Spare Parts - October FrightFest

released in its own right as it is prime scuzzy bar room rock. All woman band Ms.45 are going down a storm but when an oaf gets too close to singer Amy (Michelle Argyris) and gropes her they literary and metaphorically they tear apart the venue in the ensuing bar fight.
After the fight there’s a minor confrontation with said oaf and mates. Intervening supposedly to help them out Sam (Jason Rouse) actually antagonises them later on as the band are forced off the road.

The cops arrive and put out an APB on the car in the meantime they offer to take the band and the car to a garage to get it fixed. Tricked into a sealed room the women are overcome by fumes but not killed. They are then surgically altered with limbs removed and replaced by weapons.

Then unprepared they are forced out into a scrapyard arena built from cars and filled with a mostly male blood hungry crowd. Lorded over by The Emperor (Julian Richings) who goes into some nonsense about appeasing the gods before the band are thrust into the arena against a pretty lame looking bunch who are promptly dealt with though not without loss.

Sam has taken a liking to Emma (Emily Atalo) allowing her own room and maidservant, and gives her a guitar which is problematic as her strumming hand is either a weapon or bone. But she still has to train and so there’s Spartacus inspired training sessions as the fighters adjust to the bigger weapons. This in turn means harder opponents including the bikers they dealt with back at the bar. In the meantime, Tim (Morgan Bedard) Emma’s boyfriend is on her trail.

Spare Parts is a rollocking good fun horror with surprisingly more character depth and development than one might expect from this type of film with the festering sibling rivalry between Emma and Amy and the quieter interband relations between Cassie (Kirinia Stanton) and Jill (Chelsea Muirhead).

And this isn’t just dumb fun as the script from David Murdoch and Svet Rouskov have some barbs about male chauvinism and exceptionalism with Richings revelling (as a cut-price Caesar) in the patriarchal cobblers he spouts as he’s ‘satisfied’ by hand in the bath.

But in the main this is about fights and blood keeping the baying mob around the arena happy, which Andrew Thomas Hunt directs with aplomb. Scrapyard Challenge indeed.

Spare Parts had its UK premiere on 23 October at the Arrow Video FrightFest.