Just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas lies the city of Juárez, Mexico. It has been estimated that since 1993 over 400 young women have met a brutal death in this city of 1.3 million. In those years, as the body counts continued to rise, precious few of these cases were ever solved and the phenomenon of lost souls became knows as Las Muertas de Juárez or The Dead Woman of Juárez. Although no one has really ever been prosecuted for the rape, murder and mutilation of these women, German director Ulli Lommel’s latest production is determined to show us who is responsible for committing these heinous acts.

It’s no secret that I’m not Ulli Lommel’s greatest fan. But, after a self-imposed moratorium covering his thrice-yearly productions (Oh, I still watch everyone, I just can’t come up with that many new ways to say “crap” all the time), I’ve decided to give my thoughts on this latest film. The reason? Simple. Of all Lommel’s serial killer cash-ins, the story of Las Muertas de Juárez has fascinated me the most. I wish I could sit here and tell you that Lommel has some insight into this tale, but like the Zodiac (a subject the man has taken on twice already), there is just no definitive place to point a finger.

In BORDERLINE CULT, Lommel has set the films main location at the dusty desert home of three serial killers. It is this group that Lommel claims is responsible for the over 400 deaths—although the timeline for the atrocity is greatly shortened from 14-years down to two. Each of the killers offers a different service and what makes that interesting is that the film considers the lofty allegation that two members of the gang never actually commit the crimes; they are only responsible for the set-up and the clean-up. Begging the question whether— as in the case with one of the gang—that the sin of omission is as great as the sin of murder. It’s an interesting thought and one that a Director who cared in the least about subtext might have further explored, but, alas, Lommel is no such filmmaker.

Christian Behm—a veteran of Lommel’s films, having been in five others and serving, as Assistant Director on three—is the main killer. He’s the one responsible for all the nasty knife action—sometimes he uses as pair of vice grips too, for a little variation. He’s also the one who gets the loving-close-up-attention-details that Lommel lavishes on all his murders in all his films. Behm gets to lick, sniff and—in painfully long takes—kiss the dead lips of his victim’s bloody faces. It’s all downright uncomfortable to watch.

Elissa Dowling and Patrick Faucette seem like neophytes compared to Behm—having each appeared in only two other Lommel productions respectively. Dowling is responsible for bringing the prey back to the lair. She convinces obviously oblivious girls that she wants them for sex, for photography, for a horror film she’s shooting, for a ride home after staging an attack, and in once instance of kismet, simply by offering some lemonade to a lost hiker who winds up on the doorstep to hell. Faucette is an entirely different monster. His job is simple, he digs the graves. Other than that he has little to do except scarily flirt with a dancing girl that Dowling is keeping captive in the trio’s chicken coop. Of all the actors Faucette is the wild card, whose backstory is ripe for further—and unfortunately nonexistent—probing.

All the trademarks of Lommel’s films are on display here once again. It’s grade school acting, cinematography that is little more than “weird camera angles” and “added grain” and the idea that plot progression means moving from one murder to the next—periodically breaking with the tried-and-true killings to stop and chat with each of the killers in extended monologue sequences that are designed to give insight but really just slow the already sluggish film down to a mind numbing crawl. The only reprieve that dedicated Lommel viewers get this time around is the set.

As a general rule of thumb, a Ulli Lommel film has little more than two or three main locations. And while nothing has changed with BORDERLINE CULT in terms of quantity, the quality has increased exponentially as Lommel abandons his signature Bedroom/Bar/Vacant Building for the vastness of the desert and a few other various spots around the bordertown. In fact, compared to Lommel’s last film: THE TOMB, BORDERLINE CULT feels like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in terms of its scope. Perhaps this is the only reason that through the relentless repetition of death upon death, I never once felt like gouging my own eyes out—an emotion that I entertained more than once as I sat though BTK KILLER and GREEN RIVER KILLER (Especially GREEN RIVER KILLER!)

It would go against everything I believe in on a personal level to recommend this film to anyone with any semblance of taste. However, if you’ve seen something/anything, by this unstoppable force of nature and you do happen upon BORDERLINE CULT at a video store, or accidentally take it home because the case has been slyly slipped behind the cover box some innocuous fare like NORBIT, then at least you can rest assured, it’s far from the worst he’s capable of. That film, if you’re keeping score is…GREEN RIVER KILLER (Got it!!!?)