Modern-day CGI allowed Miike to replicate the cruel extremes of Yamamoto’s original manga, now laced with the darkest of humour. The flippant slant to this ultra-violent piece of innovation was recognized by the BBFC, who limited their censorship to a little over three minutes in this sensationalistic over-the-top splatterfest. As a publicity gimmick, vomit bags were handed out to those attending the screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Stockholm International Film Festival screenings of this film. Apparently one person was said to have thrown up and another fainted.
ESTHER (MARINA DE Van) may be highly intelligent and rather beautiful, but she also has a very unusual addiction, one that contradicts her professional persona. She may not evince any signs of self-loathing or an aversion for her body, but her life devolves into a nihilistic fixation as she cultivates a chilling predilection for self-mutilation. Her disturbing compulsion begins when she accidentally injures herself. With her leg encased in bandaging it soon begins to itch and she finds it impossible to resist scratching. Consequently her wound splits open, and immediately starts to seep. Tearing and cutting away at her injury she comes to regard her body in a both new and disturbing way, soon losing the sensation in her leg and then becoming distanced from those around her, particularly at work. The self-mutilation continues in a bizarre restaurant scene, where over several glasses of wine she begins to lose control of her body, giving the impression her arm has been severed. As her friends continue in the triviality of their conversation, of which she manages to remain a part, she indulges her desire by picking at her arm under the table with a knife. Her friends and family are completely ignorant of her descent into this obsessive madness, although her boyfriend becomes increasingly anxious as to the bizarre nature of her behaviour. Locking herself away in a hotel room, she photographs her mutilated body and in an act of extraordinary narcissism, derives an almost masturbatory pleasure from her very self. With the masochistic removal of the skin around her face she seals her own destruction, but for her this has become a voyage of unsavoury self-discovery.
The fetishist cannibalizing observed in Marina de Van’s Dans Ma Peau introduced the French avant-garde to the domain of splatter and in a quite straight forward way raised innumerable questions as to the individual’s place in society. The camera never once shied from the unpleasantness; rather, it engaged in the most elegant fashion. In this perfect example of the new wave of the French extreme, the underlying lust of the gore-monger was so exquisitely observed.
THE SADISTIC MASTER Sardu (Seamus O’Brien) and his vile midget assistant, Ralphus (Luis De Jesus), front a macabre Grand Guignol-styled S&M theatre in the heart of New York. Before the eyes of an unsuspecting audience, the sardonically witted Sardu acts out a grotesque murderous cabaret to the nightly sound of rapturous applause. On stage the bound girls are subjected to a whole variety of torturous pursuit, including the ever-tightening vice, hacksaws, eye gouging, electrocution to their nipples, darts aimed at a target painted on one girl’s backside while another girl bites onto a rope holding a blade that will remove her head if she lets go, as the evil midget canes her backside. Following the flagellation, dismemberment and cannibalism an evil surgeon (Ernie Pysher) molests one of the restrained girls and then drills into her skull before sucking out her brains. Sardu’s ardent followers have no idea each performance is for real and that the naked beauties paraded before their lustful gaze are kidnap victims thrown into a bizarre world of white slavery, forced to endure unrelenting torment and finally death.
Sardu becomes enraged when theatre critic Creasy Silo sarcastically refuses to acknowledge the art in his perverse display. Desperate for a positive review he kidnaps the critic and then abducts ballerina Natasha DeNatalie to induct her into his performance and bestow upon his show a much-needed degree of artistic merit. His felonious activities bring Sardu some unwanted attention in the guise of Natasha’s boyfriend, Tom Maverick, and the shady Detective Tucci. As they further their search, Sardu’s depraved lifestyle is laid bare. In the cellar beneath the theatre, he keeps his naked performers locked away in a cage, only ever seeing release to serve his sick cravings. For the moment, they remain under lock and key as Sardu and Ralphus torture their captives, preparing for their bloodthirsty ballet. The girls, however, will very soon have their day, as Natalie’s boyfriend and the detective get closer to uncovering the appalling secret hidden beneath the theatre.
Fly-fishing fanatic Joel M. Reed’s Bloodsucking Freaks, which has also seen release as The Incredible Torture Show and Sardu: Master of the Screaming Virgins, has been repeatedly chastised as a worthless piece of misogynistic trashy grindhouse cinema. Its scenes of humiliation and violence, specifically inflicted on the female cast, aroused the wrath of the feminist group Women Against Pornography. It was a little difficult to take umbrage with them, because this really was low-budget exploitation cinema quite literally stripped bare; Reed freely exchanged any notion of narrative flow, talent for acting and special effects for cheap gore and the wilful torture of his naked female cast, to make, arguably, one of the worst films of all time. The grainy budget celluloid stock emphasized the movie’s sordid nature, yet elevated it to become a classic for fans of exploitation cinema. Its premise and mean-spirited dark humour contained elements of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s The Wizard of Gore (1970); these combined with Reed’s seamy excess to make for an enduring cult favourite, but not surprisingly it has had a highly controversial history. When it was prepared for release, it was unrated and was later given an R-rating when a series of cuts were finally agreed. Reed can’t get enough of low-budget filmmaking, still making appearances at horror conventions, and remains determined to bring out a sequel Bloodsucking Freaks 2: The School.
IN HER GOTHIC-STYLED New York apartment, the poet Rose Elliot (Irene Miracle) has fallen to the possession of the alarming contents of an ancient text by the name of “The Three Mothers”, which she recently purchased from a local antiquarian bookseller. The book tells of three buildings constructed for three mothers, in Rome, New York and Freiburg. The three mothers, Mater Suspiriorum, Mater Lachrymarum and Mater Tenebrarum, are the incarnation of pure evil and conspire to bring forth a world of sorrow and suffering. Their machinations have resulted in a series of bloody murders that have left a trail across Europe to the United States. As Rose delves further into the book, she learns of three keys. She becomes convinced that she lives in one of the buildings described in the pages of this book. When she descends into the cellar to look for this mysterious key, she encounters a flooded chamber and a portrait bearing the words “Mater Tenebrarum”. Unknown to her, a shadowed figure watches as she leaves the cellar. Soon after, her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey), a music student in Rome, receives a letter from his obviously distressed sister begging him to come to New York. As he sets off on his way, he leaves behind the misery and death of a school covertly run by Mater Lachrymarum. When he arrives in New York he discovers his beloved sister has disappeared and very soon learns of her death and the murderous power of the three sisters.
Following the success of Suspiria (1977), Dario Argento embarked on yet another stylish masterpiece, this time abandoning any notion of linear storytelling to create a series of hauntingly beautiful set pieces. This was to be the second of the trilogy of the three witches, which built further on the inspiration derived from Thomas de Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis. It would be almost another thirty years before his trilogy was concluded, when The Mother of Tears finally came to cinema screens in 2007. With Inferno Argento tried to elucidate the fear in his audience, removing the spoken word from some of his finest scenes as Keith Emerson’s organ-based score heightened the tension, most notably in the submerged chamber and the university lecture theatre in Rome. As his audience’s sense of trepidation began to escalate, he conjured with the radiance from cleverly hidden sources of light to imbue them with increasingly surreal hues of colour set against the ever-embracing shadow. The effect was to engender an impression of dr
eam, but this was in essence the very darkest of dreams. Mario Bava’s son Lamberto worked closely with Argento as his assistant director on this film in the same year as his directorial debut on Macabre, but Inferno proved so much more grisly. The excess was such the film was listed as a video nasty in August 1984, as the DPP chose to ignore the film’s imagery and architectural magnificence, features so rarely seen in horror movies. It was removed from the list in September 1985 and when released to video in 1987 was subject to over four and a half minutes of expurgation. The unedited version was finally sanctioned for issue to DVD in 2010.
FOLLOWING A DREAM-LIKE prelude, Kelly Fairchild (Daphne Zuniga) prepares herself to pledge to the most prominent sorority sisterhood at her college. For many years, however, she has been troubled by the same nightmare: surrounded by an inferno of flames she sees someone falling before a killer’s blade. Her secretive mother (Vera Miles) continues to put her bad dreams down to the pressures of being at college. In an effort to rid herself of her nightmares, Kelly eventually agrees to see a college professor who specializes in memory regression.
Meanwhile a deranged inmate has escaped from the town’s mental facility; having already murdered his nurse he has secreted himself in a dimly lit shopping mall. Back at the college, Kelly has learned that her pledge entails breaking into the same mall, which is also owned by her father, Dwight (Clu Gulager). Once inside they must steal the security officer’s uniform, which for Kelly will be no problem as she has the keys and knows where the uniforms are stored. Once within this claustrophobic setting the girls are stalked and mercilessly slaughtered by a killer armed with an array of gardening implements and whose guise as ever remains obscured. The killer, we learn, has a strange connection with Kelly’s recurring nightmare and she is his intended victim.
Television director Larry Stewart’s well-paced film proved to be a more memorable entry in the pantheon of college-themed slashers, following in the path of Hell Night (1981) and House on Sorority Row (1983). While it was unable to bring anything new to the now established slasher format, its murder scenes were applauded and Stewart revealed his expertise as he heightened the suspense for his film’s closing half hour in the point of view cat and mouse chase amidst the isolated corridors of the shopping mall. While the murder scenes were not particularly gory, the teenage audience were compensated by the sight of Daphne Zuniga as she prepared to remove her clothes.
CHRISTMAS EVE SHOULD be a time of celebration, but not for Sarah Scarangelo; she still grieves for her husband Matthieu who was killed in a car crash some months before. Guilt-ridden Sarah had always thought that she and her unborn child were the only ones to survive the wreckage of those tragic moments and now readies for her next day’s journey to the hospital. To her surprise, a knock comes on the door. Standing before her is a woman who asks to use the telephone. Unnerved, Sarah refuses, but the woman insists that she knows Sarah and tries to barge her way into the house. Although heavily pregnant, Sarah fends off the incensed woman and makes a phone call to the police. When they arrive there is no sign of the strange woman, but they promise to keep an eye on Sarah in the hours before she goes to the hospital. However, the woman cunningly avoids detection and enters Sarah’s house with a mind to ridding her of her unborn child. Terrified and helpless, Sarah locks herself in the confines of the bathroom. The woman remains on the other side of the bathroom door and a night of vicious torment ensues as she viciously slaughters all who try to enter the house and Sarah fights a determined battle to save the life of her unborn baby. The disturbing climax brought the excess endured for the last half hour to a blood soaked finale, which offered little compromise as it continued to jolt its audience and left in its wake a haunting message.
At first glance Alexandre Bustillo’s story may appear somewhat simplistic, but under his and fellow director Julien Maury’s careful guidance this became one of the most shocking and challenging films of 2007. Their debut as directors encouraged two amazing performances from their leading ladies Béatrice Dalle and Alysson Paradis in the claustrophobic environment of the three rooms that made up Sarah’s home, with most of the filming taking place in the bathroom. This was nothing new in French cinema; Eric Valette’s Lovecraft styled horror Malefique (2002) picked upon this tradition staging virtually the entire shoot in a single prison cell. The violence witnessed in À L’Intérieur was relentless in its visceral portrayal; its cruel intensity would place Bustillo and Maury’s feature firmly among the degenerate wave of the new French extreme, and naturally invited comparisons with the torture porn that had only recently come to the fore. When an effusion of blood was seen to spurt across the walls during the latter part of the film, memories of Dario Argento’s excessive climax to Tenebrae (1982), subsequently cut in many countries across the globe, were once again brought to mind. À L’Intérieur was elevated to become so much more than torture porn, as the two directors masterfully orchestrated the tension in a disturbing drama that was more dependent on suspense than smearing the screen in gore. Bustillo and Maury’s success would see them return in 2011 accompanied by actress Béatrice Dalle for their possessed house terror, Livid.
THE OWNERS OF the local convenience store have had to announce to their staff that the shop will be shortly closing down; these are troubled times and in an ever changing world the store is no longer viable. Even though the teenage night shift will soon lose their jobs, they continue as they have been instructed to price down the stock so that it can be sold off at a discount. One of the cashiers, Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox), has become deeply anxious following the release of her ex-boyfriend Craig (David Byrnes), who has been serving time for manslaughter. This bullying hot head has already had an altercation with one of the store managers, Bill (Sam Raimi)) and has made threats to come back and cause more trouble. As the youngsters set to work someone begins butchering them using a typically outrageous modus operandi, which is both gruesome and at the same time highly inventive. The killer makes ample use of the tools made available to him in the domesticity of this local shop, paying specific attention to the meat hooks, a box crushing machine, meat slicer and then an eye is rammed into a spiked letter opener. As the film gathers speed Jennifer finds herself as the final girl just before Spiegel delivers his twist ending, the shock of which momentarily overrides the movie’s prolonged periods of teen humour.
Scott Spiegel’s darkly comedic slasher, conceived several years after the genre’s golden period, carried so many of the hallmarks that had become synonymous with these grisly features. His directorial debut was fraught with so many of the problems associated with low budget film making, but his innovative approach to camera work and use of lighting ensured his film held the viewer’s attention. Scott had been school friends with both Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, and had learned his trade working with them on some of their early movies. He then went on to co-write the script for Evil Dead 2. Unfortunately, Campbell struggled to help his friend out on this particular film, only managing a cameo appearance owing to his involvement with Maniac Cop. The excessive levels of gore unfortunately aroused the interest of the censors and Spiegel’s efforts consequently suffered badly in the cutting room. In the UK, the BBFC specified the certificated print could only be released if just over five minutes of the carnage was removed from the final edit. However, a very rare video version is still in existence. This presents the film as Spiegel had originally intended, making it one of the last great slasher movies to come out of the eighties.
A YOUNG BRITISH COUPLE Celia (appearing as Jayne Ryall) and Christopher (Robert Behling) take a holiday on the small Greek island of Mykonos. As they arrive, they appear to be an ordinary innocent couple, until Christopher makes a call to his mother from a call box while enjoying a very heated moment of passion; his mother of course is disgusted. This scene carries a warning: this couple are far from normal; they are a psychotic brother and sister on an unholy mission. Very soon, they are laying the island’s perverted inhabitants to the slaughter, all in the nam
e of God. Christopher takes delight in photographing his catalogue of atrocities, including his urination on an older woman, which some observers still insist she actually comes to enjoy. She is then beaten and decapitated with a bulldozer. The hypocritical couple’s victims range from homosexuals, lesbians, a nymphomaniac, a couple of hippies and a policeman, each dispatched in a brutal and unusually imaginative way before the film’s twist prior to the credits begin rolling onto the screen.
Nico Mastorakis’s film, which also goes by the names A Craving for Lust, Cruel Destination, Devils in Mykonos, Island of Perversion and Psychic Killer 2, has been described as a classic in the field of exploitation and followed on the back of the 1970s grindhouse boom and the success of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). As a first time director, Mastorakis’s aim was to make money; to do so, he was at least going to have to match every other exploitation producer of the period. With this in mind, he made a film that went out to shock, as Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven had before him, using some of the most degrading episodes so far committed to film. While it included many sequences of sex with the delicious Celia regularly removing her clothes, and scenes of rape, one with a goat, its display of nudity was somewhat fleeting. Sex in Mastoraki’s movie was invariably a precursor to violence and death, the three essential ingredients to any sleazy exploitation feature of the period. Typically, the acting was poor, but the humour was dark and the photography well staged. When it was first released to cinemas in the UK, almost fourteen minutes of sadistic footage had been removed. Five years later, it was packaged as a video and issued in the November of 1982, when it roused the wrath of the moral crusaders of the day, whose demands insisted it be listed as a video nasty. There was confusion when it was removed from the list having been mistaken with Narciso Ibanez Serrador’s film of the same name, only to be returned in October 1985 until the end of the so-called crisis. The film was finally issued uncut to DVD in 2010. These problems with the BBFC wouldn’t deter Mastoraki, who went on to acquire a reputation as a highly capable low budget filmmaker.
The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books) Page 29