What looked like an unassuming screener ended up being a great surprise as I knew absolutely nothing about this flick going in. The movie opens with a guy trying to pick a girl up outside a bar only to have her reject him for a bad boy in a hot car. They speed away and end up in a quiet area of town where the guy forces himself on the girl using crass dialogue which leads to an unpleasant rape scene where he traps her head in a car window. The movie then takes a bizarre turn when the guy gets sucked into the girl's vagina leaving behind only a pile of clothes. This is in the first ten minutes and from here on things only get weirder.

Fiona Horsey stars as Helen, the girl with the carnivorous private parts. After the opening scene, she realizes that she needs to feed herself downstairs whenever the need arises so she turns to a life of prostitution to find her victims. This leads to a few gratuitous nude scenes that I was not expecting as Horsey is quite an attractive young woman. It also leads to more trouble when she eventually is kidnapped by a psycho who ties her to a metal bed frame and proceeds to have his way with her. Meanwhile, the rejected chap (Paul Conway) from the opening scene spends much of the movie trying to find Helen as he believes that she is his true love. His search leads him to a bar where he meets some Siamese twins and falls in love with the nerdy half of the duo. Things progress to some uncomfortable sex as the other half is quite mischievous and tragedy ensures thanks to an electric knife and a case of mistaken identity. This is around the halfway point of the movie and I don't want to say much more as there are many other surprises to come that keep getting more ridiculous. I am laughing as I write this and think about it.

This black comedy horror movie reminds me of movies like Bad Taste and Street Trash where you never know what is coming in the next scene. I could never have predicted that bank robbery and revenge would play into the plot nor would I have predicted the strange relationships that were established from people randomly meeting and getting involved with each other. When I popped this flick in, I also had no idea that at some point in the movie, I would see a guy go down on a girl only to have his tongue extend to about three feet long as he tries to remove it from her private parts. Although we never get to see what was actually lurking inside her killer pussy, it is almost worse imagining it.

Vagina Detata (just the phrase is enough to emasculate most guys) probably received the most attention in recent years with a flick entitled Teeth that came out in 2007. It is interesting that Angst was released four years earlier in and I had no idea it even existed. The subject also brings to mind the hard-to-find Brett Piper flick from 1996 called They Bite that combines Humanoids From The Deep with a hungry honeypot. In all honesty, the whole concept is quite disturbing and taboo but I am also surprised it was never touched on in some of the crazy Italian movies of the 80's.

Angst is the best example of this strange little subgenre and offers a lot more than its centerpiece concept. I love movies that are unpredictable but can also follow a somewhat linear structure. This one takes a bizarre concept and makes it a trait of one of a cast of strange characters rather than the focal point of the film. This type of writing is appreciated especially when there is care taken to ensure that the movie makes sense and that the actors are doing their jobs. Conway in particular gives a great performance as the awkward hero Dennis and made me think of Lionel from Dead Alive with a dash of Spud from Trainspotting. Horsey gives an excellent, yet relatively restrained performance given the subject matter. Director Wolfgang Buld brought both actors back in his subsequent movies Lovesick: Sick Love and Twisted Sisters. Century Media fans will dig the soundtrack that features Lacuna Coil, Tiamat, Moonspell, and others. (Josh Pasnak, 7/28/10)

Directed By: Wolfgang Buld.
Written By: Wolfgang Buld.

Starring: Paul Conway, Fiona Horsey, Beth Steel, Amy Steel.

aka: Penetration Angst.

Picture Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: You can tell this is a low-budget flick but it looks pretty decent.

Extras: Our review copy only contained a trailer but the retail version also contains a "making of" documentary as well.

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