A few months back I knocked the After Dark Horrorfest guys for not booking Frontiere(s) as part of their second annual sorta-festival. I quickly received a very cordial response from an AD representative who told me basically precisely this: "I'm emailing in regards to your article about "Frontiere(s)" and Horrorfest. Basically, I just wanted to let you know we absolutely are not going to cut this film up in any way. We have not accepted any rating for it so far and at this point we do not know if it's going to be released NC-17 or unrated. We haven't decided. But I promise you it will get released theatrically and in its originally intended form."

He also explained how an unrated / NC-17 film could not play as part of Horrorfest, given the existing contracts between the event and its venues. OK, fair enough. But the horror geeks are getting royally gore-teased by the Weinsteins on Inside, so when can we get a peek at this freaky Frontiere(s) flick already?

May 9, according to ShocktyDrop.com, is when Lionsgate will be releasing Xavier Gens' whacked-out horror stew in theaters. It will no doubt be a contractually-mandated very limited release pattern, but here's some strange-yet-good news: It seems that the DVD will arrive only four days later. Gee, now there's some incentive to get out to the theaters, eh?

After Haute Tension hit the scene and caused a little bit of buzz (if very little attention from the U.S. box office), it only seemed to be a matter of time before a few new freaky French horror flicks would rear their unseemly heads. And here's one of 'em: A patently over-the-top piece of gore-drenched survival horror called Frontiere(s). The debut from writer/director Xavier Gens (who also has a studio flick called Hitman on the way), Frontieres feels like half Texas Chainsaw Massacre and half Hostel, with some liberal dashes of Haute Tension (and even a little bit of The Descent) tossed in to keep things juicy.

We open in the near-future, and France is suffering through a socio-political firestorm. A "right-wing" police state is in effect, and as we settle into the story we're introduced to five criminals on the run: Four hateful men and one pregnant woman. (Guess who's the hero(ine).) After one of the gang members drops dead in a hospital, the remaining quartet splits up and makes plans to meet up at an isolated hotel on the French border. To say these idiots choose the wrong hotel would be a stunning example of understatement.

Without giving too much away, I can tell you that the hotel is run by an extended family of Nazi cannibal mega-freaks. And needless to say, they're not very nice. Once both cars arrive on the scene, the cat & mouse carnage can begin in full force. A few of our anti-heroes are dispatched in decidedly unpleasant fashion, but of course we're not suffering through all this slaughterhouse insanity with no promise of catharsis on the horizon. Plot-wise, it's all very familiar and frequently quite predictable -- but boring? Absolutely not.