acting?Is there anything at all about this movie I can recommend? Well, you can buy the tape and record a couple of episodes of "Friends" on it. THEN you'd have something scary on tape.No stars. Nothing. I hate this movie and you should too, if you love real horror movies.Oink-oink, indeed.
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