Released by: Anchor Bay
Released on: 9/18/2012
Director: Michael Biehn
Cast: Michael Biehn, Jennifer Blanc, Danielle Harris, Ryan Honey
Year: 2011
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The Movie:
As a hermit way out in the middle of nowhere, Kyle (Michael Biehn) keeps to himself in his tiny little cabin in the woods. A quiet night of relaxing is interrupted by the screams of a terrified woman in need of assistance. Reluctantly, he lets her in and after calming her down a bit, he gets her to tell him what's going down. Annie (Jennifer Blanc) tells Kyle about her friend Mary (Danielle Harris) being murdered by a policeman while they were all partying in the woods. Now the cop and his narc cop buddy are chasing her, no doubt to silence her forever. Once Kyle learns that the police are involved, he wants nothing to do with her and her problem.

But before long, the two cops show up at his door looking for Annie. Harrison (Ryan Honey) and Cooger (Denny Kirkwood) suspect he's hiding her, and are there under the false pretense of a murder investigation. There's been a string of murders of young women and they suspect a woman hiding in the woods has something to do with the murders. Kyle gets rid of them, since he seems to trust policemen less than a stranger making claims of killer cops, but he still doesn't believe Annie. When she takes him to where her body was, and its missing, an earring left behind convinces him she's telling the truth. They go back to his cabin and have steamy sex (??), but everything isn't kosher, and the return of Harrison changes the game. Kyle is forced to reveal a dark side of himself, one Harrison probably wishes he hadn't seen. But Harrison is no slouch either, and is just as dark when he gets the upper hand. The story becomes one of survival for all four players involved, and things get pretty desperate.

This movie definitely has its moments. A healthy amount of sleaze fuels the movie's beginning with Danielle Harris getting boned, looking almost at first like a softcore porno (except that the guy railing her has his pants on). And then later on, a lengthy and well-lit sex scene fills the screen. Lots of violence too, brutal at times, with an impressive fistfight to the death. The actors are doing most (if not all) of the stunt work and they sell it well. So it's got many of the main ingredients to make a good little exploitation thriller, which is the genre they were obviously going for, and it works for the most part. The action is good, the boobs are nice, and the blood flows freely.

There's a couple of spots that don't quite add up though, such as the fact that Kyle and Annie do the nasty mere hours (if that) after they meet AND on the same night Annie saw her friend murdered and ran for her life to get away. That doesn't seem to be something a person in severe trauma mode would do and is really out of place. Now, if the filmmakers were trying to make the audience wonder if she's trying to pull one over on Kyle, that would make sense, save for one fact. They show Mary getting killed in the first few minutes and so there's no doubt that she's running from crooked cops. Maybe if they kept that part quiet until later in the movie it would have helped with the mystery and making the audience wonder who the real victim is. But instead they lay it all out up front, and give some back story of the girls with flashbacks, but the flashbacks don't really amount to anything more than filler. Rather than really making you think, the opposite is the case taken and the movie becomes more of a stare-and-see kind of story.

Still, Biehn's directorial debut, and with the help of his wife Jessica Blanc in the producer chair (yeah his real wife, which wasn't known to this viewer until watching the making of…no wonder they seemed into each other during their unlikely love session), makes for an entertaining time once it hits its top speed. The ending sticks the crowd with twist you might see coming, but its done well enough to keep it from being typical.

Video/Audio/Extras:
Anchor Bay puts out a great looking disc with its Blu-ray of The Victim (aspect ratio is 1.78:1). Detail is sharp and the blacks are nice and deep. The colors look subdued due to color correction (that green look that's so popular with the kids these days), which takes away from the movie's aspirations to be a grindhouse homage. It just looks too slick. The audio is a 5.1 Dolby TrueHD track and sounds great. Plenty of low-end rumbling and sound effects to keep the woofer busy, and the balance sounds fine. Music doesn't become the enemy when it kicks in, which is always nice.

For extra material, there's a making of that's pretty darn good. Aside from some “so-and-so is wonderful” moments there's some good stuff in here. One item of interest in particular concerns the massive fight between Kyle and Harrison (Biehn and Ryan Honey). They go too far with a choking scene and Biehn loses consciousness. They also talk about how they didn't have money for squibs, and how they solved that problem. The other item on the disc is a commentary by the director-producer, husband-wife team. She really provides some interesting detail and he points out all the things he would have done differently. It's actually a good commentary that for this viewer elevated the movie a bit. The two obviously put their hearts into their little movie and the commentary helps put that into a nice perspective.

The Final Word:
Boobs, blood, and Biehn…if that's not a combination that interests you then you have no soul. For those whose ears perk up at the sound of such a combo, The Victim is worth a try. Maybe not a blind-buy, but certainly worth a once-over at the very least.