Sayonara Cinema

KILLER KILLER (2007) Seven convicted killers, locked away in a ward reserved exclusively for murderers, awaken one morning to find their cell doors open, the guards missing, and the compound surrounded by an impenetrable wall of mist. At first the convicts merely wonder out loud where all the guards have gone, why the compound seems to have to fallen into disarray overnight, and what to do with the unbalanced psychopath that is kept in the basement cellblock. But when the men begin to drop dead one by one, they blame each other, unaware that there is an entity in the shadows, a killer of killers, picking off the inmates in the exact same way that they committed their murders. [Read The Full Review at Gorezone]

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DESCENT (2007) Shy college student Maya (Rosario Dawson) would rather spend her evenings curled up with a book studying than going out to parties. When her friend finally convinces her to go a house party, she meets Jared, who uses his finesse with words to gain Maya’s trust. The two go out to dinner and have a lovely first date before he brings her back to his apartment. It is here that he lets his true intentions be known and after failing to coerce her to voluntarily have sex with him, he rapes her. Shattered by this violation, Maya spends the summer drifting distantly through a job and falls into an world of drugs and dangerous partying.

When she returns to school the following Fall, she finally lands a teacher assistant position, only to discover that Jared is now one of her students. After class one day, she insinuates to Jared that she would like to see him again. Jared, being too arrogant to even question her request, comes over to an apartment to meet her. But Maya is not the insecure woman he once prayed on, and is now full of a demanding confidence that Jared is about to meet head on. [Read The Rest Of The Review at Geeks Of Doom]

BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON (2006) In a world in which Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, and Freddy Krueger exist, a young man named Leslie Vernon is preparing to become the newest name in serial killers. Following him around as he sets up for the night on which he will strike is journalism grad student Taylor and her two-man film crew, who are fully documenting Leslie’s preparation to become a horror legend, from his cardiovascular workouts, to his methodical choosing of his victims, to his complete rigging of the house where the murders take place. He carefully plants the seeds of the back story and curse that will be associated with his name, and even introduces Taylor and company to his mentor, a serial killer who has since retired. But on the night of the murders as Leslie sets to work, Taylor feels something deep within her - Leslie Vernon must be stopped!

Move over SCREAM, there is a new kid on the self-aware horror block. Building from a base previously set up by the serial killer mockumentary MAN BITES DOG and employing the laundry list of well-known horror cliches and motifs, debut director and writer Scott Glosserman energetically takes on the horror genre with one of the most unique entries to the slasher world in quite some time. [Read The Full Review At Gorezone]

FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965)

A trio of ultra-busty vixens have taken a trip into the desert, each behind the wheel of a screaming-fast hot rod for a little adventure and excitement. There, they come across an amateur driver doing time trials. Lead pussycat Varla challenges him to a race. When the racer accuses Varla of cheating, she simply beats him to death. The three women then drug the racer’s girlfriend, and head off to an isolated farm to lie low, and hopefully discover the whereabouts a hidden cache of money belonging to the old man who lives there. Though old, this wretched cod shows that he is the embodiment of misogyny. But his two sons, one a hulking and silent muscle-bound brute and the other a sly-talking weakling, will become the targets of the sexually-charged and strong-willed women. These men have never met the likes of Varla, Haji and Billie, and it is quite unlikely they’ll ever meet anyone like them again!

Director Russ Meyer, whose obsession with huge-breasted women helped to carve a niche for himself in cinema that will last an eternity, is a reigning king of trash movies and this has become his cherry example of all that is excellent in a Meyer picture. Beyond his cartoonish approach to violence and his obvious respect for the power that women’s will and sexuality have over men is his brilliant use of photography. Meyer was a WWII combat cameraman and professional photographer before turning to movies, and his sheer mastery of black and white images is phenomenal. Even forty years later, FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! still contains some of the best uses of the film stock since its release, and a well preserved print or restored home release will prove to be a testament to his focus, clarity, and ability to suggest fluid motion with very little actual movement. It is not with a hint of glee that camerawork worthy of study and praise is found in a film that champions bad taste and carnal excitement.And who is to be thanks for this carnal excitement? It is the three antagonist heroes Varla, Haji, and Billie. Meyer brought in Tura Satana (whose poster image has become synonymous with the movie itself) to lead his gang as Varla. She is by far the most vicious of the three, whose violent instincts are the only thing more tough than her sexual innuendos. Single-named Haji stars as Rosie, a curious blend of Italian and Mexican eroticism, and supplies a hidden lesbian undertone for the film with her loyalty to Varla. Haji would go on to become a regular in Meye’s future pictures. Lori Williams comes in as Billie, a happy-go-lucky buxom blonde that comes as close to a real life “Barbie” as the screen has ever seen. Together these three women become a trifecta of danger that no man can hope to withstand.

Meyer’s sets up against them a polar opposite trifecta of male incompetence in the family that the three women hole up with. There is The Old Man, a wheelchair bound (read as the “power” of the penis has been taken away) woman-hater who must use snarling words and violence to try and recoup is power. The Vegetable, a blonde-haired muscular brute with absolutely no brains to speak of, who only has his good looks and impossible strength to defend himself from the wills of his newly arrived female oppressors. And finally there is Kirk, who believes he can reason with the women, unaware they are playing him like a harp. Each of these three men become a living part of the male id, and each are created as being much less than women. And that is the draw to Meyer. Despite the on-the-surface sensationalizing of the female form, Meyer is a feminist, and even more so believes that they are the superior of the sexes. Meyer has been quoted as saying “the girls kick the hell out of the guys.”

Much to the surprise of those who see FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! for the first time, the film contains no nudity. The closest Meyer gets is a shot of Williams’ back when she is showering. Though this was done to avoid being hit by the censors at the time, it also alludes to the fact that sometimes less is more. This also applies to the actual on screen violence that is shown, and goes back to Meyer’s ability as a cameraman and director. He is able to suggest much more than is actually seen, and allows the human mind to fill in the blanks.Upon its initial release, the film did only moderate business and faded out just as quickly. Meyer became widely known with the release of VIXEN in 1968, teamed up with Roger Ebert in seventies on three screenplays (Ebert’s only official screenwriting credits) that Meyer would also direct. FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (The title being a reference to speed, sex, and violence) would go on to become a cult film in revival theatres and art houses, and gained further reach when John Waters wrote that it was “…the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future”. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but so far he is pretty damn close.

EL TOPO (1970) In the desolate and barren desert wastelands, roams El Topo, a wild gunslinger, clad exclusively in black, and assisted by his seven-year-old and completely nude boy apprentice. When he comes into a village being ravaged by a ruthless and savage group of bandits, El Topo instinctively saves the village, and meets Mara. For saving her, Mara throws herself to El Topo. El Topo leaves the boy with the villages remaining monks, and heads off with Mara. Mara tells El Topo that the only way she will love him, is if he finds the four master gunfighters in the desert and defeats them.

Though no easy task, El Topo eventually finds the four gunfighters, but in the end is betrayed by Mara and left for dead. When El Topo finally awakens back to consciousness, he finds that untold years have passed, and that he is in the care of a deformed and inbred horde that is forced to live inside a mountain. The only way out is through a tiny hole at the very top of the mountain. El Topo sets out to create a surface level tunnel, so that all of the clan may leave and live in the nearby town, unaware that this is the worst decision he will ever make.

Forget THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, this is the original, the unbeatable, and the pinnacle of the “midnight movie” Thrust upon the United States and the world when John Lennon and Yoko Ono saw Alejandro Jodorwsky’s underground film and persuaded a friend to distribute it worldwide, EL TOPO took audiences unaware, became a jewel in the crown of film critics, and soon became a must-see in the early seventies.

EL TOPO is a hallucinogenic western that is difficult to follow, challenging to decipher, and filled with cryptic symbols and spiritual overtones that will have the movie mulling in afterthought long after the credits have rolled. However, the film does have a clue to help interpret El Topo’s journey, which is found in the powerful and simple narrative opening - “The mole [which translates to el topo in Spanish] digs tunnels under the earth, looking for the sun. Sometimes he gets to the surface. When he sees the sun, he is blinded.” Jodorowsky, who also wrote the screenplay and stars as El Topo, uses this short speech as an allegory over and over again, sometimes via metaphor and sometimes literal, thorough out the movie. It is the constant the keeps the film’s themes going, and with it the rest of the clues to understanding will fall into place.

Jodorowsky’s tale is that of a spiritual journey, of a man who is in search of something to make his life feel complete. As such, religious symbols and mystical elements play an important part of the film. Most of the film centers around Christian fixtures - including the cross, monks, mass, prayer, and divine faith. The film is divided into chapters named after books of the Bible, and El Topo is even crucified in a most unique way at one point. However, it is never quite clarified that El Topo is in fact searching for the Christian God, as the film also works in The All Seeing Eye (an eye inside a triangle, similar to the one a dollar bill), the element of fire, and meditation.

EL TOPO truly takes full advantage of film as a visual medium. Jodorowsky fills the screen with wild scenes of bloodshed and death, sex that is hedonistic, violent, sensual and taboo, visually arresting characters, the most memorable being an armless man with a legless man strapped to his back holding a gun. He sets out to shock with imagery that is designed to trigger an emotional response in all but the most soulless viewers. Jodorowsky also casts a spell over the entire film with his camerawork and editing, as he blurs reality to the point that what is on screen could very well be reality, a character’s imagination, a vision of the future, or an aid to define the theme of the current sequence.

As mentioned before, EL TOPO is a very difficult piece of cinema to watch, but do not succumb to frustration so easily. Part of the wonderment of the film is its ability to mean multiple things as once, and to be seen by people in different ways depending on what they bring into the movie as a viewer. In that sense, the viewer goes on very much the same journey that El Topo does. And what you take out of the viewing may very well be a reminder and definition of just who you are. To that end, EL TOPO is more like a motion painting rather than a motion picture, and a piece of artwork that is worthy of the utmost respect.

THE WOODS (2006) Heather is a rebellious teen who has been brought to an isolated all-girls school deep within an old forest in an attempt for her to learn some control over herself. Heather is none too keen on the idea, and attempts to worm her way out of it, but to no avail. She meets the headmistress Ms. Traverse, befriends shy Marcy, and likewise becomes the object of torment by the school’s alpha student, Samantha. On her first night sleeping there, Heather has a horrific nightmare, as she has visions of the surrounding woods and begins to hear voices. And though no one will come out and say it, Heather feels an aura of the supernatural lingering around the school as days turn to weeks. When a student goes missing, and Heather learns of the legend of the school, she begins to suspect that there might be some truth behind it. As her intuitive nature leads her on, Heather comes to realize that school may in fact be run by a sisterhood of witches.

Lucky McKee quickly followed up his 2002 sleeper horror hit MAY with this supernatural ode to witchcraft, sisterhood, and rebellion. However, as McKee’s film is drenched in a European-styled slow building suspense and filled with three-dimensional fleshed out characters, rather than the long haired ghosts and torture chambers, fans had to wait almost three years for his film to be quietly ushered onto DVD. It is quite a shame, as McKee’s film seems an attempt to bring back into the horror spotlight a more lyrical and dreamlike tempo which has been widely absent from modern American screens, and has more than a passing resemblance and paid respect to SUSPIRIA.

Within cinema and before that in storytelling reaching back into Shakespeare’s MacBeth and beyond, the woods and forests have always been a source of the unknown, of horrors untold, of mysteries waiting to unfold, of spooks and spectres, witches and warlocks. In modern days, forests have housed unstoppable killers and unseen evil forces. McKee taps into this subconscious fear of the woods quite aptly here, sending his characters into the underbrush both in day and night, and allowing his camera to idle through the shadows and silhouettes of the treetops. The effect is both hauntingly calming and frightening. McKee even goes so far as to bring in Bruce Campbell in a supporting role, and actor who will always be synonymous with haunted forests, to ratchet up the filmviewer’s embedded terror of what lurks beyond the tree line.

David Ross, who makes his writing debut here, makes a stylistic choice to set his tale in 1965. This decision gives the film a unique twist on the story as it plays out. Given the year and the isolation of the school, the setting has a very natural and earthy feel to it. Technology is given very little screen time, and much of that is during Heather’s car ride in. The classrooms, and especially the dormitory, doesn’t look like they have been updated in the one-hundred plus years of the school’s operation, and give the setting more of a haunted castle aura than that of a learning institution. Second, is the dawn of rebellion that was blossoming in the mid-60’s youth, and the distrust for all authority. This subtext plays a crucial part of Heather’s being, and adds texture to her anti-authoritarian stance against both the teachers and her parents.

Ross also takes his time to give depth to his supporting cast. He keeps the horror and suspense subdued through most of the first hour, limiting it to a few nightmares of Heather’s, and a fantastically paced goose bump covered ghost story that one of the students tells as to explain what lies in wait in the woods and its connection to the history of the school. But when he unleashed the woods in the final act, they are more terrifying and lifelike than ever before seen. Though most of the gripping, thrashing, and constricting plant life is CGI, it is wonderfully brought to the screen and meshes with the physical set and actors, serving to enhance rather than distract. And when Heather finally gets a hold of an axe, it brings forth a quick and satisfying bloodletting that plays not only for shock, but as a logical conclusion to the story that is multiple layers thick.

Just as the extreme and graphic horror of the last few years was a backlash against the watered-down “near beer” horror, so too does it seem that character driven horror seems to be clawing at the throats of the James Wans and Eli Roths over the past year or so. And though THE WOODS did not get the widespread initial recognition it should have, perhaps it be looked back upon fondly as a forebearer of what is soon to come. Or it may just have to sit and wait patiently on the rental rack, waiting for the next unsuspecting soul to get too close, so that THE WOODS may grab its next victim.

CANNIBAL FLESH RIOT (2006) Stash and Hub are two ghouls, who roam graveyards at night looking for the freshly buried corpses to dig back up and chow down on. These two, who bicker and argue like a married couple and are more friends due to circumstance, have chosen tonight to feast on the recently deceased Mr. Hickle. As they make their way through the patchwork of tombstones looking for the plot, they make idle chat. But when Stash and Hub finally come to their destination, they soon discover that some cemeteries aren’t too keen on letting their permanent residents be taken away as a late night snack!

While the current trend in horror has been to cull through 70’s shock cinema, writer and director Gris Grimly goes back to the spooky and gothic low-budget flicks of the 50’s and even the 30’s to bring his twisted and comical tale to life. The movie, while shot on video, is put through the “grindhouse” wringer to give it a wonderful and inviting feel. Through post-production work, the black and white film is laced with scratches and dirt specks and frames are purposefully removed to give the film a jittery motion. Grimly incorporates the classic yet underused iris shutter to fade out and into one scene to the next, cue cards to move along the narrative, and even Tex Avery style sound effects to give a cartoonish tone to the rather morbid material.

Grimly further takes this stylized approach with both his set decoration and camera work. The graveyard is littered with oddly shaped tombstones with even stranger fonts marking the grave’s occupant. The graveyard is also inhabited by comical bats brought to life by string and more rolling fog than even John Carpenter would have the nerve to use. Grimly’s camera is often off-set at an acute angle, and uses fish eye lenses to give a twisted and warped view into the fiend-filled world.

The protagonists here, Stash and Hub, take their comical appearances from Laurel and Hardy, after of course being given a greasy southern gas station attendant overhaul. The pair even look like they could’ve just walked off a Cramps record album. Grimly’s rotted humor shines magnificently through the pairs’ dialog, as much of the film is just them wandering through the PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE inspired graveyard talking with one another. And just what do two ghouls who’ve been creeping around for decade discuss? Well, Stash speaks of the culinary variety that can be had with a finely carved corpse, especially with the almost limitless amounts of spices and condiments available in the world. Hub meanwhile, seems fixated on commercials that present anthropomorphic food like the California Raisins to make the product more appealing.

Rounding out the fiendish short film is a musical score by Peter Sandorff of Nekromantix and Denmark’s Hola Ghost, which further cements this movie as being a psychobilly’s ultimate wet dream. Gris Grimly has set up massively cool project here, which will be sure to please fans of horrific 1930’s creepers and grim 1950’s horror. CANNIBAL FLESH RIOT is currently making the festival rounds, with a full package DVD release planned for July.

www.cannibalfleshriot.com

SIX-STRING SAMURAI ( 1998 ) It has been forty years since the Russians dropped the bomb on America and Lost Vegas, lorded over by Elvis himself, became the last beacon of freedom in a desolate wasteland. Now, the King is dead, and the call has gone out over the airwaves that Lost Vegas needs a new leader. Guitarists across the land are making their journey, including Buddy - a sword-wielding, hollow-body electric guitar player, with a penchant for black suits, skinny ties and two-tone shoes. This “lone wolf” picks up a “cub” on his journey, when he saves a young boy from being attacked by mutants. This kid, who Buddy tries to get rid of at every possible turn, becomes both a helping sidekick and infuriating nuisance.

As Buddy and the kid continue their journey across hundreds of miles of desert and abandoned roadways, they come across rival would-be kings, bowling-themed assassins, an all-American family of cannibals, a communist surf band, and even the Red Army! Buddy’s mastery of his sword, and quick kung-fu keeps him safe from harm, unaware that Death himself, is also making his way toward Lost Vegas, killing any guitarist that he finds and keeping their picks as trophies around his neck. Buddy may be quick on his feet and quicker on a fret board, but is he fast enough to outrun death?

In this comical and highly-stylish post-apocalyptic adventure, co-writers Jeffrey Falcon and Lance Mungia, who respectively star and direct, blend a hyperkinetic cocktail of samurai motifs, road movies, ROAD WARRIOR inspired landscapes, colorful comic book-esque characters, and a surf soundtrack (courtesy of The Red Elvises) that hasn’t been this good since THE ENDLESS SUMMER. Mungia, in his directorial debut, takes his cues from the dubbed kung-fu VHS releases of his youth. His action scenes are quick cut to the tempo of the music and the film speed is played with to enunciate Buddy’s finishing moves or when he needs to pose. Jeffrey Falcon, who performs his own stunts, obviously has some martial arts training, and Mungia keeps his camera back enough to show that Falcon knows what he is doing. And even though the film’s original language is in English, most of dialogue appears to be dubbed in post-production. This should be the western/samurai/action/exploitation homage that everyone name drops, rather than KILL BILL VOL. 1, so where did it go wrong?

The film’s fatal flaw is the choice of half-pint Justin McQuire, who makes his first only film appearance playing The Kid. A even better question is the choice of why The Kid exists at all. If Mungia and Falcon were aiming to give a nod to the LONE WOLF AND CUB series, they sorely missed their mark. The Kid, who basically communicates in high-pitched shrieks is enough to drop the enjoyment of any scene he is in to zero. Even in the coolest of sword fights, a quick cut to this brat wailing is enough to make one just want to stop the movie. It really is that annoying. During Buddy’s many failed attempts to ditch The Kid, we feel his frustrating pain when he has to save him or when the tyke wanders back to the roadside bar Buddy has holed up in for the night. While the storyline would turn out much different without this ragged tot in tow, the alternate result would have been a flashier, hipper, and cooler version of what we get.

There is plenty to be excited about here, and The Kid fortunately doesn’t do enough damage to completely make the film a no-go. There is Death for instance, who looks like Slash right off the cover of Appetite For Destruction, who is more of a nuisance to Buddy than an actual adversary. His mission is to take over Lost Vegas with heavy metal, and thus becomes a contrasting force against Buddy’s rockabilly stylings. Their final battle, which is equal parts “Devil Went Down To Georgia” and SANJURO, is a duel that the film takes eighty minutes to build up and final product does not disappoint. Buddy also takes on an entire division of the Red Army, who still carry guns despite not having any bullets for them. The bloodless slaughter is certainly a highpoint of the film. And of course there is the radio DJ Werewolf, who is a blissful tribute to Wolfman Jack, and acts as narrator and sage-like voice-over who pipes in in-between scenes, a requirement for any action-fantasy worth its weight in steel.

Released at the tail-end of the indie film explosion of the nineties, SIX-STRING SAMURAI got its fifteen minutes, but never got the cult status is does deserve. You won’t find people dressed as Buddy at comic conventions, you’re not going to find a ten-year anniversary re-release or a re-make of it this any time soon, and oddly, you won’t find much of the cast or crew connected to any other films after this. The true potential for the film may never have been realized, but still it is a wacky example of the fringe cinema that was popping up in the care-free last decade of the twentieth century. And for better or worse, you’ll never see another film quite like this ever made again.

13 TZAMETI (2005) Sebastien is a Georgian immigrant living in France and working as an smalltime contractor fixing houses to help his family make ends meet. When his employer dies of an overdose, Sebastien finds a mysterious envelope with a train ticket and hotel room receipt. Recalling an overheard conversation regarding a job that he employer was about to perform that would bring great wealth, Sebastien decides to take the journey himself. After following a series of strange phone calls and a breadcrumb-like trail, Sebastien is brought to a remote and rundown mansion in the woods. There, he discovers just what he has gotten himself into - a thirteen player game of Russian Roulette, with wealthy gamblers betting hundreds of thousands of Euros on who will live and who will die.

With cold and harsh brush strokes that only black and white cinema can conjure, debut director/writer Gela Babluani paints a bleak and uncaring world within France, where death is bet on by the soulless elite, and the poor and desperate willingly put their heads in the line of fire for a slim chance at becoming part of the upper crust. Not since LA HAINE has France felt so raw and desolate. Into this world he thrusts a young and naive man (played by the director’s brother, George), whose only thoughts are the well-being of his family. It makes Sebastien, who already is isolated due to his immigration status, just that more isolated, as he is the only character in the film that thinks about anyone other than themselves. George Sebastien, who makes his acting debut here, captures the viewer from the get go with his sheepishly shy performance.

Although the story focuses on Sebastien, Babluani’s world is inhabited with characters that are given a surprising amount of depth, given their brief screen time. This is a testament to both the director’s vision and the actors he has chosen to portray his creations. Though we are not given any background on them, it is quite easy to say that each one’s untold story that brings them into the mansion where the game is played would make just as equally as good a movie. There are those that bet and “endorse” the players, and the players themselves - among them being a grotesquely obese man and an overly aggressive man whose own brother is betting on him - that add some real human traits to a very inhuman game.

The actual game, which takes up only a small portion of the film, is obviously where Babluani puts most of his focus, and is the “shower scene” of the movie. Every angle and every second vitally important. The eyes of each contestant become the windows to their souls. Like the strike of noon on a clock tower in a western, a light bulb in the center of the circle is watched by twenty-six waiting eyes. Life is whittled down to a single moment as thirteen fingers pull thirteen triggers. Babluani gives a new definition to tension here, and the scenario is just dirty enough and grimy enough that the burning gunpowder can almost be tasted as the shots come ringing out of the speakers. Nick Chevotarevich might even wince watching the build up.

Many films should be seen knowing as little as possible about what you are about to see, and 13 TZAMETI (tzameti means thirteen in Georgian) is certainly no exception. In fact, the direct enjoyment of the film revolves crucially around going on the journey with Sebastien “blind”. Sadly, Palm Pictures, which released the film here in the US doesn’t think so, and uses DVD artwork that destroys the fragile and carefully pieced together rising tension and insecurity we feel with Sebastien. Make all attempts to avert seeing the cover. Your future self will thank me.

MAN BITES DOG (1992) A small film crew, consisting of a director/interviewer, a cameraman, and a sound engineer have been chronicling the exploits of a serial killer, Ben, in Belgium. Ben is well-groomed, well-spoken (even if quite misled), poetic, and above all charming. He works his way from town-to-town, killing and choosing his victims at random, waxing on how to properly dispose of a body, speaking about the de-evolution of towns, and always funding the film crew with the money he takes from his victims.

There is a catch though. As Ben’s murders progress, he involves the film crew more and more in first the body disposals, and then the murders themselves. At first, the crew is excited to be a part of the murders even begin to like what they are doing, but as Ben’s ambitious slayings, which have no boundary or reason, begin to pile up, the crew realize that they have become part of a horrible experiment of their own creation, and only their footage may survive to tell the tale.

This pseudo-documentary, which is shot in black and white on grainy film using handheld cameras (the fictional crew is also the film’s actual crew) can in retrospect be seen as a harbinger for the clout of reality television shows and increasingly exploitative news programs and stories that started plaguing the airwaves only a few years after the film’s release. For that, the writing and character arc here is borderline genius.

Ben (played with panache by Benoît Poelvoorde, who eerily resembles comedian Ryan Stiles in a bizarro world kind of way), much like the reality TV stars who would follow, believes that the world revolves around him, and expects those around him to hang on his every word, whether he be eloquently speaking poetry about pigeons, or going on and on with quite misinformed racist remarks. But as with all short-lived, brightly burning stars, his very remarks and actions that lead him to where he is ultimately become his downfall.

Both the English re-name MAN BITES DOG, and its original title C’EST ARRIVE PRES DE CHEZ VOUS (roughly It Happened in Your Neighborhood or It Took Place Close To Your Home) call to mind the shocking and eye-grabbing headlines of newspapers vying for attention. The film, which takes itself quite seriously, subtly leans toward parody and exaggeration of what at the time was being sold as newsworthy stories, and the spectacle given to evil. At one point in the film, Ben and his crew cross paths with another serial killer who is being followed by a film crew, which can be taken as a mockery of the copycat and bandwagon mentality of entertainment.

As a whole, MAN BITES DOG plays out as a pitch-black comedy. This can be attributed mostly to Ben’s performance and fantastic monologues. One of the many highlights involves Ben explaining to the crew the proper ballast ratios to keep a body underneath water, depending on if they are man, woman, child or midget (their bones are denser, and thus need less rocks) and speaks as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The cut-aways between ultra-violence and conversations also serves as a shocking jump that one can not help but laugh at.

Originally released on VHS in the states by Miramax, which cut out two of the more gruesome scenes, it has since been released uncut on DVD by Criterion. These two controversial scenes involve Ben murdering a child, and Ben and the crew following a woman home and raping her. These scenes are obviously difficult to watch, but they are important to the overall insanity that dwells in his mind, and his complete influence over the film crew. More importantly, they are shown as the brutal and unforgivable acts that they are, and not glamorize in the least.

Since the film’s release, news stories, television “documentaries”, and the horrible plague of reality television shows which continue to pour out, have since far surpassed the extremes of entertainment that MAN BITES DOG was trying to bring attention to, and watched with fresh eyes today, MAN BITES DOG is almost quaint in how it documents and portrays its subject. Still, this is an important piece of cinema which deserves to be seen, and can still be effectively used as a warning about just how far someone can go when the camera is on them.