If you've seen Wes Craven's Last House On The Left, then you've pretty much seen David DeFalco's Chaos. Although Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham's script isn't credited anywhere in the movie credits, the source of inspiration for this film is obvious from the start to the point where this film is almost a remake (ironic considering that Last House On The Left itself was a remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring and that Craven has recently approved and will be producing a big budget version of his original film soon enough – truly genre cinema is cannibalizing itself!).

The story revolves around three guys – Chaos (Kevin Gage), Frankie (Stephen Wozniak) and Swan (Sage Stallone) who use their pal Daisy (Kelly Quann) to trick motorists into stopping to help her – the fact that Daisy isn't afraid to use her feminine charm to her advantage in this regard ensures that there's a fairly steady stream of people willing to 'help' whenever she needs them there. Of course, once they stop, Chaos, Frankie and Swan inevitably drag them off into the woods where they are robbed of whatever valuables and/or drugs they might have on them and left there, sometimes dead, sometimes not. The cops know who Chaos is, he's the ringleader and they're aware of him which mean's he's a wanted man, but that doesn't stop him from doing his thing anyway.

Enter two pretty young woman, Angelica (Maya Barovich) and Emily (Chantal Degroat) who have left college for the weekend to take a weekend camping trip out in the woods. When the two ladies spot Swan wandering around they figure he can hook them up with some ecstasy and so they make the mistake of approaching him and the even bigger mistake of going back to his cabin where Chaos and the rest of this motley crew are waiting for them. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens next, but in case you're oblivious, they're beaten and raped (and no, that's no more of a spoiler than anything that the PR guys from Razor have written on the back of the packaging for this DVD).

Chaos is a tough movie to get a grip on. On the surface it's an ugly, vile piece of work with absolutely no socially redeeming qualities whatsoever. It's shameless in its graphic portrayal of sexual violence and it pulls no punches in showing you exactly what you think it will show you. On the other hand, there's no denying that this film will at least make you feel something, even if it's nothing more than pity for the two girls who are unfortunate enough to trust a stranger in the woods. DeFalco prefaces the movie with a text scrawl that states that Chaos is a cautionary tale, a warning in hopes that it will prevent crimes like the ones depicted in the film from happening in real life. While this motive is certainly questionable (in fact it's probably a load of crap) it follows the tradition of similar introductions like the one at the beginning of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and puts us in the frame of mind where it's not that difficult to imagine these types of events happening in the world around us.

Retro-style intros can't hide some of the acting, however. Sage Stallone is decent enough as Frankie and Kevin Gage has got some screen presence as the title character but there are a few too many spots in the movie where the acting falls a bit short of where it probably should have been had the filmmaker's really wanted to suspend our disbelief for the duration of the film. The depiction of the rape and sadism in the film, however, is handled very well in that it is effective in making you hurt along with the characters. It's not at all tasteful and not at all classy, it's shown as rough and horrific and it does go much farther than it needs to but that's the point – this is an exploitation movie after all, don't let the 'cautionary tale' warning fool you.

The director's cut as presented on this DVD is three minutes longer than the theatrical version of the film though what is missing from the edited version also available on the DVD is not specified anywhere on this release.

Video:

For a low budget film, Chaos looks pretty good in the 1.33.1 fullframe transfer that it's received on this DVD, though whether or not that is the proper aspect ratio is questionable. Color reproduction is strong with the reds looking distinct and not bleeding into the other colors and the black levels staying deep. A little bit of line shimmering and aliasing is present but there aren't any problems with compression artifacts and only mild edge enhancement rears its head. Flesh tones look lifelike and natural and there's never anything harsher than fine grain present nor is there any print damage save for the odd speck that appears here and there.