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Released by: Culture Shock Releasing
Released on: February 14th, 2023.
Director: Victor Bonacore
Cast: Erin Brown, Allison Egan, Linnea Quigley, Roni Jonah, Michael Shershenovich
Year: 2022
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Thrust! – Movie Review:
Directed by Victor Bonacore, who co-wrote with actress Erin Brown (formerly known as Misty Mundae) and Hannah Neurotica, 2022's Thrust! is set in a drugged out post-apocalyptic urban setting ruled by a girl gang. Here we meet Aloe (played by Brown) and Vera (Allison Egan), two lovers on a mission to track down and assassinate a man named Dirtbag Mike (Michael Shershenovich) who has recently escaped from prison. Men are essentially persona non grata in this world, they essentially exist only as servants, so taking out someone like Dirtbag Mike makes total sense in the context of the setting. After all, not only is he a man, but he's also... a dirtbag.
Their quest takes them across this bombed out landscape (actually modern day Ohio!), they run into conflict and occasionally have to fight their way out and deal with various female wrestlers and a lunatic named Mother Nature (Linnea Quigley in a cameo role) until, two hours later and with some help from a punk kid (played by Bonacare), the movie comes to its surprisingly intense finale.
Funded through an Indiegogo campaign and produced entirely independently, Thrust! is well-made in so many ways but definitely could have benefited from some more judicious editing choices. At a hundred and twenty minutes, the movie does feel too long, even when it is consistently delivering the trash movie goods. It's loaded with sleazy visuals, some solid nudity, impressive gore, crazy costumes, insane characters and some pretty fun performances and it's set to a pretty great soundtrack. For a low budget picture it has a lot of production value and the location work is absolutely spot on.
Based on the short story ‘Shitfucked: A Vile Love Story’ by writer Hannah Neurotica, there’s a lot of pretty impressive creativity on the screen throughout. The costume and makeup work harkens back to vintage punksplotation movies like Class Of 1984 or Intrepidos Punks, which is pretty much the perfect look for this story. The cinematography is also much better than you’d likely expect out of a movie made on a modest budget, full marks for the crew behind the camera for using some interesting angles and strong lighting and color work to bring the story to life as effectively as they do.
The acting is also pretty solid. Michael Shershenovich plays his role really well, creating a truly sleazy character, the kind you probably wouldn’t want anything to do with in real life but who is a blast to watch in an exploitation movie. Quigley is fun in her role, really bringing things over the top, though again, it’s a cameo, so she doesn’t get a ton of screen time, though she does make the most of it. Brown and Egan are, understandably, the stars of the show and both not only look great here, but they deliver some pretty impressive work. You’ve got to appreciate the commitment that pretty much everyone in the cast shows here, it really does feel like everyone is giving their all and while some of the acting from the supporting cast is uneven, it almost doesn’t matter when things go as over the top as Thrust! does.
Bonus points for pretty girls on roller-skates and for delivering an ending that you probably will not see coming.
Thrust! – Blu-ray Review:
Thrust! arrives on a 50GB region free Blu-ray disc with the feature presented in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.78.1. Shot digitally, the movie looks excellent. There are no problems with compression artifacts and detail always looks nice and strong. Colors are replicated really well, from the garish colors of a girl’s green stockings to the purple and red in the evening sky, while black levels and skin tones always look just fine.
The 24-bit English DTS-HD 2.0 track is also of very good quality. The levels are properly balanced throughout and dialogue is always easy to understand and follow. The music used in the movie sounds effectively powerful and there are no problems with any hiss, distortion or sibilance. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.
Extras include a commentary with stars Erin Brown and Allison Egan that offers up a lot of information about what it was like making the movie. They talk about how certain scenes changed between what we see on screen and how they were originally envisioned, how some of the quirky details in the movie came to be, how much they appreciated working with the other cast members in the movie, what order different scenes were shot in, how some of the cast members featured in the movie came to be in it, details on the locations used in the movie, Quigley's work in the movie, some of the metaphors that add some depth to the movie memories of shooting specific scenes, getting a visit from the cops while shooting a fairly gory scene, trying to get Jim Van Bebber to play a role in the movie but his declining because the movie was "too woke" and lots more.
The End Of Men featurette is comprised of over three hours of behind the scenes footage that shows off some of the Dayton, Ohio locations that were used for the shoot. It covers everything from the first photo shoot that was done all the way through production itself, some of the musical performances featured in the movie and more. It’s all presented fly on the wall style without any formal interviews or anything.
Origins is a fourteen minute piece featuring Hannah Forman and Ami Goodheart where they talk about how Thrust started out as an all-female punk rock band in the nineties. They talks about how the band was formed and tells some stories about their heyday, how the band inspired the story, which was never published, and how that story then in turn became the movie, thoughts on the characters and differences between the original story and how things were portrayed in the movie.
Scary Mary's Sinema is a collection of all of Scary Mary's home movies running just shy of fifty minutes in length. Here we get a few different short films - Hellfire (where Mary humiliates a man at gun point while strutting about in a blue gown), Raw Footage (where Mary brandishes a pink gun and takes her top off before getting into some foot festishy stuff with a guy on the floor). These are odd, shot on a camcorder videos set to ambient noise music.
Movie Music And Soundtrack Stuff is a thirty-three minute featurette with the guys from Dirty/Clean who talk about getting their start doing a Duran Duran tribute act, how their work evolved pretty quickly from there, what they tried to bring to the movie, their feelings on synth rock, working with Victor Bonacore, what went into scoring the movie and how their creative process fit into that. We also get interviews with Mike Hunchback and Calean Wyant and Erica Rodriguez-Wyant who also contributed music to the project who give their thoughts on their contributions to the movie.
Thrust Weekend is a forty-five minute piece that documents different events and live performances that were held to celebrate the launch of the movie. Mike Hunchback performs here as do Calean Wyant and Erica Rodriguez-Wyant, and after that we get interviews with Lovari, Mike Shershenovich, Scarlett Storm and Rowyn Richards about how much fun it all was. There's also a cast and crew Q&A here held at a screening of the movie to finish things off.
Yas Scream Queens is a thirteen minute piece featuring Linnea Quigley and Sadie Tate where they talk about some of their roles and which roles were fun to make, doing burlesque, meeting Bonacore and coming to work with him and why they like working with him and then what it was like working with him on Thrust!, as well as how it all came to be.
The disc also contains a twenty-five minute short film titled ‘Triangle’ that is available with optional commentary from director Victor Bonacore and composer Caleab Wyant. The story sees a guy who thinks he is the last man on Earth trying to find food for the dolls that keep him company. While out scavenging, he meets a woman (Erica Rodriguez-Wyant) in the woods holding a triangle. While all of this plays out we see some of Bonacore's early amateur SOV projects that serve as flashbacks. He's then visited by a woman dubbed Patches (Lacie Trout), a guy dubbed Doom (Aaron Williams) and a few others all in his backyard, and we're left to decide if this is really happening or if it is all in the man's head.
As to the commentary, this is clearly a very personal project for Bonacore, who wears a shirt that his father got for him in the film. He notes that he and Erin Brown, who also appears in the movie, are involved, talks about how the short was made for a compilation based on the producer giving each filmmaker a symbol to work off of, how his father had just passed away before the movie was made and how it was shot during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, using Dayton, Ohio as a post-apocalyptic setting, the significance of some of the items that show up in the movie, working in actual anti-police brutality protests and memories of his girlfriend's death into the movie.
Finishing up the extras are a trailer for Thrust!, trailers for a few other Culture Shock Releasing titles (Devil Rider, Raw Nerve, Video Murders,)
Thrust! - The Final Word:
Despite a bit of a bloated running time, Thrust! generally works and works well at that. The direction is strong, the production values really stand out and the locations on perfect. Throw in some impressive and committed performances and a whole lot of insane creativity, and you’ve got a movie worth checking out. The Blu-ray edition from Culture Shock Releasing is a strong one, presenting the movie in a very nice presentation and on a disc loaded with interesting extra features.