Saturday August 1, 11:35 AM

'Collector' gathers gruesome bits that don't add up

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Having nothing in common with the 1965 Terence Stamp/Samantha Eggar chiller other than the title, "The Collector" grafts a torture porn payoff onto a heist thriller setup with messy, illogical results.

After writing "Saw IV," "Saw V" and the upcoming "Saw VI" with Patrick Melton, first-time director Marcus Dunstan admittedly knows his way around the viscerally sick and twisted. But by this stage in the torture porn game, the prevailing sensation is a case of been there, impaled that.

In the absence of a sturdy, plausible foundation on which to hook all those grisly bits, the film tends to play out more like a protracted "Saw" outtake reel. The Liddell Entertainment film, originally a Dimension release, opened Friday .

When an ex-con handyman (Josh Stewart) sneaks back into the renovated home of a jeweler and his family with the intention of cracking his safe, he discovers it has been lethally booby-trapped by a silent, masked serial killer (Juan Fernandez) who prefers to keep his bloodied and eviscerated victims alive for as long as possible.

While the would-be jewel thief manages to navigate his way around the complex Rube Goldberg-like contraptions rigged with knives, bear traps and other sharp stuff, getting the innocent inhabitants out in one piece proves trickier.

Dunstan and co-writer Melton -- whose horror script "Feast" was a "Project Greenlight" winner -- and imaginative visual effects supervisor David Karlak deliver some squirm-inducing goodies, but in between the depravity, there's an awful lot of running up and down the stairs, not to mention a ridiculously heavy hand with all that spider imagery.

The proficient cast does what little it can with the lifeless material, which is geared exclusively toward their unpleasant demises. (please visit our entertainment blog via www.reuters.com or on http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)