Dear God No! (2011)

Dear God No sees The Impalers, an outlaw motorcycle hang hell-bent on rape, murder and merriment, driven to a cabin in the North Georgia mountains, after an altercation (see: massacre) with another club. There they encounter a crazed anthropologist hiding a dark secret in his basement, and a flesh-devouring monster stalking the wilderness outside.

Directed and written by James Bickert, this flick ticks all the boxes for a decent grindhouse film – murder, rape, exploitation, nunsploitation, and boobs as far as the eye can see. But somehow he just didn’t get it quite right. I feel like he was spending too much time fulfilling the quotas of depravity and perversion to step back and consider if the film was actually any good. And realistically, it’s not.

It’s a shame that whilst I was expecting the violence and sex to be the main shockers (albeit the expected ones), I instead found myself jarred and dismayed mostly by the poor direction, and lazy script.

My issues with the script are thus – quite aside from not being able to hear what the fuck they’re talking about most of the time (which I appreciate is more a sound/enunciation issue), it’s so liberally punctuated with cursing it’s boring. When the first scene shows the decimation of a nun’s nether regions, something as banal as swearing constantly just becomes kind of tedious – it gives an impression of childishness and indolence on Bickert‘s part, and portrays the gang as a bunch of faceless idiots.

Pacing is obviously an issue with Bickert as well – some scenes felt unconsidered and rushed, whilst others were given too much screentime and presence, and realistically added nothing to the overall plot of the film – a prime example being the 5 MINUTE close-up topless dancing. I genuinely never thought I’d get bored of looking at dancing boobs, but here we are.

I’d also like to give a dishonourable mention to the ropey-as-all-fuck mother/daughter scene towards the apex of the house invasion – I won’t do you the disservice of ruining what I consider to be the only really shocking bit in the film by telling you what happens, however I do find myself questioning the morals and indeed sanity of the individual who thought that stuff up.

Plot-wise, the film seemed to centre around the degradation of women – with the only female parts being monsters, whores and victims – and everything else that happens seems to be concentrated around linking these exploitative scenes together. I didn’t find it offensive for that reason, but once again, a bit lazy and flat. In fact genuinely the only part of the film I found enjoyable were the scenes containing the Bigfoot-esque monster – what a costume! What a tour de force!

All in all, I would rate this film Not Very Good. It missed the mark on so many of the aspects that would have made it a truly great grindhouse film, and instead it made for dull viewing, and in my eyes, does a pretty poor job of paying homage to many much greater GH flicks that came before it. If you’re looking for something exceptionally gory and perverse, and don’t care too much for plot or acting talent, you’ve probably come to the right place – otherwise I’d give it a wide berth.

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