The story of this film is a fairly basic one. A psychopath serial rapist kidnaps a slim brunette and holds her captive in a storage room. He then strips her naked and subjects her to all manner of groping, fondling and forced participation in sexual acts. But each time she refuses one of his advances, he promises that he’ll take his rage out on someone else.
He then goes out and films the act of kidnapping, raping and murdering another woman at random. He makes his captive brunette watch these films afterward, and tells her that if she refuses again, he’ll kill another innocent woman. And so, in this manner, he slowly convinces her to give up more and more of her dignity and reluctance, eventually having her surrender all of herself to him.
Sounds great so far, right? Well, the only problem is that it’s not managed all that well, and the end result is far more of a snooze-fest (despite TONS of nudity) than any kind of scandalous treat.
In fact, the nudity in Captive Audience is the only real saving grace. There are several women on display in this movie, all of them performing full-nude scenes with frequent close-ups and actual breast-squeezing. But unfortunately, someone seems to have forgotten to tell them that they’re being kidnapped and raped against their will, because for the most part, they simply strip down without complaint and look mildly embarrassed without ever struggling. The one exception is the final victim, a woman who starts her scene with a nice interlude in the shower. Now this woman actually managed to put up a decent show of fighting and struggling, but all it really managed to achieve was the stark highlighting of the absence of this element from the other performances.
Captive Audience also had major issues when it came to pacing. The nude scenes were always a treat to behold, but more often than not, they were simply dragged out too long and with too little variety. I mean, sure, it’s nice to see a hot naked chick vaguely pretending to struggle against her bonds. But if you keep the camera on her, and don’t vary the action one iota for nearly 10 minutes, I’m gonna start yawning. And unfortunately, that kind of fixed-action philosophy seems to be prevalent throughout Captive Audience. They’ll start off with a great idea for a scene, get a hot naked chick to play it out, then drill the audience with that same image for so long that it actually becomes a bore to watch.
The audio is also borderline non-existent. Most scenes are completely silent except for a boring soundtrack overlay, and on the few occasions when the killer or his victim actually manage to speak a few lines of dialogue, it’s a bit spotty and hard to make out.
So once again, here I am, left with a dilemma. I actually do like this movie, at least in principal. And I think the basic concept is well worth being explored. I also think the women Director Bill Zebub found for this flick are absolutely smoking, and the sheer glut of explicit nudity is a very, very welcome thing. But the fundamental structure of this film is so poorly realized that it’s hard to give it anything approaching a passable score.
So while I’d certainly be interested in seeing more of this kind of action, and I’m genuinely curious to see if Mr. Zebub can sharpen his skills to create a more captivating entry in this sort of sub-genre, for this particular piece of film, I’m going to have to fall on the far end of the scoring spectrum.
Director: Bill Zebub
Production: Bill Zebub Productions
Distribution: MVD Entertainment Group
This film receives a score of:
4 out of 10
