Effects

Shot in late October 1978, EFFECTS predates the slasher boom, co-initiated by FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) a couple of years later, and was being made just as John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978) debuted on screens. The fact that it seems to feature a number of what we now recognise as subgenre tropes (the POV shot of someone spying on a couple from behind trees in the woods) only goes to show how much proto-slashers from the earlier part of the 1970s laid the groundwork for the subgenre as it came to be known. Seemingly, a big influence on the film (which is based on the novel Snuff by Bill H. Mooney) was Michael Findlay and Roberta Findlay’s notorious SNUFF (1975); a movie released to a great deal of outrage (much of it orchestrated by the makers themselves for publicity reasons) after they tagged a specially filmed fake snuff scene onto the end of a low-budget Argentinian Mansonploitation film, THE SLAUGHTER (1971). SNUFF teased that the murders were real (the tagline being: “The film that could only be made in South America … where Life is CHEAP!”), but it was really just a typical carny-style bait-and-switch. However, the legend of snuff films persisted in urban lore throughout the 1970s. In EFFECTS, several characters debate whether the spectacle of gore without substance is enough. The cold reality is that the movie Lacey and his crew are making is purely driven by money and designed for a jaded audience; whether it’s drama or brutal reality, it is directed and shot with clinical detachment by a production studio with multiple monitors, operators, and seemingly impossible, omnipresent surveillance cameras. In many ways, it shares themes explored five years later by David Cronenberg in VIDEODROME (1983). The film closes with a shot of a cinema marquee reading “Lacey Bickel’s DUPED - The Snuff Movie” in lights. The film ultimately chooses not to comment on whether this passes as carny-type fakery to titillate, or whether real-life murders on camera have become an accepted form of entertainment for the American cinemagoer within its world.
 
EFFECTS was shot on 16mm with the kind of grit that marks it out as a Pittsburgh production (and features a number of George A. Romero collaborators and assistants, including Savini, who provides the film’s special effects and was co-produced Romero’s Latent Image). Although a product of its super-low $55,000 budget, the film stock gives it the kind of graininess that, at least visually, puts it only one step above the fake snuff loop shown in the film, which—intentionally or not—highlights the thin line between the two. Although certainly shot through with a sense of nihilism, it also works as both a fascinating, almost fly-on-the-wall glimpse behind the curtain of low-budget horror movie-making in the 1970s and a surprisingly effective suspense piece towards its conclusion. The film shares the fascination with conspiracy and deception that runs through many of that decade’s paranoia-driven thrillers, and—in its most effective touch—keeps you guessing as to who is in on the plan to make a real snuff movie and who are the unfortunate stooges. Once the cat is out of the bag, Dominic’s attempts to stay alive and find out what is really going on are genuinely exciting—with an almost stubbornly anti-genre production switching gears towards more of what an audience might expect from a conventional thriller movie.
 
Whilst it is true that EFFECTS generated its own kind of almost-legendary lore by virtue of never being released on VHS and therefore being little seen, there is a misconception that the film wasn’t released at all before Synapse rescued it for a 2005 DVD release. It did get a limited theatrical release in North America (blown up from 16mm to 35mm and trimmed for violence to secure an R-rating) and attracted some good notices (and some not-so-good ones). Pittsburgh critic Marylynn Uricchio reported on the film in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ahead of its premiere in the town in November 1979, saying, “‘Effects' is a challenging film, a conscious effort on the part of the makers to involve the audience in working out the story”. Adding, “The gore and sex, primary elements of that genre, are kept to a minimum. Yet the tenants of "Effects" are far more frightening than dripping blood could ever be”, and concluding “It is an intriguing, difficult and provocative film, yet it pays its due to the conventions of accepted cinema, and so remains entertaining.” The film won awards at the J. Hunter Todd’s Houston International Film Festival in late 1979 and was a finalist at the US Film Festival in Salt Lake City (the precursor to Sundance), although it attracted a fair amount of controversy, too. Reviewing the film for the Greater Miami International Film Festival, critic Bill Cosford, although dismissing it as a “shock” film, concluded, “Still, shock-film fans are going to love Effects. And so will anyone with a taste for ingenious filmmaking.”
 
EFFECTS was picked up by Stuart S. Shapiro and released theatrically by his International Harmony company in Tucson, Arizona, in April 1980 (a popular market for testing how well movies perform before committing to a wider release). Presumably, it didn’t test well enough to fund such a rollout, as its only other engagement was in its hometown in October 1980. However, critical opinion in Pittsburgh had curdled somewhat, with critic Ed Blank calling the film “loathsome” in The Pittsburgh Press, finishing his review by saying, “I'm puzzled by its R rating, given the high quantity of explicit violence, sex and language. "Effects" also provides a narrated on-camera lesson in how to take cocaine.”
 
Its ambiguities (it doesn’t neatly tie up all its loose ends) largely work in its favour. Despite a few technical flaws (the camera is out of focus at least once), EFFECTS remains a fascinating puzzle-box of a film that is just waiting to be opened by the uninitiated.