My review was written in November 1986 after watching the film on Vestron video cassette.
In "Violated", filmmaker Richard Cannistraro can't seem to make up his mind whether he is making a sexploitation film for grindhouses or a serious treatment of the oft-filmed rape topic. Resulting hodgepodge, like so many other unreleased features that surface on video cassette, plays like an unfinished film bailed out of a lab. Two distinct rape-themed films with this title were made in 1984, the other one acquired by New Line Cinem and reamed "The Ladies Club".
Storyline, which resembles a telefilm but feature loads of extraneous nude scenes, has gangsters Jack Diamond (D. Balin) and Frank Lyon (Alec Massey) throwing parties to which young girls are invited and raped. Focus is narrowed here on a young victim, Lisa (April Daisy White), a soap opera actress in New York. Though she doesn't report the incident, her aunt and guardian Shirley (Kaye Dowd) does and it's spread all over the front page when a N. Y. Post reporter badgers the family for info.
Lisa quickly falls in love with the cop on the case, McBane (J. C. Quinn), but the gangsters buy off testimony and ridicule her in front of the grand jury. Film's credibility falls apart completely when gangster boss Zimmerman (Charles Gilbert) hires a hitman to kill the gangster-rapists and cop McBane turns out to be moonlighting as the pro hitman. Film ends abruptly midstream with a fadeout after one of the hits and none of its plot threads resolved.
Actors perform capably in a losing cause, with April Daisy White lending panache to her central roel. Picture is not likely to be listed in the resume of John Heard, who is nonetheless excellent in a brief role as a fidgety lowlife who acts as intermediary in hiring the cop-hitman and dreams of someday becoming a hitman himself.
In "Violated", filmmaker Richard Cannistraro can't seem to make up his mind whether he is making a sexploitation film for grindhouses or a serious treatment of the oft-filmed rape topic. Resulting hodgepodge, like so many other unreleased features that surface on video cassette, plays like an unfinished film bailed out of a lab. Two distinct rape-themed films with this title were made in 1984, the other one acquired by New Line Cinem and reamed "The Ladies Club".
Storyline, which resembles a telefilm but feature loads of extraneous nude scenes, has gangsters Jack Diamond (D. Balin) and Frank Lyon (Alec Massey) throwing parties to which young girls are invited and raped. Focus is narrowed here on a young victim, Lisa (April Daisy White), a soap opera actress in New York. Though she doesn't report the incident, her aunt and guardian Shirley (Kaye Dowd) does and it's spread all over the front page when a N. Y. Post reporter badgers the family for info.
Lisa quickly falls in love with the cop on the case, McBane (J. C. Quinn), but the gangsters buy off testimony and ridicule her in front of the grand jury. Film's credibility falls apart completely when gangster boss Zimmerman (Charles Gilbert) hires a hitman to kill the gangster-rapists and cop McBane turns out to be moonlighting as the pro hitman. Film ends abruptly midstream with a fadeout after one of the hits and none of its plot threads resolved.
Actors perform capably in a losing cause, with April Daisy White lending panache to her central roel. Picture is not likely to be listed in the resume of John Heard, who is nonetheless excellent in a brief role as a fidgety lowlife who acts as intermediary in hiring the cop-hitman and dreams of someday becoming a hitman himself.