ART OF THE DEAD

CONTAINS SOME MINOR SPOILERS

A cheerfully trashy low-budgeter with a surprisingly generous dollop of sex and blood, this almost feels like the cheapo ripoff response to the more high profile (if strangely underdistributed) Velvet Buzzsaw: the sort of thing Fred Olen Ray or Jim Wynorski would come up with three days after watching it. Strip out the satire on art pretensions, fill it with people you've never heard of and a couple of minor name guest stars (Tara Reid, Richard Grieco), and ramp up the sleaze, gore and nudity. The result is hardly a classic, but it's good nasty fun with an almost howlingly silly last act to commend it.

Art Of The Dead (was someone hoping casual shoppers might confuse it with Art Of The Deal?) centres around a set of seven animal paintings dating from the 1890s and illustrating each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Mystery surrounds the original artist Dorian Wilde (a clunking choice of name, though not as clunking as his occasional appearances as a pantomime Englishman), and everyone who has ever owned them ended up dead....

It's rubbish, obviously, but the graphic bloodshed and the pile-up of idiocies in the final reels make it much more enjoyable and entertaining as a Friday night schlocker than it should, or could, have been. And the paintings themselves are pretty impressive as well.

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