Cards of Death 1986

Cards of Death

This is a stick up sleazebag; give me all your good taste because you won’t need an ounce of it for Cards of Death; a movie that is a holocaustic bomb of depravity, hooker nails, and porn lighting.  Featuring a sordid and bizarre love affair between a neo-Nazi dominatrix named Tracy and a brutal sadomasochist with spider tattoos named Hog Johnson, Cards of Death deals out the bludgeoning with cheese and crackers; literally.  The main pelvic thrust of the story centers around a struggling finger painting artist (seriously) named Billy who is trying to find out what happened to his father, the police chief, whom mysteriously disappeared when investigating a series of serial killing like murders taking place every Thursday.  The poor red flanneled schmuck is actually held captive by Hog and Tracy who slowly and systematically torture the chief, cutting off his nose with a cheese slicer along with several fingers and toes and sends the “sick shit” to police headquarters.  Billy the sensitive finger painter is paired with a hysterically bad tough guy cop with a pink cut off shirt who overreacts to virtually everything because he has a “hot head”.  During their investigation clues about the chief’s whereabouts are gathered from fast food takeout, doodles of pigs, and a heart to heart between Billy and a street hooker.  Hog Johnson and Tracy bring in new meat to play their “Cards of Death” game, which is never explained really, only that the loser is killed by the winner who wins some sort of cash reward, and Hog can change the rules whenever he wants like some brat. Their secret hideout is neon lit, giving it that soft porn look.  Hog is a bored billionaire so he invented the “Cards of Death” game to sate his blood lust.  Since refereeing a death game doesn’t seem to be all it’s cracked up to be Hog also had an industrial press installed in their secret evil lair to crush street people and strippers in so he and Tracy can drink and bath in fresh blood, Bathory style.  Because the setup of the story wasn’t crazy enough there is an impaled priest with a gambling problem, copious nipple teasing, and rape thrown in for good measure.   Padding comes in the form of a dancer dancing to, what else, the movie’s theme song “Cards of Death”  Cards of Death will probably be one of my most bizarre and rare VHS tapes.  They don’t make them like they used to, and I doubt a movie with the same atmosphere and dime store feel as Cards of Death will ever come out again, making it special in its own right.  The apocalypse is written and it is “Cards of Death”!