Slice

You will never find the bollocks again after watching the graphic ballsack-cutting anthology horror film Slice, conceived and written by Chet Turner, Nick Iway, Dustin Mills, and Austin Shell, and directed by Iway, Mills, Shell, and Dylan M Shell. The wrap-around story, the one that leads to all the others, is set in an addiction recovery group. There, people like Damoin (Joe Piazza), Justin (Dave Parker), and Zoe (Kenzie Phillips) tell their stories of being strung out and all the horrible things they did to pay their drug bills. This leads to three tales being told, all about men who, because of their hunger for drugs or fame, get into situations where they are asked to voluntarily relinquish their testicles for various reasons.

A man in a black hoodie talks over drinks beside a graffiti-covered wall in Slice.

“He is given the address of a strange house, where rich people offer him a large sum of money if he gives up the family jewels.”

One guy is going to get murdered if he doesn’t pay his drug dealer back the thousands of dollars he owes for heroin and heroin accessories. He is given the address of a strange house, where rich people offer him a large sum of money if he gives up the family jewels. Another tale is of a bass player who had scored a sweetheart guest spot in the line-up of the metal band Krime. He is offered a chance to become a permanent member of the band; he just needs to do what his bandmates did: lop off his own nuts. Another guy is also strung out on drugs, and a gal he is screwing tells him about a doctor who will pay him a lot of money for his balls. And in the shadows, dark figures in cloaks gather around as the snipping commences.

If you dare cross over to the indie side of the tracks, this is the kind of far-out happening you can only find here. Yes, Slice is that kind of party, the kind where they cut your sack off and stick it in the mashed potatoes. What intrigued me was the whole drugs jazz, and Slice shows you how drug horror has no boundaries, just like the real thing. The middle story, with the spilling your marbles for rock ‘n roll, was the perfect variation on the theme, as fame is the ultimate drug. The antics of the metal band, and their fans, border on hard cheese at times, but that’s what gives ripe metal its umami tang. But it is different from the first and third story, which are all drugs, drugs, drugs. So we have a studded leather sandwich between two slices of junkie bread.