Oh SOV land, how I adore thee. The democratisation of means of production leading to unfiltered dissemination of every shade of chintz gore and cheap-jack lunacy, often wrought with zero talent and oozing home movie cheer, as a lover of the artistic process I have a lot of time for these sorts of films. I don't rate many of them especially highly and Spine is no exception, but dang I like to watch 'em. And here we even have a semi name star in Janus Blythe, from Wes Craven's classic The Hills Have Eyes (and its sad, sad sequel too). Plot is suitably seedy, a lunatic obsessed with a girl called Linda sets out tying and slicing nurses, seemingly convinced that all of 'em are called Linda. Its kinda funny actually, he keeps at it even when his victims patiently explain that they aren't called Linda and at one point is terrorising two ladies at once, convinced both are called Linda. I guess that's the problem with the dangerously insane, they really aren't very smart. And in Spine, the police aren't very smart either. Like, not at all, in fact the discovery of the killer's identity comes from one of the most basic conceivable tricks of information seeking behaviour. This is of course a good thing, part of the fun of these sorts of films is the disjoint between their realm and reality and Spine does pretty reasonably in the cut off. Another good thing is that the killer wears a salmon pink shirt and jeans combo with rich, manly facial hair and sunglasses. He looks like kind of a dork, which is somewhat fun. Sadly, not everything is good with Spine. For one, there isn't any nudity. A seamy shot like this really needs nudity and when it isn't there, well its kinda frustrating. Greasy misogyny needs the nudity to push it into artistic fruition and Spine never gets there, I guess in a way its a further disjoint, pulling away from rational expectation, but its the wrong kind of pull away. There isn't much in the way of bloodshed either, which is less of a problem in the context, but still a bit irritating. Oh and the ending pulls a distinctly "what the heck were they thinking twist" as well, pretty weak. On the other hand the second half is a nicely sustained exercise in meanness carried well by the actors, which gives the whole affair much more of a kick than expected from the general quality. Janus Blythe is ace in her role, friendly, frightened, committed, a good show. R. Eric Huxley is nicely unpleasant as the baddie as well, determined and weird, while Lise Romanoff is a generally attractive and likable nominal heroine. The editing is semi interesting as well, the way the killers actions are mixed with other scenes can be amusing. Altogether, this is another of those that only die hard slasher fans should bother with, but for those devotees to the cause it has enough of merit to be worth at least one watch. 5/10 from me, though normal people will probably go quite a bit lower.