By David Dent
When hunt guide and ex pentathlete Marcia (Julia Dordel) is fired from her job over a failure to sufficiently protect paying punters, her problems multiply when, driving home, she runs over a woman who talks about ‘the competition’ and is promptly captured by a fast-moving creature who also has designs on Marcia.
Marcia manages to escape and winds up at the local castle, where lives the mysterious Countess and her slaves. She quickly realises that the castle owner hides a big secret and that her life is in immediate danger.
Apparently it took director Guido Tölke five years to bring this movie to the screen. His second feature, and running at over two hours, it’s in desperate need of editing and a more coherent storyline. The FX work – and there’s a lot of it – looks halfway decent but everything feels thrown together and bitty.
The main reason to see this is Dordell’s incredibly physical performance as Marcia. She jumps, she leaps, she swims, all the while sustaining a nasty knife through hand injury (treated with some TCP and a roll of bandages) and later a full sword run through, which slows her down a bit.
The movie feels like Tölke watched the UNDERWORLD franchise on repeat and took a lot of notes. It’s certainly swashbuckling, but it’s rather light on gore and, sorry, a bit of a slog to get through. Well done to the director on having the patience and stamina to complete it, though.
The Bitter Taste screened as part of Frightfest Halloween 2024.
Bloody Flicks 