Product Details

• Actors: Jonathan Sidgwick, Tina Barnes
• Directors: James Eaves
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Celebrity Video Distribution
• DVD Release Date: May 19, 2009
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001TMDXT8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #237,244 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Bane" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Review

It might be an unfair description to hurl at Bane, but the film can be classified as torture porn. The plot revolves four women locked in a cell where they re psychologically abused and physically carved up by a psycho killer. Stripped down to its barest bones description like that, sure one can toss it into the Saw, Hostel, Captivity, et. al. bin. But take out the blood and gore, Bane is really more like a modern Twilight Zone story, specifically that one where a group of people are trapped in a tall cylinder that they can t escape. Then at the end we find out they re really just toys tossed into the bottom of a bin. No, that s not my way of lobbing an oblique spoiler. it s readily apparent from the beginning of Bane that the women s only hope of escaping their predicament is to figure out the secret. And that secret comes from so far out of left field, it comes sailing in from another stadium entirely. Though, to the film s credit, the ending totally works and is a satisfying one. Writer/director James Eaves smartly focuses the script more on the mental challenges faced by his four leads rather than their physical ones. The women, however, are a tad on the cliché side. There s the serious, let s think this through one; the tough, act first, ask questions later one; the sensitive, I m worried about everyone else one; and the cry-baby one. Now, on the one hand Eaves didn t cast bimbos in these roles, so unfortunately there s no nudity. (Does that hurl it out of the torture porn genre altogether then?) But since they re solid actresses (Sophia Dawnay, Lisa Devlin, Tina Barnes and Sylvia Robson), they re able to grind out enough human dimension beyond the archetype they ve been fitted for. Plus, the basic mystery that the entire film is wrapped around is a nicely intriguing one. For some reason, these four women have had their memories wiped clear while a deranged doctor (Daniel Jordan) is intent on driving them insane during Clockwork Orange-ish interrogation sessions. But this doctor is the least of their worries. In the middle of the night, a masked maniac wielding a giant knife breaks into their cell and carves into their flesh the time he s going to return to kill them. Suffice it to say, the little prison cell turns into a slaughterhouse. Aside from the original time stamp method of murder, Eaves doesn t get creative in the techniques of killing and just goes for straight-up slicing and dicing, which is refreshing in this day and age of Can you top this? gross-outs. And special mention has to go to the creepy yet sparse set design. Instead of the dingy dungeon look of the typical torture film, the women in Bane are trapped in a stripped-down laboratory testing facility. Their only prison walls is a thin metal fence electrified of course covered by flowing translucent plastic sheets, which actually turns out to be more frightening than dark, mold-covered dripping walls. And If one still wants to throw Bane into the torture porn vault, it s one that gives a welcome new eerie, medical/military/scientific sheen to the genre. --Mike Everleth--Bad Lit

Product Description

Four women awake in an underground cell with amnesia. The women soon discover that they are part of a secret experiment with no obvious purpose. They are visited, one by one, by the SURGEON who cuts a four digit number into each woman s skin...the exact time he will return to kill them. Each woman must quickly piece together the dark secret behind the gruesome experiment and somehow survive the Surgeon s nightly visits of pain, torture and grisly murder. Be prepared for a shocking ending that will leave you breathless! Winner of many awards including Best Horror Feature Film at this years LA Horror / Sci - Fi Film Festival Shriek Fest 2008.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Saw this at ScreamFest 2008, April 10, 2009

By 

B. Weeks "blueoktober" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bane (DVD)

I saw this in a little back banquet hall in Orlando Florida at last year's Screamfest. I really had no expectations, I was just tired of fighting the crowds to meet all the celebrities so I stopped in to see this movie.
First off I have to say the production is really poor. It feels almost like a college made movie, but the atmosphere completely makes up for it. The movie made me feel claustrophobic and dirty in a way I cannot really sum up in words. The gore is there in spades and the tension remains high throughout. You really never have much of an idea of what is going on, only that four girls are in this room trapped and a bloodthirsty Dr. comes in randomly and murders the girls at a certain time. I cannot say much more because it ruin it but I do recommend this movie to people who are fans of something NEW in the genre. Don't expect a hollywood production, no expect a scare a minute movie. It's a slow burner that eventually pays off and has some of the most haunting imagery I have seen in a long time.

I am very happy this is finally getting a DVD release.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No pain in watching Bane..., June 3, 2009

By 

J. Graham (Yorkshire, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bane (DVD)

This is a gem of a movie!! A totally British film that shows full respect to some of the finest from the horror genera and isn't afraid to tip it's hat to some all time classic horror / Sci-Fi movies of the past. It's one part Slasher, one part Sci-Fi and the story carries the underpinning of a psychological thriller...
Four women wake up in a 'testing lab' which must be one of the bleakest sets every used within a movie, and as a viewer you don't escape that feeling of claustrophobia as they struggle to come to terms with what's going on, or what is going to happen... The film carries the story fantastically, dropping the viewer small bits of information until dropping in a great twist towards the end throwing the viewer off guard, and changing your perception of some of the key characters.
All the women actors do an amazing job in this movie, this is due to the fact there is little distraction away from their predicament on screen, and they each convince the viewer of each characters personality, (although none of them know who they are / were) but the sense of who they are in their current situation is portrayed in the finest way I've seen in any movie in some time.

Great stuff!!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bore., August 24, 2010

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bane (DVD)

Bane (James Eaves, 2008)

James Eaves has, to date, directed five feature films. Of them, Bane has the second-highest IMDB rating, sitting currently at 3.3. (His first feature, the straight-to-video Sanitarium, edges it out at 3.4 for the top-rated Eaves flick.) I haven't seen any of his other movies, but if this is the second-best of the lot by a tenth of a point, then I'm pretty sure I don't need to. Bane is film that starts off terrible and only gets worse from there.

Four women--Katherine (Sparkle's Sophia Dawnay), Jane (Horrible Histories' Lisa Devlin), Natasha (Eaves regular Tina Barnes), and Elaine (Sylvia Robson in her screen debut)--awake in a room with electrified bars and plastic sheeting for walls. None has any memory, they only know their names by plastic armbands. Soon after awakening, each is taken in turn for an interview with Dr. Murdoch (Demonsoul's Daniel Jordan) and his right-hand man, a seeming combination of bouncer and torturer (Jonathan Sidgwick, who previously worked with Eaves on The Witches Hammer). They try to figure out their situation for a while, then Elaine is suddenly and mysteriously attacked by a guy in a doctor's mask (we never do find out who this is, but I'm getting ahead of myself) who seems to have superhuman speed and strength. When he gets through with her, she has a number carved into her thigh. Jane, who witnessed the attack, tries to figure out what it all means, while the other two scoff. There's more to it than this (one major plot point appears halfway through the film), but I can't get into it without major spoilers. It ain't worth thinking about anyway.

I was willing to buy this, kinda-sorta, and consider it just another worthless piece of bad filmmaking until we got to that plot point I mentioned above. The movie goes from slow, boring, and rather monotonous to ludicrous in an instant. It actually plateaus at that level of idiocy for the next forty-five minutes or so, and we go back to the whole "mysterious serial killer flick meets women in prison flick" vibe. And then comes the big climactic explanation scene. And oh, lord. It's hilarious. It's bad enough when you have to have a scene in your movie where Poirot gathers everyone in the drawing room and explains how whodunit didit. When that scene lasts a quarter-hour and still leaves gaping plot holes (like the identity of the psychotic doctor, who judging by his makeup in one scene may actually be undead, though this is never explained at all), you've gone beyond any bounds I'm willing to stretch in the fine art of blowing the ending of your movie. Way, way beyond.

Half a star because the leads are pretty darned cute, and cute in a non-Hollywood-cardboard-cutout sort of way; Dawnay and Barnes do the whole buff-but-femme thing, Robson is the most traditionally cute of the bunch (but would likely have been accorded "raving beauty" status more in the seventies than today), and Devlin is nerdgirl, with frizzy hair and glasses and please please please Hollywood cast her in a romantic lead somewhere. She's not the world's greatest actress (but really, the pinnacle of rom-com acting these days is... Gerard Butler?), but yeah. Nerd-hot. ½