YouTube, Take the Shot Films channel

An incapacitated man blacks out after being subjected to horrific torture, waking up to the welcome attentions of a helpful surgeon and his nurse.

Samuel and George Clemens’ award-winning short horror film Surgery, based on the final idea of their father, Brian Clemens (The Avengers), arrives on YouTube five years after it first shocked festival-goers at Fright Fest, and it hasn’t lost any of its impact. It’s 11 minutes of tension and gore – will you be able to handle it?

Nicholas Ball (Hazell) is not your obvious candidate for a madman, but as he hammers nails into the head of his victim (the poor fellow has already had his mouth sewn shut to stifle the screams) we realise that there’s a bigger picture here. True, the scooping out of the ocular socket is a horrific scene that veers into torture porn territory, but the sense is that there’s more going on that meets the… ahem, eye. When he awakens in an operating theatre, the worst of it is surely all over. Surely.

With such a short running time, the production has to hit the ground running, and there’s some impressive overhead drone work of the countryside juxtaposed with the grubby squalor of the torture den. In fact, production values are top drawer all round, even if the gore effects might be just too realistic for many. And even if you clock what’s going on earlier than some of the characters, surely that’s part of the fun. The question is less about what and more about why.

Verdict: Best watched on an empty stomach or after a stiff double, Surgery never outstays its welcome and has enough class to raise it above your standard horror fest shock shorts. 8/10

Nick Joy

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