The Girl Next Door DVD
DVD Review by Kam Williams
Headline: True Tale of Teen Torture Released on DVD
Left orphaned after the untimely deaths of their parents in a car accident, Meg (Blythe Auffarth) and Susan (Madeline Taylor) Loughlin found themselves suddenly adopted by their Aunt Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker), a single-mom already raising three adolescent boys on her own. Unfortunately, the authorities had no idea the woman had some serious issues, specifically, that she was a severely disturbed sadist whose mind was spiraling towards madness.
Because Chandler looked normal, no one would come to suspect the unspeakable horrors unfolding inside the soundproofed bomb shelter in her basement of her nondescript house on an otherwise quiet dead end street. But Ruth resented her nieces from the moment they moved in, and began taking it out on them immediately, both mentally and physically.
Plus, she involved her sons and one of their friends, David (Daniel Manche), in the torture, which came to focus on 14 year-old Megan, since her sickly younger sibling wore braces on her legs due to polio. Gradually, the mistreatment escalated from verbal abuse to beatings to bondage to rape and disfigurement, with chain-smoking Ruth always orchestrating the action. She would pressure the males to perform whatever atrocity she could dream up daily, first plying them with beer, afterwards threatening them with death if they told a soul about what had transpired.
This kinky scenario underpins The Girl Next Door, a harrowing crime saga adapted from the best seller of the same name by Jack Ketchum loosely-based on an actual case that transpired in Indiana in 1965. Directed by Gregory Wilson, this super-realistic picture is so relentlessly-disturbing it’s likely to trigger debate as to whether the filmmaker might have left too little to the imagination.
So, brace yourself for a daring docudrama featuring practically-pornographic horror fare far more frightening than the Scream trilogy. Not for the squeamish. You wuz warned.
Excellent (4 stars)
Rated R for nudity, profanity, graphic violence and sexual abuse, all involving minors.
Running time: 93 minutes
Studio: Anchor Bay Entertainment
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