Mad Mutilator

 

Now this is what I'm talking about. Mad Mutilator, no, Ogroff the Mad Mutilator (1983), is a film that brings me harking back to my heydays in the course of splatter cinema. An age in which most cinephiles discover and explore, leading them to extended bathing in celluloid excrement. Mad Mutilator is something I had been meaning to check out and a recommendation from a dear friend put Ogroff's mutilation onto the fast track of necessary viewing. Having time off during work surely befitted the experience of Mad Mutilator; that pounding pressure in the frontal lobe that needed to be exorcised with a crudely fashioned axe. Just what was I getting myself into? Mad Mutilator opens on a note of sheer esoterica with a car stopping and a bouncing, bubbly boy skipping into the forest. Like any radically redesigned filmmaker, N.G. Mount decides to begin his crude French slasher with our pivotal mutilator shedding the boy of mortal coil. For being a steaming heap of film dung, Mad Mutilator sure shelters something enjoyable under its hood, even if I can't quite put my finger on it. So what Mad Mutilator is, is a low-fidelity French splatter film whose crude upbringing really fosters a Violent Shit anti-aesthetic. It is a classic example of film degraded to the point of an untranslatable condition.

Other than offering the maiming of a child, Ogroff's daily duties of thinning out the French population offer many surprises, especially when the film turns over halfway. After dramatic chase effects and the slaying of teenagers playing chess in the plains, Ogroff heads to his cabin to gawk at a pin up whose literally pinned up with darts. After this, his post-edited grunts strike off a scene in which Ogroff's Axe becomes his personal phallic extension and proceeds to masturbate and fondle his own instrument of terror. Actually, Ogroff loves tasking his Axe with the nubile flesh of women. So much soft skin to be flayed, so little time. In fact, had he kill with sexual discrimination, meaning only women, a fetishistic satisfaction could be argued - his utilizing of the blade. This proves to be too much thought put into such a shallow pool of aggressive ideas, though. Another of Ogroff's hobbies isn't so much cannibalism as feeding his pets, namely a dog and several zombies under the rubble of his hut. Shown in brief scenes throwing ground beef under a steel trapdoor, this is later heavily emphasized when these zombies escape, turning a tale of a masked murderer into the making of a tragic anti-hero. Boy, Ogroff sure is a strange creature, one who fights for the lives of his victims. So much so that by films end, the term happy refuses to apply with our mutilator's fate.

Perhaps my favorite expression of Mad Mutilator's is the all-synth soundtrack whose inspirations spouts theremin influence and ethereal screams from past dimension X (must be). It is purely the soundtrack whose preeminence creates the shifting soiled tone of the film that sparks hints of atmosphere. Compiled with fluctuating bubbles, pops, and whistles, Mad Mutilator's soundtrack sounds as if it were concocted in an all-too literal "beat laboratory". Without the soundtrack of synth-science, Mad Mutilator would benefit from nothing. It would be the cinematic equivalent of a black hole. Already is there scare dialog but paired with the abscessed special effects (if you can call them that) you'd get a life-killing incident of slasher footage. Ogroff's visage depends entirely on his leather-sex-mask. His character is thankfully gifted with some remove of a psychopath but plays bumbling in several scenes, specifically when he gives up chase with the mother of the slain child only to turn around to witness the car pass her, thus preempting him to return with chase. In this and many other regards, it is possible to connect Ogroff with some form of autism, giving him leagues more depth. For certain reasons, Mad Mutilator's only real contribution to film is the wacky events that later give way to early elements of fan fiction and the fact that it is a French antique. One that can be cherished if quality isn't a token concern and Axe-havings benefit whatever sour mood you may be in. Mad Mutilator also predates the brutality that the cowardly French would later adopt as the crown of their influx of neo-horror films.

Even the story is ridden with faults. Mad Mutilator contains itself within the span of an afternoon or so it seems. Ogroff trails the roads, finding victim after victim. If math is given consent then his body count alone for a week would trim a large portion of rural France's population. Ogroff is the very personification of genocide - a cold, burly machine capable of unstoppable madness. This changes with the inclusion of the undead, however, as Ogroff is besmirched by his own pets and by films end, unknowingly becomes a shambling toxic creation of his own doing. Mad Mutilator doesn't stop there though. Near the final minutes of Ogroff do we find one of Ogroff's maidens being given a ride by a humble holy man who turns out to be of vampiric origins. The forest in which Ogroff resides must be of cursed soil. How else would so many myths, legends, and monsters thrive off what seems to be barren in regards to resources or wildlife? Don't mistake my tooting of Mad Mutilator's horn to hint achievement. No, Mad Mutilator compromises the very notion of tedium and even manages to make a chainsaw fight echo mundane. Past the inclusion of some strange figures, Mad Mutilator Béla Tarr instead decided to focus his long tracking shots on rookie dreams of cheap gore and Axe murders. Repetition, when employed passively, can benefit your acquisition of knowledge in many cases, even furthering dramatic effect. In Mad Mutilator, repetition will be your undoing. Many scenes prove to be expendable. In fact, an abridged version could only benefit the film. Although I am fairly partial to the ending, an ending in which Ogroff's morality can be questioned. Perhaps Ogroff "madly mutilates" to keep the zombies destructive appetites curbed. Maybe his daily duties of murder are but for the greater good, less these creatures of the night destroy the very fabric of society. But really, who cares if Ogroff is too stupid to distinguish life from zombie? If proven to do anything, Mad Mutilator's only ability is to force me to spend an awfully long time contemplating a film that I will inevitably hate, but with appreciation. 

-mAQ

Exte

Perhaps the most natural return to form for me would be to write reflexions of a Sion Sono film. As assuredly you all know, Sion Sono is my personal favorite auteur, with his each and every film reaching beyond the boundaries of reality returning with visual prose of weightiness. Pairing his talent of avant-garde poetry with the camera was a match made in heaven, whatever that may be. Following Suicide Club 6 years in the making is Exte, an idea that must have stemmed from a deleted subplot in Suicide Club. During the trailer of Suicide Club exists a scene in which blood and hair protrude from a printer in grotesque fashion. Seeming all too surreal for the very [sub]rational elements within Suicide Club, this attention to the supernatural with digital dreads would have made for Suicide Club to be rebranded entirely. Not just teetering on subliminal messaging but mechanical possession? Why, it seemed only logical to take his scorned ideas and to mutate them into something else - Exte, the greatest horror satire that was ever to be. Starring Chiaki Kuriyama (Kill Bill, Battle Royale) and Ren Ôsugi (HANA-BI, Audition), Exte: Hair Extensions is a wild, trope-smashing migraine of Japanese horror cinema. Ostensibly too muddled and tongue-planted-too-firmly, Exte has but been exiled into scraps of J-Horror excess which serves as every bit a crime as child abuse is.

Exte is certainly nasty business, all involving the fine undead follicles of a dead girl. You'd hope Sono's "extensions" of horror would be safe from phobias. Well you can say goodbye to that notion as Sion Sono gives us another reason to fear physicality and being. Scenes to mention would be when a hairdresser discovers a strand of hair distending from beneath her eyeball. Grasping softly and tugging, the tension on the strand of hair has enough impact as to leave even the most jaded gorefiend emphatically wringing their fingers and begging for the images to succumb to a tone lighter than its current. On a strict plot basis, Exte is too weird for its own good, that is, this disjointed exhaustion of traditional Japanese curses and crude possessions is every bit bizarre as the mental image of a decomposing body's wounds exuding tufts of hair would be. A trichophilic morgue watchman, whose activities involve trimming the hair of the recently deceased to create hair extensions, discovers the corpse of a young girl whose organs were harvested by Yakuza and due to her flowing raven locks, Yamazaki steals the body and takes her home. This is just where the madness begins though. As the body appeared in a shipping box of hair, you might assume that this hair is a collection but her rage in an unhampered fashion may prove otherwise. Sion Sono doesn't answer these questions you might have. The terrible fate of the girl is hinted at during short, soiled segments. Exte would just rather tell the story of an inspiring hair stylist and her abused niece.

Now from the standpoint of a Sion Sono enthusiast, Exte is his most critically shamed film to date. I've had several like-minded fans of his auteur signature tell me that Exte really didn't contain all too much worth spare a couple scenes of hair-terror. I was colored very surprised, though, with Exte as it continues Sono's reign as king and proves to be his most established and separate taste to date. I have always witnessed Japanese films attempting to fit the mold of a direct, picturesque adaptation of manga to the screen. It is the Eastern equivalent of Hollywood buckling towards comic books aesthetics which you have seen in Punisher: War Zone and less-effectively, Zach Snyder's Watchmen. To be honest, the most recent of these films turned ink would be Hobo with a Shotgun. The inky pastels of blue and yellow taint the screen and create for an unsettling backdrop for the extreme violence. In Japan, many films have struggled to suit such a label including Ichi the Killer, Marronnier, and Uzumaki, just to name a few. Granted, these ideas seem more in tune with comics because several are based off of such and not just splashed with tinges of vibrant colors. With that in mind, Exte is the closest I have ever seen the medium of film succumb to a comic sickness. Ren Ôsugi's portrayal of Yamazaki is worthy of the film textbooks. Yamazaki is a character that, to an intellectual level, can only be described as batshit insane and no amount of brooding upon the volume of raven black hair can change that asset of his character.

Returning to the idea of a Suicide Club with technologically inclined spirits, Japanese horror cinema has been all about "grudges". In their market lies much room for mistakes. Catering entirely to the feeble-minded cowards of the West, it is hard for me to believe that anyone in the land of the East takes their own horror genre seriously. After all, the only atmosphere to be found is ample servings of soft focus and pajama garbed girls with knotted wet jet-black hair. In that instance in which the hair parts ways with raw data and projects itself out of a machine, I felt inspired to write about Exte, a film that has undeservedly been cast out among the Tartan filth of global cinema enthusiasts. Exte cannot be grouped up with any Kairo or its more suited companion The Wig. No, Sion Sono's Exte is all his own creation. Even the beauty shop comedic elements to this tale of sisterhood comes as a sigh of fresh air. I have spent so long avoiding J-horror for all of my worth when, in the process, I had foolhardily swept Exte under the rug as well. Not just for its extra-dimensional static cling, Exte is a unifying reason to pity the dead. That single tear escaping from the empty socket of a once beautiful girl marks the existence of a soul, which, even if in cinema, gives me some hope for an after-life. Exte: Hair Extensions is skin-crawling with emphasis applied to every syllable. Sion Sono borrowed the game just to humiliate the "masters" and further solidifies his placement on a pedestal.

-mAQ.

Crowley Rising: Kenneth Anger's The Man We Want to Hang and Brush of Baphomet

Biologist-turned-Sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey (left) and Kenneth Anger (right) at the Abbey of Thelema in 1955

Homo-Occultist auteur Kenneth Anger has always had a lifelong admiration for The Great Beast Aleister Crowley. As a matter of fact, Anger is also a follower of Crowley's Thelema - a religion which would play a major influence on the independent filmmaker's cinema-magick experiments. Anger's stunningly colorful and ambitious work Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1953) includes a variety of Crowleyite and Thelemite inspired themes and also features the mysterious Scarlet Woman Marjorie Cameron (whom would later live with Anger for a small period of time) - the widow of  NASA rocket scientist Thelemite Jack Parsons (whom accidentally blew himself up in his home laboratory) on the eve. In 1955, Kenneth Anger traveled to Sicily, Italy (with his fellow hedonistic friend Alfred Kinsey) so that he could direct a documentary on the Abbey of Thelema - a small house that Aleister Crowley used as a Temple for his religion in 1920 during one of his various self-imposed exiles. Italian II Duce Benito Mussolini would later have Aleister Crowley thrown out of fascist Italy and subsequently the religious murals created by the English Occultist were painted over by locals. Although Kenneth Anger would later restore the murals for his documentary Thelema Abbey (1955), unfortunately, a British television channel lost the film. Kenneth Anger's most ambitious Thelema themed film is undoubtedly Lucifer Rising - an extraordinary esoteric work that would take over a decade to make, but was certainly worth the long wait as it is arguably the American auteur filmmaker's cinematic magnum opus. Lucifer Rising - which was shot in Germany and at various ancient Egyptian temples - is a symbolic interpretation of Aeon of Horus - a new period in human history prophesied by Aleister Crowley in his Thelemic unholy holy book, The Book of Law. Apparently, at the dawn of the Aeon of Horus - which began in 1904 - humans would become devoted solely to individual liberty, following Crowley's law "Do What Thou Wilt." Despite being a nonbeliever with little interest in the Thelemite self-gratifying faith, I think it is obvious to most people that self-worship is indubitably a virtue of the modern Occidental world, thus coincidentally fulfilling Crowley's prophecy.

The Man We Want To Hang (2002)

After about twenty years of retirement, Kenneth Anger returned to filmmaking at the genesis of the new millennium and eventually released the short film The Man We Want To Hang (2002) - a work which encompasses a good number of phallocentric painting created Aleister Crowley during his lifetime that had been displayed at an exhibit Bloomsbury, London. Additionally, in 2009, Anger released Brush of Baphomet, yet another film comprised of various painting (from a 2008 exhibit in Paris) created by Aleister Crowley. Although shorter in length than its predecessor, Brush of Baphomet is the more wickedly sweeter of the two Crowley painting tributes. As for Crowley's art: although the paintings leave much to be desired in the way of technique, they vividly scream out the Great Beast's undeniably distorted view of humanity, as well as his playful fixation and notorious historical participation with sexual depravity. I especially enjoyed a painting featured in Brush of Baphomet of a nude savage Negress jovially grabbing the phallic nose of a man who resembles Pinocchio. Whereas The Man We Want To Hang features Crowley's most iconic artistic works, Brush of Baphomet features The Great Beast's more complex and expressionistic oil murals. In 2000, Dutch filmmaker Nico B. paid homage to Kenneth Anger's infamous book Hollywood Babylon by documenting an exhibition dedicated to the gossipy work at the Museum of Death in California. Thus, I would not be surprised if Kenneth Anger received his initial inspiration to document the two Aleister Crowley painting exhibits from Nico B.  Interestingly enough, in an interview we (Soiled Sinema) conducted with Nico B., the Dutchman stated about his friendship with Kenneth Anger, "Afterwards he (Anger) met my then wife and child. We even celebrated Christmas together. Then out of nowhere, in some dark moment he called me and was upset about something. Anger said he would put a spell on my family and I asked him to never contact me again."

Brush of Baphomet (2009)

Kenneth Anger lecturing on Aleister Crowley

Although Kenneth Anger's post-career shorts The Man We Want To Hang and Brush of Baphomet might not seem like anything special - they are beyond a shadow of doubt - loving tributes to a wicked man whose Occult influence is uniquely grand and ultimately incalculable. In a way, Aleister Crowley was the hidden guru behind the counter-culture "revolution" and the hippie movement. After all, Mr. Crowley is featured on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album with other various historical figures that The Beatles admitted to admiring. In 1971, Jimmy Page - guitarist of Led Zeppelin - moved into Crowley's former house in Loch Ness, Scotland and he even engaged in sex magick rituals, but later found such Occult activities no longer fun (replacing them with heroin). In fact, Page was originally hired by Kenneth Anger to provide the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising, but his wife later had a cat fight with the Occultnik filmmaker, so consequently, the famous guitar player was fired from the film (despite the fact that Page had already composed a score, which was inevitably left unused). In retaliation, Kenneth Anger belittled Jimmy Page to the press and even threatened to attack him with a black magic curse.  After his falling out with Jimmy Page, Kenneth Anger hired convicted murderer and Manson family associate Bobby Beausoleil to score and record the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising in prison (Beausoleil was given permission by the institution to do so).  Beausoleil also stars in Anger's short Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) - a film made from an agglomerate of scrap footage from Anger's original 1966 failed attempt at directing Lucifer Rising.  On top of being heavily Thelemic in both theme and imagery, Invocation of My Demon Brother features Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey (whom plays "His Satanic Majesty"), as well as random concert clips of Mick Jagger - who also composed the Moog Synthesizer-driven score for the film.  After all, Mick Jagger is the man that gained much fame by writing (with some minor help from Keith Richards) and confidently singing the 1968 controversial hit song "Sympathy for the Devil."  What better way for Lucifer to subliminally trick people than through the aesthetically pleasing hypnotism of music?! Aleister Crowley would also influence industrial music (Throbbing Gristle, Coil), as well as neofolk groups (Death in June, Current 93). In the late nineteenth century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche stated that god was dead. Instead of embracing their traditional Christian cultural backgrounds, many of the great artists of the twentieth culture fell in love with the self-worshipping gospel of Aleister Crowley.  'Tis no wonder the modern world is so pridefully and enthusiastically unholy, for that we can partially thank Aleister Crowley.

 Aleister Crowley on the cover of
The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album

-Ty E

Patrick

 In the 1978 Ozploitation flick Patrick, a naive nurse named Kathy develops unwarranted empathy for a comatose matricidal killer named Patrick. After killing his Mother and her lover three years earlier (whose lovemaking further perturbed poor disturbed Patty boi) - Patrick - probably caused by his incapacity to psychologically cope with his dirty derelict deeds - fell into a coma. Although Patrick is impotent as far as physical mobility goes, he has developed keen psychokinetic powers. Nurse Kathy - a fetching young lady with an inquisitive mind - finds herself fondling Patrick's genitals out of curiosity - even arousing his vegetated member. Overtime, Patrick develops an increasingly romantic obsession with hot twat nurse Kathy.  Jealous of any man that enters Kathy's life, self-centered Patrick begins to manipulate events in her life from the discreet comfort of his sterile hospital bed. Like a lot of guys with mommy issues, love struck Patrick naively mistakes Kathy's kindness and sympathy for love, thus intensifying his psychokinetic wave of destruction after the cutesy nurse neglects to reciprocate his delusional feelings. Of course, Kathy eventually tells Patrick - in a fit of unrestrained rage - that on top of being a narcissistic Momma's boy who is incapable of true love - he has nothing to offer her, aside from psychokinetic scribblings on an electric typewriter. At best, Patrick is a quasi-villain who is not exactly evil, but acts more like an irrational neurotic girl whose judgment is blurred due to fluctuating hormone levels during a monthly menstrual cycle - as he always acts out violently when things do not workout in his favor. That being said, Patrick is indubitably an unconventional work of horror and a neglected cinematic gem that is guaranteed to offer the viewer a jolly old deranged time - where the monster is an immature matricidal maniac's mind, yet despite his lack of animation, he still gets your adrenalin pumping just fine.

Patrick was directed by Richard Franklin, a Hitchcock connoisseur who freely admits his psychokinetic horror film was influenced by the Ed Gein inspired masterpiece Psycho (1960). In fact, Franklin developed a real-life friendship with Hitch and would later go on to direct Roadgames (1981) - a mobile vehicle reworking of Hitchcock's Rear Window (1958) - as well as Psycho II (1983) - a surprisingly decent sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's original masterpiece. Despite taking influence from Hitchcock's Psycho, Patrick is a highly original film in its own right. Although both films feature pathetic matricidal killers who have obvious problems socializing with the opposite sex, the similarities pretty much end there. Patrick screenwriter Everett De Roche based the script on a real-life mentally unstable individual named Patrick - who jumped off a balcony after discovering his wife was sleeping with another man - becoming completely paralyzed in the process, aside from being able to spit and catch random erections (like Patrick in the film). Richard Franklin openly admitted (in a DVD audio commentary) that he had "literary pretensions" whilst directing Patrick - taking the liberty to include unreferenced quotes from William Shakespeare (The Tempest) and Oscar Wilde in the film. While girlishly arguing with Nurse Kathy via an electric hospital typewriter, Patrick psychokinetically plagiarizes Wilde's famous quote, "Yet each man kills the thing he loves." Of course, Patrick - being a neurotic maniac - self-deceptively believes that he is in love with Kathy, despite the fact that he has never physically embraced her (nor could he). The hospital's matron - Cassidy - a bitter old wench who seems to suffer from a dire case of sexual repression - has a seemingly irrational hatred for comatose Patrick - as well as an instant contempt for Kathy upon first meeting her. Cassidy - a godless realist and self-satisfied "humanistic" proponent of euthanasia - who at first seems like a vile she-bitch gatekeeper from hospital Hades - ends up coming off as one of the wisest characters by the conclusion of Patrick. Had Kathy practiced the same cold and calculated hospital procedures stringently endorsed by Matron Cassidy, she would have undoubtedly avoided Patrick's hospital bed led reign of temper tantrum terror. 

Although early psychoanalysts like Wilhelm Reich and C.G. Jung (who wrote extensively on parapsychology throughout his career) attempted to study Occult phenomena - such unconventional research has now become virtually abandoned in the medical world. In fact, Jung once attended a séance performed by an adolescent girl psychic and also wrote on several clinical cases of double consciousness. Of course, as so cynically portrayed by the doctors in Patrick - the golden age of studying unexplainable psychological phenomenon is long gone. Nowadays, psychologists are only interested diagnosing individuals via brain scans and prescribing dangerous (and many times unpredictable) psychoactive drugs. Nurse Kathy encounters a doctor - who is more arrogant than charming - that freely admits he was originally interested in studying the more mysterious elements of the brain and human psychology - but is now only interested in monetary success. Only Kathy - a naive nurse who is dubious of modern medicine - finds abnormal Patrick to be of an intriguing character. What makes Patrick more interesting than most films of a similar supernatural nature is that it provokes the audience to ask questions \regarding euthanasia - as well as the validity of cold materialistic science when treating psychological blemishes of a less accurately definable sort.  Richard Franklin and screenwriting co-partner Everett De Roche originally intended to make a sequel to Patrick; Patrick II: The Man Who Wasn't There, but, alas, fate did not work in their favor, thus the project never left pre-production. Additionally, in the audio commentary for the Synapse DVD release of Patrick, director Richard Franklin acknowledges his interest in remaking Patrick with modern filmmaking technology just as Alfred Hitchcock did with some of his earlier films. Unfortunately, it is now impossible for Franklin to remake Patrick as he passed away in 2007. Still, novice director Mark Hartley announced in February 2010 that he would be remaking the film - undoubtedly the (often times unfortunate) fate of all decent (and not so decent) horror films. Admittedly, it would be interesting to see a modern day Patrick who utilizes a computer and the internet as his pseudo-romantic weaponry of the third eye controlled kind. For more info on Patrick, check out Synapse Films.

-Ty E

Slime City

 

This odyssey that, of course, revels in slime, started as a selfless act of me finding a copy of Slime City for a friend to watch. I never had any initial intention to watch the film, much less give it a thoughtful review. This friend has, for some time, had a growing addiction and it's only right that his path be taken downtown, a city of effervescent and oft-runny ooze. After bestowing upon him a Ghoulies double feature, why, I should have foreshadowed this long ago but now that I'm at this point - I can stop bitching and attempt to mend the mold that Slime City has spread upon every nerve in my brain. Opening with a scene of unspeakable turbulence, a couple glance at an apartment complex but for only the male suitor. Unknown to us, the female is a dedicated full-time cocktease whose occupation borders maintaining chastity and driving the lead male, Alex, mad. This can include many activities as Lori's model is an advanced prototype of female warfare, visiting Alex's workplace, furthering the temptation with her always loaded innocence artillery cannon. Mary Huner portrays both Lori, unloving girlfriend, and Nicole, temptress Goth-Rock man-killer. For reasons unknown to us at the time, the paralyzing performance of Mary Huner digs much deeper into the flesh of Slime City than one would care to realize but for now lets stick to the Satanic scribblings at hand.

After Alex moves into his new apartment, the tenants prove his previous assumption of being among retirees wrong by displaying black leather and chains, clearly the height of 80s NY counterculture. After the stress finally buckles his will too far from the lack of intimacy from his girlfriend, Alex spends his dinner with a fellow tenant, Roman, which includes a strange Himalayan Yogurt and an unknown wine created by a deceased soul. Upon further revelation, the wine is clued to be an elixir created by a Satanic alchemist before his suicide in the very basement of the apartment. Down there, shelves are lined with the stuff and Alex's future transformation is beset in stone. For you see, once you consume this dark combination of questionable origin, you must kill or else the slime will consume you. Your skin puses and boils. Clothes give way to seep slime through your every pore and eventually you rot. This drags in a line of clear inspiration from the aforementioned Ghoulies, that tale of a wandering masculine identity falling at the heels of property horror while a bubblehead bounces around. Not content with just "apartment horror", never in the vein of Polanski, Slime City ups the ante with extremely practical and unnecessary slime, ooze, gunk, and mire, which is more of a monetarily-salvaged helping of Street Trash, if anything. Slime City rolls out the mildewed red carpet at this epiphany and reincarnation, dismemberment, and turgid synth take lead of this true "grindhouse" production.

Whether or not Slime City is of worth to be occupied with your precious time is mainly up to the three key aspects that might make for sparse enjoyment. If promising amounts of seepage, fully clothed sex, and nondescript Satanic occultism seem like any desirable way to spend an evening than Slime City will overcompensate your dwindling taste in filmic luxury. Picking up where I left off, the transformation of femininity in Slime City is a rather quirky one. Nicole plays succubus to Alex's only desire - sex. After all, he is a struggling artist whose hormones were the only unconditional aspect of their seemingly flawless relationship. Refusing to make love, spend the night, or give way from her parents hold, Lori not only sacrifices the life and the will of Alex but also condemns his soul in the process. Striking opposite, Nicole is the gloomy girl-next-door archetype par excellence, especially with her dominating candy stare and the crypt-like apartment that she resides in, complete with wooden boards protruding from doorways. The climax of Slime City reaches a boil all too fast, resulting in an obviously synthetic experience. It feels as if Greg Lamberson forced the script to swallow a bag of pop rocks then wash it down with a spent slug of a .45 to ease the pain and eliminate its coil thus severing expectation. In fairness, I understand his will to want to keep it canon in death. Slime City lives up to its title in some ways, some others, it doesn't. It's not so much a slime city as it is a slime suburb. Either way, Slime City is definitive barf material. Especially in my sickened state did the grueling nature of goop sway me.

-mAQ

Madame O

 

For the past several days I have been plagued with fluish symptoms. During this brief period of hell, I had managed to view quite a number of films with Madame O being one of the more memorable ones. Not just because I, too, shared a "rot" of sorts with the main objector of the film but also because of the pulp decadence that played a part of this early entry in pinku. Past polygamy, Seiko harnesses the terror grained in her roots from a savage rape to fuel her moonlight attacks on men. Depicted only during a single and short scene, Madame O makes sure not to stick so much as to the erotic nature of her molestation as to focus almost exclusively on the stylistic composition of the film. After all, without the pseudo-noir and the toggled monochromatic/color, why, Madame O would have been left a sizzling piece of stale pink, as non-titillating as could be. Due to the absence of logical Japanese perversion and fetishistic truths, Madame O is counterfeit Americana picked up for Western soil via Audubon Pictures. It is in this vein that makes Madame O seem unfitted for any proper audience. You can herd it any which way you'd like but Madame O will never feel or be at home. No, Madame O was clearly made for a different species of being and in this context I'd imagine it getting the vast recognition it almost deserves.

Labeled as a killer and outcast as a saint, Seiko's livelihood makes up of two key activities: performing complicated surgeries, saving the lives of many, and seducing and transmitting her syphilis (given to her upon the rape) while the male contender rests peacefully after an explicitly PG-13 night of consensual sex. The surgical precision in which Seiko applies her "scorned woman" archetype is as devious and calculated as it gets. She is a simple and stupid creature, labeling all men as chauvinist pigs and dealing them her inner-rot via cotton swabs. For these terrible attacks on men, you'd assume the violation she suffered through would have been a grueling experience but due to the foolish and prudish handling of Madame O, the rape scene is presented as a slightly eschewed game of ring-around-the-rosie, baring only a small amount of breast and retaining full dignity, syphilis withheld, of course. Seiko's life is challenged, however, when she finally transcends teasing death and actually murders a potential blackmailer. She then not only becomes a legit killer but picks up a note of love with a young doctor employed at her clinic. Once married, Seiko doesn't rest easy as she begins to suspect her husband being of questionable intention. Again, the utilizing of two separate palettes really draws the line between art and proto-sleaze, black and white representing the drama and color to visually resonate with the graphic (at the time) images on display. 

Madame O was, at times, breathtaking in its dazzling display of crisp cinematography. There is no denying its powerful images, including the silly throes of passion which barely stand for second base by today's standard. Whether or not you would enjoy it depends largely on your taste. Hailed as being cutting edge and graphic, Madame O is really neither - a fossil, more or less. Its value relies largely on its history and not so much the internal worth. Despite ending on a chord so silly and sudden that all dignity self-defenestrates upon credits, Madame O remained a worthy textbook pink film with rather unconventional decisions progressing itself in the art market. But if misandristic cinema is what you are looking for, Madame O can only satiate a small portion as there is no real revelation as to the reason of her madness, other than Seiko's whines of an unfortunate incident which have, no doubt, happened to millions of other people. This facet plays perfectly with her narcissism and leaves the air about the character unsettling and curious. I still don't how to feel about Seiko's resentment towards men other than blaming it on naivety. Recommended for a single viewing but no more. To learn more about Madame O or more Asian cult cinema, visit Synapse Films.

-mAQ

Captain Berlin Versus Hitler

(C) Jörg Buttgereit

Proto-Nazi völkisch writer Arthur Moeller van den Bruck believed that Germany had the right to take over lands of alien races due to their superior kultur and völk- as the Teutons could only bring progress to these inferior nations. After the devastating defeat of Germany in two World Wars - völkisch theories like Moeller's were pretty much universally discredited throughout the Occidental world - at least in regard to military prowess and in a relativist humanistic sense. Of course, the allies had no problem stealing defeated German's technological inventions - for Germany was easily the most scientifically advanced nation at that time. Ever since the end of World War II and the split of Germany into two separates states (which were only considered "secondary" nations as far as power goes) - as predicted by Oswald Spengler - organic German kultur has been on the steady decline (despite the end of the Berlin wall). Of course, Germany is still one of the greatest industrial producers (despite being de-industrialized by the allies after the second World War) in the world, yet the country is nowhere near as innovative as it was during the first half of the twentieth century. For example, Germany has yet to produce an artistically innovative filmmaker greater than F.W. Murnau nor has the country produced a filmmaker more technically innovative as Nazi state-funded auteur Leni Riefenstahl. F.W. Murnau would later work in Hollywood and direct his masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, but still utilizing a virtually all German film crew, and later Hollywood blockbuster filmmakers would steal Riefenstahl's groundbreaking Teutonic cinematic techniques - producing big budget artificially-stylized cinematic dribble. One of the reasons why I like German necro-auteur Jörg Buttgereit so much is because of the distinctly German quality of his original five feature-length films: Hot Love, Nekromantik, Der Todesking, Nekromantik II: Return of the Loving Dead, and Schramm. After a 16 year absence from feature-length filmmaking, Buttgereit eventually released Captain Berlin Versus Hitler (2009) - a film shot over the course of 3 days in a Berlin theater. Unlike Buttgereit's previous feature-length films, Captain Berlin Versus Hitler was shot on digital video during a live stage play. Also, unlike Buttgereit's previous efforts, Captain Berlin Versus Hitler is highly reflective of the Americanization of German culture.

(C) Jörg Buttgereit

The most glaring aspect of Captain Berlin Versus Hitler that reflects the post-World War II influence of America on German culture is the film's superhero protagonist Captain Berlin. It is no secret that most of the early comic book innovators in America were of the Jewish persuasion. In fact, America's most popular superhero - Superman - was created by Zionist Jews Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. Ironically, Superman (who was originally supposed to be "evil") - like Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg and his völkisch theories - was inspired by the übermenschlich philosophies of Teuton philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Of course, Buttgereit's Captain Berlin is Germany's answer to Superman (with characteristics of Captain America thrown in for good measure). Also taking influence from America - the Dracula vampire featured in Captain Berlin Versus Hitler resembles the iconic Universal Pictures Dracula played by Bela Lugosi and not that rat-like vampire Count Orlok featured in German auteur F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922). Last but not least, Captain Berlin Versus Hitler is mostly a parodic comedy - certainly a traditional trade of Jewry but not so much a common characteristic of conventional German artistry.  During his childhood, Buttgereit's Grandmother bought him Creature Feature bubblegum cards, thus sparking the horror movie obsession that would eventually erupt into an artistically successful "Art House Horror" filmmaking career.  In 2009, Buttgereit finished his cinematic Frankenstein - Captain Berlin Versus Hitler - the auteur filmmaker's greatest tribute to genre that caused him to develop into the mad-German-scientist-film-director that he is today. Essentially, Captain Berlin Versus Hitler is Buttgereit's answer to Syberberg's Hitler: A Film from Germany (1977) - taking inspiration from an eclectic range of seemingly unrelated works including Mel Brook's The Producers, Universal Monsters (especially Frankenstein and Dracula), The Boys from Brazil, and the director's nostalgic love for American comic books. 

(C) Jörg Buttgereit

 (C) Jörg Buttgereit

In 1982, Jorg Buttgereit originally introduced his German superhero Captain Berlin in a short of the same name. Over a 1/4 century later, Buttgereit finally realized the feature-length film Captain Berlin Versus Hitler - set in 1973 - where Captain Berlin battles against Adolf Hitler's preserved brain. Isle von Blitzen - a sexy Nazi chic doctor who saved Hitler's brain during the conclusion of World War II - acts as the antagonistic caregiver of Hitler's gray matter. Von Blitzen creates a Frankenstein-type creature named "Germanikus" out of the bodily remains of decomposed SA and SS soldiers - which is designed by the sadistic SShe-wolf as a vessel for Uncle Adolf's brain. To von Blitzen's disgust, she has to hunt down communist vampire Count Dracula in Romania - as his antique blood will animate the Totenkopf-Frankenstein body she has assembled. Despite being a count, Dracula is a true believer in the internationalist cause - a fighter for the proletarian who enjoys sipping on hot Aryan blood. Captain Berlin, who in his normal everyday life works as a leftist yellow journalist, becomes distressed when Isle von Blitzen and Dracula steal his voluptuous Aryan daughter Maria.  After Germanikus acts in a typically Frankenstein-esque manner of mental and physical instability, Ms. von Blitzen produces a Krupp steel HITLERROBO body for Adolf's lonely brain.  Historically, Krupp steel - a 400-year old German dynasty - became the center for German rearmament after Hitler's rise to power in 1933.  In Captain Berlin Versus Hitler, Buttgereit successfully interweaves horrible historical fact with phantasmagorical science fiction - certainly a grand achievement that will bring happiness to any serious underground cinephile.  As one would expect from a film by Buttgereit, Captain Berlin Versus Hitler features an excellent synthesizer-driven soundtrack that fans of Kraftwerk would certainly admire.  From beginning to end, Captain Berlin Versus Hitler is a comedic absurdist ride through the perverse mind of Jörg Buttgereit and his greatest personal obsessions.

All pics (C) Jörg Buttgereit

Before the end of World War II - whilst growing up in the Fatherland - German youth looked up to the historical heroes (from Frederick the Great to Goethe) of their past for inspiration. After World War II, any sort of National pride in Germany was mostly considered taboo - as it was usually associated with Nazi Germany and the propaganda that was spouted by that regime. Having no Germanic heroes growing up (one could say, "a father-less fatherland"), Buttgereit invented the fictional hero Captain Berlin - a German superhero who waged war against Uncle Adolf and gave Germany some lasting integrity by helping to clean-off the infamous legacy of Nazi taint. In Buttgereit's short Mein Papi - shot between 1981-1995 - the Teutonic auteur belittled his own father - documenting his lifetime of steadily accelerating degeneration - starting out as a handsome young Aryan of Germany and eventually morphing into a typically obese-philistine-couch-potato Yankee-like creature whose personal integrity had worn to nil. Captain Berlin Versus Hitler is undoubtedly Buttgereit's most escapist film - offering an alternate pseudo-reality where the good Germans defeated Austrian peasant Adolf Hitler and restored Deutschland's posterity from within.  Buttgereit also grew up in the wake of the Baader-Meinhoff terrorist attacks in Germany, thus it is no surprise that he also lampoons the shallow nihilistic idealism of Communism in Captain Berlin Versus Hitler.  In the film, Dracula - the most cunning of all monsters - militantly states, "You're corrupted by the ugly face of capitalism" - in a feeble attempt to validate his genocidal monster brand.  In the world of Captain Berlin Versus Hitler - both opposing collectivist political ideologies: National Socialism (Nazism) and Communism (Marxism) - the real-life historic monsters that led to Germany's ruin - are the true bogeymen of the film.  Dracula and Hitler's brain merely act as entertaining archetypes for these historically disastrous political ideologies.

Peter Synthetik (theme song creator), Claudia Steiger (Dr. Ilse von Blitzen), Jörg Buttgereit (director)
(C) neverhorst.de

Although some fans of the Nekromantik films might not appreciate Captain Berlin Versus Hitler, I, for one, was pleasantly surprised by the unconventional work and have now come to the realization that Buttgereit is an eclectic artist whose talent is marvelously multifaceted - proven by his ability to innovate, gross out, humor, and intrigue the viewer - despite creating only a handful of cinematic offerings during his low-budget filmmaking career. After my first viewing of Captain Berlin Versus Hitler - I knew the film captured the artistic prowess of Buttgereit's earlier works (albeit of a different flavor) - as I already have the impulsive desire to revisit the unconventional cross-genre-gothic-horror-science-fiction-hybrid superhero flick and once again become enthralled by the Germanic artistry that no other artist could successfully duplicate; nor would any other filmmaker have the gall to capture the post-Nazi German zeitgeist Herr Buttgereit has so wickedly, yet lavishly dreamed up. For more info on Captain Berlin Versus Hitler, check out The Official Website of Jörg Buttgereit and Media Target Distribution.

-Ty E