Nothing adds a touch of pizzaz like shooting on location: from exotic jungle epics to romantic nights in Cairo, there's no better way to grab an audience's attention than by cast and crew hoofing it out there, rather than faking everything behind a matte painting on the studio backlot. Leave it to William Hellfire, master of thumbing his nose at a small but devoted audience of strangulation acolytes, to drag his cast and crew all the way to Paris and shoot 75% of his movie in a hotel.
Like all the "lesser" Hellfire epics, INTERNATIONAL NECKTIE STRANGLER is largely room-bound, with little exterior photography and even less plot (in this regard, it's on par with ELECTRIC CORD STRANGLER 3). Non-narrative follows parallel strangers in strange lands: in New York, it's Ruby LaRocca as an Eastern European visiting her American cousin (shades of VAMPIRE STRANGLER), while in Paris, it's Misty Mundae and Tina Krause (billed as Mia Copia) as lesbian lovers.
In New York, LaRocca visits a porn shop before taking up with her cousin (Lily Tiger), who needs to head out to do some classwork. She warns LaRocca to keep the curtains closed, but of course, Ruby can't resist leaving the window open and letting her fingers do the walking. Naturally, Hellfire sneaks in and strangles her. Meanwhile (previously? Later?), in Paris, Krause and Mundae take endless, morose baths together and wander around. They visit a cemetery (Pere Lachaise, I think) and end up followed by a creepy guy (Christophe Bier) who, in a twist, ends up strangled by Hellfire too! Of course, Bill will return later to finish off the girls. (SPOILER) Low-key disquieting ending has all three women waking up in their beds, wondering with a cold chill if it was all a dream - or a premonition.
So, there's not much going on. Hellfire, a talented musician, is able to coast for quite a bit - as he often does - on discordant music and the inherently creepy, peevish aesthetic of consumer video. But even at 73 minutes, INS really starts to drag, and it features precious little strangling, surely a frustration for its target audience. As always with Hellfire, there's at least a modicum of stylistic interest that makes things worthwhile, but for anything beyond hardcore fans, it's probably not worth suffering through the film for.
Like all the "lesser" Hellfire epics, INTERNATIONAL NECKTIE STRANGLER is largely room-bound, with little exterior photography and even less plot (in this regard, it's on par with ELECTRIC CORD STRANGLER 3). Non-narrative follows parallel strangers in strange lands: in New York, it's Ruby LaRocca as an Eastern European visiting her American cousin (shades of VAMPIRE STRANGLER), while in Paris, it's Misty Mundae and Tina Krause (billed as Mia Copia) as lesbian lovers.
In New York, LaRocca visits a porn shop before taking up with her cousin (Lily Tiger), who needs to head out to do some classwork. She warns LaRocca to keep the curtains closed, but of course, Ruby can't resist leaving the window open and letting her fingers do the walking. Naturally, Hellfire sneaks in and strangles her. Meanwhile (previously? Later?), in Paris, Krause and Mundae take endless, morose baths together and wander around. They visit a cemetery (Pere Lachaise, I think) and end up followed by a creepy guy (Christophe Bier) who, in a twist, ends up strangled by Hellfire too! Of course, Bill will return later to finish off the girls. (SPOILER) Low-key disquieting ending has all three women waking up in their beds, wondering with a cold chill if it was all a dream - or a premonition.
So, there's not much going on. Hellfire, a talented musician, is able to coast for quite a bit - as he often does - on discordant music and the inherently creepy, peevish aesthetic of consumer video. But even at 73 minutes, INS really starts to drag, and it features precious little strangling, surely a frustration for its target audience. As always with Hellfire, there's at least a modicum of stylistic interest that makes things worthwhile, but for anything beyond hardcore fans, it's probably not worth suffering through the film for.
