Gore Whore

This is a hard one to be mad about, because, if we're being totally honest...I genuinely kinda love this.

It's one of those "so ridiculous it's great" examples, because there's not really anything super outstanding or downright original about it, design wise, but it's also so out there that I can't help but appreciate it on multiple levels that even I, quite frankly, don't fully understand. The cover is what it is, an attractive young woman covered in blood - a visual that a demented horror loving lesbian like myself can't help but adore - and the back has her in short shorts and a hawaiin-esque shirt while brandishing a pistol, ready to smoke anyone who comes near her. Clearly, a woman after my own heart. She might eat that heart, but hey, that's the price you pay for love I guess. Then we've got the screenshots which, aside from the first and third, are pretty spectacular in and of themselves because for once, even outside of context and regardless of purpose, they're just fantastic visuals to behold. A scientists sitting in a pool of blood screaming in agony at his recently severed legs, while a headless man approaches in another, arm outreached for either his next victim or just a friendly girlscout to help him across the street.

Sadly, I cannot find much information on this film. There's no Wikipedia entry for it, and when searching I came across a rental for it from a website called Family Video which, honestly, is more ironically hilarious than it is informative. Gore Whore! Fun for the whole family! So, with nowhere else to turn, I looked up the Writer, Director AND Producer, Hugh Gallagher. Clearly a man with such a trifecta of credits on a single feature would have a long and prosperous career, right?

Turns out, this isn't his first foray into the Gore Genre. In fact, it seems to be his bread and butter. He's also known for movies with such titles as "Gorotica", "Gorgasm" and "Dead Silence". Though, his IMDB doesn't list anything after 1999, so either he realized his brand of work was going to not survive the new millenium, or he himself ended up a corpse. He was also a producer on films called "Lust For Frankenstein" and "Exploding Angel", both of which sound incredibly entertaining in the worst kinds of ways. So, once more, we're at a dead end, and instead we'll have to turn our attention to the box itself. Which is fine, because there's more than enough there to pick at.

One immediate fault I can find is in the description for the plot, wherein it states the lead woman, the Gore Whore if you will, is actually a dead prostitute and has stolen a formula that's actually a reanimation agent that, with the consumption of human blood, is keeping her alive. This of course begs the question of whether or not the scientist she was working with reanimated her himself, because if not, then how did she come back to life? Of course I recognize the problems with arguing the merits of plot intricacies of a movie titled "Gore Whore", but still.

And while this secondary box I found from Sub Rosa Cinema is, without a doubt, infinitely cooler, as it combines all the best parts into one beautifully rendered piece of artwork, I couldn't find a back for it, so this is all we get. Still, the title font, the artwork, the inclusion of the headless man and someone coming out of the ground fairly decomposed, plus our Gore Whore in question seductively licking blood off a knife? All good stuff. Solid work here. The inclusion of the decision to make the background faded and grey and rather colorless only makes the color choices on every other aspect pop all the more, so yeah, good job whoever put this together. You are a solid graphic designer, and I applaud you for your efforts, same with the person who actually made this piece of art, in the chance you somehow aren't just the same person. All in all, Gore Whore is nowhere near the worst on this blog, and in fact, is likely really high up on the list of best that I've featured here ever. It's not that it's totally great or original, but it's more that you can tell for once people actually put in effort, and that effort doesn't go unacknowledged or unappreciated. Effort, even bare minimum effort, is all I ever really ask for.

Don't get me wrong, this film probably is still pretty trashy and awful, but who knows maybe it's in a fun way instead of a plain unwatchable way, but at least, as far as box art goes, they really nailed not just the piece itself but also managed to do what most of these don't which is make it work within the context of the film it's for! You see this box art and you kind of just know what it's going to be about, and you read the blurb on the back and you think, "Yeah, this makes sense for what's here visually." Most of the boxes I feature here can't even hit that note 99% of the time, which is a real tragedy. So kudos to you, Gore Whore, for actually being a well made piece of work.

Hey, I can't hate stuff all the time, alright?