Terrible low-budget shot-on-video horror movies fall into three distinct categories: so bad it's good; so bad it makes you want to tear your own eyes out to remove the vileness forever imprinted upon your retinas; and so bad it makes you want to tear the eyes out of the unscrupulous sobs who made and released this godless monstrosity upon the world. Sean MacArthur's opus "Experiments In Torture" falls safely into that third category.The title is all too apt in that "Experiments In Torture" is indeed an experiment in torture; the only ones who should watch this abomination are blind people, terror suspects, and people who feel the need to atone for some sin they committed in the past.A bunch of vapid, slutty, amoral strippers (as opposed to "virtuous strippers", I guess) agree to be a part of some mysterious rich guy's fetish film and head out to his remote lakeside cabin for the weekend to make some quick cash. Little do they know they're actually being set-up by three sadistic killers who are in actuality making a snuff-film...I think. I don't really know, this thing is such a muddy, jumbled, poorly shot mess I might have missed a "plot-point" (for lack of a better term) or two along the way, but I think that's pretty close. The only ones who can save them are the hot-headed, overprotective brother of one of the strippers, the bouncer of the nightclub where they work, and some random guy who has some unexplained foreknowledge of the killers. Naturally, one of the three is in cahoots with the killers and things don't go too smoothly for our heroes, leaving the job of saving the day up to another stripper who had previously escaped the psychos after they killed her friend and she threw acid in the face of one (for some reason she didn't tell the police and ended up in a loony bin instead, or maybe she did tell the cops and they didn't believe her and that's why she's in the loony bin).There is not a single redeeming feature in this truly Godawful excuse for a film. The lighting is so terrible that most of the time you cannot even tell what's going on. The sound is atrocious, the make-up effects impoverished, the story ridiculous, the acting... nonexistent. Never, ever EVER in ten+ years of watching low-budget movies horror and otherwise have I seen such terrible, terrible acting. There is not a single professional actor--or even a remotely talented amateur--to be found in this dreg. The strippers are such a vacuous bunch of unlikeable airheads I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out they were really just a bunch of strippers the production crew hired to be in the film (but unfortunately weren't paid enough to do what they do professionally (get naked) on screen). No "stripper with a heart of gold" here; they'll all just a bunch of skanks and whores. Characterization? Physical features are about all there is in terms of personality.Things happen without any explanation of any kind. It feels like entire scenes are missing or were just never filmed because they ran out of time or money or both.I'm all for independent cinema; compared to most of the mainstream crap that comes out of Hollywood it's a welcome departure and sometimes can be genuinely entertaining and tell a good story. The invention of the digital camera in the 1990's opened a new door to an entire generation of wannabe filmmakers. Unbareable crap like this, which is all too common, is the downside of that. For every diamond in the rough, there's just a bunch of cat turds. For every truly talented young filmmaker, there is a Sean MacArthur, who apparently dropped out of the Burger King school of Film-making and then decided to made "Experiments In Torture" one day because they shut off his cable and he was out of macaroni & cheese and his mom wouldn't loan him two hundred bucks to pay his light bill and because, darn it, there just wasn't anything else to do that day!

I can't believe movies like this are even made. Women are tortured, raped, trafficked, and abused every day, and somehow this is entertainment? It's appalling. I looked up a website for indy films, and was horrified to see this crap included in the listing. Men are such hypocrites. They love to go to strip clubs, but strippers are then viewed by men to be less than human, deserving of whatever harm comes their way. I hate this nonsense, but more and more I think it would be great to have the tables turned and watch men get raped, tortured, mutilated and degraded. Seems fair to me! I genuinely hope this movie didn't generate any revenue.

I waited for some (other) fool to return this film so I could rent it, that I might review it in hopes of getting some ideas for a paper on horror genre films. (only one copy at video store - I now know why.) Absolutely the worst film I have ever seen, worse than Attack of the Killer Tomatoes...which was at least honest in its sense of mockery.Yet worse than every collective film featuring Diane Keaton's deadpan, mouth breathing camera invitation - worse even than Woody Allen, who somehow convinced the director to allow Scarlett Johansson, in "Scoop," to hop onto a stool in the restaurant scene, while the voyeuristic Woody glared at her boob-shake (magnificent, by the way) and admire their turbulence - for the benefit of only the camera - with nary a thing to do with the story line.This is yet worse.Perhaps you have heard of Liverwurst, a sausage product that might be enjoyed on hearty German bread, often served with hot mustard.Then, there is "Braunsweiger" the Americanized food-factory version - it is a meat mixture "spread"(yum) made of pork liver and pork parts.Imagine pig-face meat and various organs blended together with dried milk, corn syrup and a multitude of chemical additives, extruded from a factory blender into a plastic tube wrapper, which absolutely fails to approximate true liverwurst.This film is worse than Braunsweiger.Now, imagine drinking a thirty-pack of crap American beer (which I would never do, but, just for now...imagine the pain....)Then imagine awakening to a hangover and to a breakfast of a sloppy Braunsweiger sandwich on white bread and yellow hot dog mustard - while watching "Experiment in Torture."Now, if you are that gullible; you will have experienced...MOVIEWURST.For the love of God, how the hell did this ever make it onto DVD?I produce wedding videos. This movie is more insufferable than the canon of every wedding/reception, chicken dancing, garter tossing foolery than I have ever filmed.The screenwriter and director should have their eyelids propped wide and be made to watch this mess.Now, there is an "Experiment in Torture." Wow.Bad.

I blame Eli Roth: he made shed-loads of cash from his positively mediocre Hostel movies, and a whole slew of wannabe torture/porn movie-makers crawled out of the woodwork to follow in his wake, hoping to emulate his success. Experiment in Torture is one of these copycat films, and is quite possibly the worst (yet), having been made by a director with only a fraction of the talent of Mr. Roth (scary, but true), and starring a no-talent cast destined for obscurity.In this dire, amateurish, scare-free mess, a bunch of strippers (some hot, some skanky) are lured to a remote cabin for the weekend, where they expect to be paid handsomely to appear in a fetish video. However, once there, they fall foul of a maniac who drugs and tortures them.Terrible acting, coupled with horrible, horrible camera-work, a lousy script which ultimately makes little sense, and acting that'll make you cringe, all go to make watching Experiment in Torture a rather torturous experience in itself. Admittedly, director Sean MacArthur doesn't wimp out on the nudity and gore, but the whole shebang is so poorly pieced together that nothing much could save this one from stinking to high heaven.The first half of the movie feels like it was badly improvised, with endless dull scenes of yakkety-yak from the bimbos, and practically zero action. The latter half is an unfathomable, almost unwatchable mess that tries to compensate for being confusing with some nasty blood-letting (a broken leg, an arm slicing, a beheading, plus assorted masochistic mayhem featuring a blowtorch and power-tools).The makers of this trash would love to think that it's the unrelenting violence that makes watching it unbearable, but it's not: it's everything else!