Blu-ray Review – Spetters

Paul Verhoeven is known as a cinematic provocateur. He's a filmmaker with a defined taste for the extreme, using sex and violence as mere building blocks in his features, which typically amplify the human experience into big screen opera, making a mess of emotions and body parts. 1980's "Spetters" comes before Verhoeven's incredible American run of "RoboCop," "Total Recall," and "Basic Instinct," returning to a time when he was a burgeoning Dutch helmer with plenty of spunk to spray on audiences, funneling his enthusiasm for untamed characters into a story of youthful energy, tragedy, and bad behavior. Imagine if Verhoeven directed "Porky's," and that's close to the viewing experience of "Spetters," which highlights the youth of Rotterdam as they try to make their way in the world, landing on the worst possible personal decisions imaginable along the way. Overkill is a big deal to Verhoeven, and the feature tries to inflate common problems into major incidents of horror, retaining the unmistakable vision of a helmer who excels at creating screen danger, but often doesn't know when to quit. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com