If you've been sitting there wondering just what happened to Kristy Swanson since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then Living Death provides the answer. Older, plumper, and more low-budget; Swanson takes the lead role in this Canadian-shot mix of bland thriller and revenge playing Elizabeth, the wife of wealthy masochist Victor (Greg Bryk). How do we know Victor's into all things torture? Because the opening scenes of the film has him bring a woman back to his mansion for a seeming fling only to expose her to his collection of torture equipment up in the attic - which not only contains the "Rack" featured prominently on the box art but also has such vapid dialogue as "Can I stretch you? Sometimes when I'm alone I come up here and stretch myself".

After our intro to Victor's heinous ways, Living Death settles down into your standard, and fairly dull, thriller with the script relying heavily on erotic violence which feels more like it's only here for perverse value rather than plot mechanic. It's your usual set-up with Victor being an obnoxious jerk to Elizabeth and her having an affair on the side with his lawyer Roman (Josh Peace) and the two lovers planning to use a drug called TTX (which is derived from blowfish) to poison Victor so she can inherit his money and be rid of him.

A plan that they think succeeds as Victor drinks the poisonous concoction and is shipped off to the morgue. But Living Death soon shifts gears as it tries for some mild humour as our coroner's assistant gets up to all sorts of shenanigans, which actually picks up the film's pace, before Victor returns from the dead and performs an impromptu autopsy on the attendant (giving us a little bit of organ grue to chew on) before heading back home to deal with Elizabeth and Roman - which you just know will lead to a finale where all his torturous toys will come into play.

Produced by the same company as the pretty entertaining creature feature Bottom Feeder, Living Death definitely doesn't give that great of a first impression. The first half of the film is pretty stagnant and just when I was beginning to wonder why this was classified as a horror movie director/co-writer Erin Berry trots out a handful of gory moments in the finale. Thanks to all the bloody mayhem on display, and the aforementioned comic relief, Living Death becomes entertaining despite itself and the last twenty minutes or so make you wish they'd of gone with that tone from the get go - it's somewhat of a slog to get to that point and, by then, most people will have probably given up on this.

Looking at Swanson's resume between Buffy and this, it's easy to see why she's fallen off the radar (only to have a brief resurgence when she posed for Playboy) by appearing in forgettable fare like the mediocre killer shark flick Red Water and various generically titled action films starring the likes of Kiefer Sutherland and Skeet Ulrich. And her performance here doesn't do much to shake that impression, as she's nothing more than weak. Meanwhile, Bryk is suitably sleazy as Victor, even though he's given most of the crappy dialogue, and Marc Hickox pretty much steals the show as the wise-cracking Mike - on an unrelated yet oddly amusing note, it's listed on his profile at IMDB that he "likes rap music and sleeping late."

Living Death is a cheapie thriller with horror bits 'n' pieces trying to cash-in on the 'torture porn' craze of films such as the Saw series, Hostel, and Captivity. It doesn't contain nearly enough elements of those films to be in the same category and I found myself spending a good portion of it waiting for something to happen. But here's where it earns its rating, by actually being a lot of fun once something DOES. That's not to say you should go out of your way to see this (you shouldn't) but at least it isn't a complete waste of time. (Chris Hartley, 8/27/09)

Directed By: Erin Berry.
Written By: Leo Scherman, Christopher Warre Smets, Erin Berry.

Starring: Kristy Swanson, Greg Bryk, Josh Peace, Kelsey Matheson.