Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire


Torture Porn - The View from My Armchair
The unlikely commercial success of so-called "torture porn" films has generated a lot of press over the past several years, spawning at least two franchises in the form of the "Saw" and "Hostel" films. The key appeal of these films is their set-piece scenes of elaborate and gruesome torture, providing teenagers everywhere with a convenient conversational gambit: "I saw this movie over the weekend where a guy does X to this other guy and then..." Much of the mainstream press surrounding these movies concentrates on the same "Decline of Western Civilization" bunk that saw the drafting of the Hays Code in the 1930s. Interestingly, the best discourse on the topic hasn't been written in publications like frequently-insightful New York Magazine (in an article misses the point entirely, the author makes sweeping generalizations about the "relatability" of characters in older horror films versus those in the more recent crop of ultraviolent cinema), but has been explored on various fan-based message boards where there's a healthy debate about the relative *quality* of these films.There have been movies that could reasonably be dubbed "torture porn" for decades now, encompassing such works as the "Faces of Death" series, episodes in the "Guinea Pig" series and, arguably, much of the Italian cannibal cycle. I think what has people all aflutter is the fact that the recent American
Tag--I'm IT!
It appears that I've been double-tagged (ooo errr) in the estimable blogs Arbogast on Film and Cinebeats to participate in a meme. This provides me with a most excellent and timely opportunity to prove that I'm *not* a subliterate mongoloid by blogging about the book I'm reading. The rules are as follows:1) Pick up the nearest book.2) Open to page 123.3) Locate the fifth sentence.4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.I just finished reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde* and it was sitting on my nightstand, so we'll play with that.Was the face on that canvas viler than before? It seemed to him that it was unchanged; and yet his loathing of it was intensified. Gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips--they all were there.Well. If that was the excerpt on the book-back, Wilde wouldn't sell a solitary copy of this thing. Vain guy ponders own portrait--FILM AT ELEVEN. It's a good thing that there was no internet in Wilde's day. In addition to being undone by memeage, he'd probably get distracted by the profusion of hairless, nubile young men willing to post pictures of their naughtiest of bits for a paltry monthly membership fee.
The Machine Girl [2008]
Yesterday evening was an exciting night at the Apartment of Erotic Horror--I had the teevee all to myself and seized the opportunity to watch the copy of The Machine Girl that I bought at Chiller Theatre Con. In retrospect, I think my movie-watching experience would probably have been enhanced with group participation (to make no mention of the addition of booze--booze would have helped enormously). This movie was... problematic.

The movie tells the story of schoolgirl Ami, whose brother is killed by a teenaged gang of thugs led by the son of a sadistic yakuza family. Hell-bent on revenge, Ami joins forces with a mother who has lost her son to the bullies and embarks on a kill-crazed mission to massacre the criminals.

Much the way that Don't Answer the Phone is a retarded cousin to Manhunter, The Machine Girl is a developmentally challenged relative of Takashi Miike's ultraviolent yakuza epic Ichi the Ki
The One I Would Have Saved
Without victims, there would be no horror movies--the genre demands its cannon fodder. For the most part, I am delighted to watch the endless parade of tramps, bullies, dummies and other character-cliches march to their appropriately grisly demise. Isn't "grisly demise" what we're waiting for? Hell, much of the time I'm disappointed that some on-screen ninny doesn't get his or her comeuppance in an appropriately macabre fashion.
Much like Arbogast and others who've piped up in response to his query, there is at least one I would have saved.

Above: Udo Kier as Count Dracula in Blood for Dracula

Now, I know what you are thinking--"Kate, you can't save Count Dracula! He's the villain." Au contraire, internet--in Paul Morrissey's 1974 Blood for Dracula, he's done in by a thuggish, raping Communist. As the new Indiana Jones picture has taught us, Commies are the new Nazis, and Nazis are the ultimate screen villains. Simple cinema mathematics, yes?

The Dracula of BfD is absolutely swoon-worthy--a perfect example of the Three F's:

    Perversion Story [1969]
    I'll be frank--I'm not comfortable casting Lucio Fulci in an Italo-horror trinity with Mario Bava and [classic] Dario Argento. While I think that Fulci has his great moments(skindiver vs. zombie vs. shark--YES, PLEASE) and that he produced a solid body of work, I find his films, when taken as a whole, have a workmanlike feel with too-infrequent moments of auteurship and elegance. I'll be doubleplusfrank--I watched "Perversion Story," Fulci's 1969 erotic thriller, due to the presence of steamy Austrian screen goddess Marisa Mell* in a pivotal role and not because of a real affinity for the director's work. I emerged from the movie-watching experience with what might be a renewed interest in the work of Lucio Fulci--this was an unexpected gem of Italo-thriller cinema."Perversion Story" tracks the twisty personal life of Dr. George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel, whose character name evokes the author of that other famed work of Wicked Spouse fiction, "Rebecca") after his wife's death due to a lingering illness. Far from being the devoted husband, Dr. Dumurrier carries on a torrid affair with bohemia