This movie uses a VD awareness message as the gloppy wheat paste to bind together a mache of nude cavorting on the beach, comic-relief 'retards', big menacing guys standing around waiting for a fight scene that never comes (instead a lady of the night tickles them with a pitchfork), and Philip Michael Thomas doing a racial-pride shtick in his pre-pigment-fader youth. But how's he supposed to be sympathetic when he's such a jerk? He throws several tantrums during a five-minute hitch-hike, he grabs and yells at his patients then wonders why they run away. And for good measure, he's also an idiot - he kicks the sheriff in the nuts and leaves on the run, but stops off back at his place so he can talk into a tape recorder for about 45 minutes. The movie looks pretty good as long as nobody's trying to use lights, and it played like Erich Von Stroheim on a double bill with Frozen Scream. But just when you think you're in for an action-packed climax, you get five minutes of the kids sitting in a circle learning about the dangers of promiscuity. Followed by a death-by-supersonic-foghorn that is the most pathetic deus ex machina in the history of cinema.
Review of Stigma
