231. Fleshburn

231. Fleshburn (1984)
Director: George Gage
Writers: George Gage and Beth Gage based on the novel by Brian Garfield
From: Cult Cinema

A man institutionalized for holding four people in the desert until they died kidnaps the four psychologists who voted to institutionalize him and holds them in the desert.

I have literally nothing to add beyond that capsule description. What I’ve listed there is the movie. The first five minutes while the credits are running is the villain Duggai escaping the mental institution. Then the movie briefly checks in on each doctor learning Duggai’s escaped, the check-in coming shortly before Duggai pops up and seizes them. By the half-hour mark, he’s left them in the desert to die. If the desert doesn’t kill them or they try to escape, he’ll shoot them.

Then nothing. No character studies, no plotting to escape, no use of psychology by psychologists to try to figure out a means of escape. One character had quit being a psychologist to become a forest ranger and he gives the rest of the quartet instructions on how to survive. Eventually, another character goes off looking for a salt lick. Several days later, the forest ranger goes looking for him. They find each other, keep walking, and eventually find the highway. Only Duggai finds them at that point, kills salt lick and ties ranger to a rock to die. Ranger cuts himself free, though, finds Duggai, and defeats him by banging his head against a rock. Then he eventually finds the other two. THE END.

I don’t have anything to say about the movie because nothing happens. It’s barely a movie. Everything interesting about it are its connections to other movies. This was the first movie produced Ashok Amritraj who went on to eventually head up Hyde Park Entertainment Group. The second movie he produced, by the way? Nine Deaths of the Ninja which is also barely a movie, but at least more of a movie than this. Another connection: the movie is based on a novel written by the guy who wrote the novel that Death Wish was based on. This movie is not as over-the-top as that.

So, yeah, I don’t have much to say. Fleshburn isn’t really a movie. It’s just ninety minutes of video. Don’t watch it.