Amazon.co.uk Review
In Tetsuo: The Iron Man Shinya Tsukamoto draws on the marriage of flesh and technology that inspires so much of David Cronenberg’s work and then twists it into a Manga-influenced cyberpunk vision. A man (Tomoroh Taguchi) awakens from a nightmare in which his body is helplessly fusing with the metal objects around him, only to find it happening to him in real life… or is it? Haunted by memories of a hit and run (eerily prophetic of Cronenberg’s Crash), the man knows this ordeal could be a dream, a fantastic form of divine retribution, or perhaps technological mutation born of guilt and rage.

Shot in bracing black and white on a small budget, Tsukamoto puts a demented conceptual twist on good old-fashioned stop-motion effects and simple wire work, giving his film the surreal quality of a waking dream with a psychosexual edge (resulting in the film’s most disturbing scene). The story ultimately takes on an abstract quality enhanced by the grungy look and increasingly wild images as they take to the streets in a mad chase of technological speed demons. This first entry in his self-titled “Regular Sized Monster Series” was followed by a full-colour sequel, Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer, which trades the muddy experimental atmosphere for a big-budget sheen but can’t top the cybershock to the system this movie packs.–Sean Axmaker

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

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This is the movie that made John Waters famous, and quite possibly the film that made bad taste cool. Yes, Virginia, a large transvestite actually eats dog faeces as a kind of dizzying denouement to this frequently illogical and intentionally disgusting movie, but by the time that happens, you’re already numb … and you’ve possibly laughed to the point of losing bladder control.

The plot revolves around two vile families laying claim to the title “The Filthiest People Alive”. You’ve got pregnant women in pits, you’ve got grown men getting sexual satisfaction from chickens, you’ve got people licking furniture to perform trailer-park voodoo and you’ve got classic lines like: “Oh my God! The couch … it … it rejected you!”

Waters, who went on to direct genuine pop-culture classics such as Hairspray and Serial Mom, made this celluloid sideshow with one aim–to make a name for himself. It worked. He does have a genuine eye for filmmaking (when the trailer burns down, you feel the white heat of Divine’s pain and anger). On the other hand, you won’t notice any disclaimers about stunt doubles and animals not being mistreated. There weren’t, and they were. Welcome to the filthiest film in the world. –Grant Balfour

Pink Flamingos

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Michael Powell lays bare the cinema’s dark voyeuristic underside in this disturbing 1960 psychodrama thriller. Handsome young Carl Boehm is Mark Lewis, a shy, socially clumsy young man shaped by the psychic scars of an emotionally abusive parent, in this case a psychologist father (the director in a perverse cameo) who subjected his son to nightmarish experiments in fear and recorded every interaction with a movie camera. Now Mark continues his father’s work, sadistically killing young women with a phallic-like blade attached to his movie camera and filming their final, terrified moments for his definitive documentary on fear. Set in contemporary London, which Powell evokes in a lush, colourful seediness, this film presents Mark as much victim as villain and implicates the audience in his scopophilic activities as we become the spectators to his snuff film screenings. Comparisons to Hitchcock’s Psycho, released the same year, are inevitable. Powell’s film was reviled upon release, and it practically destroyed his career, ironic in light of the acclaim and success that greeted Psycho, but Powell’s picture hit a little too close to home with its urban setting, full colour photography, documentary techniques and especially its uneasy connections between sex, violence and the cinema. We can thank Martin Scorsese for sponsoring its 1979 re-release, which presented the complete, uncut version to appreciative audiences for the first time. This powerfully perverse film was years ahead of its time and remains one of the most disturbing and psychologically complex horror films ever made. –Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Peeping Tom – Criterion Collection

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Thanks to Mike Myers’ wonderfully rude, lowbrow humour and his full-bodied understanding of who his character is, Wayne’s World proved to be that rare thing: a successful transition of a Saturday Night Live sketch to the big screen. Wayne Campbell (Myers) and his nerdy pal Garth (Dana Carvey) are teens who live at home and have their own low-rent cable-access show in Aurora, Illinios, in which they celebrate their favourite female film stars and heavy-metal bands. When a Chicago TV station smells a potential youth-audience ratings hit, the station’s weasely executive (Rob Lowe) tries to co-opt the show–and steal Wayne’s new rock ‘n’ roll girlfriend (Tia Carrere) at the same time. Like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure before it (and the later Detroit Rock City), this is a film that affectionately parodies and celebrates slacker teenage culture. It’s also filled with all kinds of knowing spoofs of film conventions, from Wayne talking to the camera (while forbidding other characters to do so) and hilariously self-conscious product placements, to labelling a moment a “Gratuitous Sex Scene”. Dumb yet clever–and very funny. –Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

Wayne’s World

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Brace yourself: this is a clever, consistently entertaining and even inspired continuation of the mean-spirited slasher series. For those not in the know, Chucky is a mop-top kid’s doll come to life with the soul of a serial killer and the voice of Brad Dourif (doing his best Jack Nicholson). Revived by his former paramour Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly, looking every inch a life-size Barbie in stiletto heels and skintight black leather), Chucky proceeds to turn his human sweetie into a pint-sized Talking Tina doll with attitude, and together they hit the road for a magic amulet and young new bodies to inhabit. They hitch a ride with sweet young runaways Katherine Heigl and Nick Stabile and leave a trail of corpses bloodied, burned and cut to ribbons. The kids are cute, but the real heat is generated by the latex lovers who use murder as foreplay and consummate their renewed romance in a night of passionate sex (“Shouldn’t you wear a rubber?” “I’m all rubber!”).

Hong Kong director Ronny Yu (The Bride with White Hair) directs with a light touch and against all odds transforms walking dolls Chucky and Tiffany into funny, energetic, full-blooded characters: l’amour fou has never been more crazy. John Ritter costars as Heigl’s overprotective uncle (another obstacle on the road to dolly freedom) and Alexis Arquette is hilarious as a lanky goth nerd. The wild conclusion leaves room for another high-concept sequel. The DVD features two commentary tracks, a behind-the-scenes documentary, and “Jennifer Tilly’s Diary.” –Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Bride Of Chucky

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Ok, let’s get all the disclaimers out of the way first. Despite its colourful (if crude) animation, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is in no way meant for kids. It is chock full of profanity that might even make Quentin Tarantino blanch and has blasphemous references to God, Satan, Saddam Hussein (who’s sleeping with Satan, literally), and Canada. It’s rife with scatological humour, suggestive sexual situations, political incorrectness and gleeful, rampant vulgarity. And it’s probably one of the most brilliant satires ever made. The plot: flatulent Canadian gross-meisters Terrance and Philip hit the big screen, and the South Park quartet of third graders–Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman–begin repeating their profane one-liners ad infinitum. The parents of South Park, led by Kyle’s overbearing mom, form “Mothers Against Canada”, blaming their neighbours to the north for their children’s corruption and taking Terrance and Philip as war prisoners. It’s up to the kids then to rescue their heroes from execution, not mention a brooding Satan, who’s planning to take over the world. To give away any more of the plot would destroy the fun, but this feature-length version of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Comedy Central hit is a dead-on and hilarious send-up of pop culture. And did we mention it’s a musical? From the opening production number “Mountain Town” to the cheerful anti-profanity sing-along “It’s Easy, MMMKay” to Satan’s faux-Disney ballad “Up There”, Parker (who wrote or cowrote all the songs) brilliantly shoots down every earnest musical from Beauty and the Beast to Les Misérables. And in advocating free speech and satirising well-meaning but misguided parental censorship groups, Bigger, Longer & Uncut hits home against adult paranoia and hypocrisy with a vengeance. And the jokes, while indeed vulgar and gross, are hysterical; we can’t repeat them here, especially the lyrics to Terrance and Philip’s hit song, but you’ll be rolling on the floor. Don’t worry, though–to paraphrase Cartman, this movie won’t warp your fragile little mind. –Mark Englehart

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

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Caught midway between 1970s soft-porn clunker The Story of O and Bunuel’s sado-masochistic fantasy Belle de Jour, the 1968 erotic curio Girl on a Motorcycle is one of Marianne Faithfull’s chief claims to notoriety. She stars as Rebecca, a leather-clad, former bookstore clerk in search of sexual fulfilment who flees her dependable schoolteacher husband for a dangerous liaison with Daniel (Alain Delon), a dashing Professor addicted to speed. The story is told entirely in flashbacks as Rebecca rockets along the road, having donned her leathers and walked out on her sleeping husband at the crack of dawn. It all must have seemed fairly daring and provocative in 1968, providing viewers with ample opportunities to view a naked Faithfull at the height of her allure. But today the existential musings of the lead character seem achingly pretentious, the erotic symbolism merely gawky and unintentionally amusing: the sight of Alain Delon with a phallic pipe dangling from his mouth is like something out of a Rene Magritte painting. The sex scenes between Delon and Faithfull are all swamped in a polarised visual effect that, while garish and psychedelic, is dated and distinctly unerotic. Director Jack Cardiff is better known as a cinematographer on classics such as The African Queen and Black Narcissus. Among Cardiff’s other directorial credits is a worthy adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Sons & Lovers, but Girl on a Motorcycle is a saucy road movie with no final destination.

On the DVD: This DVD version is misleadingly presented as being the fully restored and uncut version of the film. Yet it was the US version not the European one that was heavily cut (and titillatingly re-titled “Naked Under Leather”). The restoration certainly does not refer to the print quality: although the colours are vivid and bright, the print used to master the DVD (in 16:9 anamorphic format) is extremely grainy and, at times, speckled with dirt and scratches. Included as one of the special features, a theatrical trailer loaded with innuendo shows just how much the film was marketed to a prurient audience. Director Jack Cardiff provides an audio commentary but has few revelatory things to say about his film beyond technical considerations, and even makes several clunking errors (recalling his casting decisions concerning a scene that takes place in a provincial German café, he raves about how he strove to find authentic French locals!). He does reveal that the film’s use of a voice-over was inspired by the internal monologue that forms the basis of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Given Cardiff’s age and experience one feels that he must have more interesting anecdotes and insights, making this commentary feel like a wasted opportunity. –Chris Campion

Girl on a Motorcycle

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I Spit on Your Grave, writer-director Meir Zarchi’s controversial story of rape and revenge, has lost none of its ability to shock viewers since it first gained notoriety in 1978. Camille Keaton (grand-niece of Buster Keaton and, later, Zarchi’s wife) stars as a young woman who is terrorised and then brutally assaulted by four men while on vacation. After slowly pulling herself together, she methodically tracks down and butchers each of the perpetrators. Zarchi’s film has been consistently accused of celebrating violence against women, and while the rape scenes are graphic, they also lack the voyeuristic qualities that earmark other similarly plotted exploitation films. If anything, Zarchi is guilty of awkward scripting; the dialogue is leaden, and Keaton’s transformation from victim to avenger is too swift. But to label him a pornographer is wrong, and while the film is challenging–perhaps more than most audiences can bear–its depiction of the psychology of violence is undeniably powerful. –Paul Gaita

I Spit On Your Grave

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Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers) continues to delight and disturb us with his talent for combining storytelling with optic artistry. The Pillow Book is divided into 10 chapters (consistent with Greenaway’s love of numbers and lists) and is shot to be viewed like a book, complete with tantalising illustrations and footnotes (subtitles) and using television’s “screen-in-screen” technology. As a child in Japan, Nagiko’s father celebrates her birthday retelling the Japanese creation myth and writing on her flesh in beautiful calligraphy, while her aunt reads a list of “beautiful things” from a 10th-century pillow book. As she gets older, Nagiko (Vivian Wu) looks for a lover with calligraphy skills to continue the annual ritual. She is initially thrilled when she encounters Jerome (Ewan McGregor), a bisexual translator who can speak and write several languages, but soon realises that although he is a magnificent lover, his penmanship is less than acceptable. When Nagiko dismisses the enamoured Jerome, he suggests she use his flesh as the pages which to present her own pillow book. The film, complete with a musical score as international as the languages used in the narration, is visually hypnotic and truly an immense “work of art”. –Michele Goodson

The Pillow Book

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One of the most famous, most shocking and, for much of its existence, most elusive of cult films, Tod Browning’s Freaks remains worthy of its dubious top billing by literary critic Leslie Fiedler as the greatest of all Freak movies. At the centre of the story are two circus midgets, Hans and Frieda (already well known in the 1930s through film and advertising appearances as Harry and Daisy Earles), whose marriage plans are blasted when Hans becomes the target of the aerialist Cleopatra’s plot to marry him then kill him off for his money. During what is certainly one of the most notorious scenes in cult film history, the wedding party of freaks ritually embrace Cleopatra as one of us. Through her undisguised horror at this and her gruesome punishment by the freaks, the film bluntly confronts viewers about our awkwardness about different bodies while simultaneously stirring up fear and alarm in familiar horror-movie style. Better known for the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula (1931), Brownings showmanship was equally a product of the circus (he was himself an adolescent contortionist in a travelling show). His meshing of circus and cinema–two dangerous entertainments–produces Freaks‘ uniquely disquieting effect.

Startled and indignant preview audiences forced the producers to add an explanatory foreword to the film but even this crackles with sensationalism as it veers between sideshow-style sympathy and fright warning. None the less, protests and local censorship ensued and the film never reached the mass audience for which it was made. Still, some of the real stars of the midway Ten-in-One shows of the 1920s and 30s (Johnny Eck, Daisy and Violet Hilton the Siamese twins, Prince Randian, the Hindu Living Torso) are showcased here as themselves and it is their undeniably real presence in what is otherwise familiar fictional terrain which is still so provocative. –Helen Stoddart

Freaks

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