13.11.2024

TRASH HUMPERS (2009)

dir. Harmony Korine, 78 min. English language

A take on found footage that wasn’t supposed to be found, a home movie made by amoral outcasts for an unspeakable audience. No real narrative to speak of but a series of vignettes as the titular Trash Humpers (played and shot (on VHS) by Korine, his wife and some friends) roam the alleys and backlots of Nashville on a spree of antisocial behaviour: drunkenness, disturbing rituals, vandalism, lewd acts with garbage bins, and murder. Are they driven by their own personal desires, or simply acting in rebellion to societal norms? None of these questions will be answered but you will see someone fuck a tree.

This is Korine’s most polarising film, one that can be read as a reach for the same authenticity-at-all-costs ethos that is the lived reality of the Humpers. Without the pathos of Julian Donkey Boy or the carefully curated antifashion aesthetics of Gummo it’s just a movie about horrible people doing horrible things, but what Trash Humpers does have is a highly specific texture putting contemporary VHS nostalgia to shame. It’s also extremely funny and at times frightening, accessing the creeping fear of nighttime excursions turned bad-weird and the certainty that somewhere out there people are getting incredible kicks from things we'll never know.

20.11.2024

BLACK LIZARD (1968)

dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 86 min. Japanese with Eng subs

Decadence, glamour and passionate pulp from the director of Battle Royale and Battle Without Honor and Humanity. Based on the novel by Ranpo Edogawa, Black Lizard follows the exploits of beutiful super criminal Mme. Midorikawa (Akihiro Miwa) in her quest for love and jewlery at all costs. Kidnapping, double crossing, ingenious disguises, human statues and great gowns, beautiful gowns.

The screenplay was adapted from Ranpo by author, attempted coup leader and problematic queer icon Yukio Mishima, who was an admirer of Miwa’s legendary drag performances in the underground Tokyo scene (Mishima pops up in a small role, shirtless as usual). It features his favourite obsessions of eros/thanatos and unrequited love, given the melodramatic verve he learned in Kabuki and Noh dramas. Miwa was the only person he could imagine playing this role and he was absolutely right: she is a mesmerising presence and a true star.

27.11.2024

FROM BEYOND (1986)

dir. Stuart Gordon, 85 min. English language.

Lust meets Lovecraft in this psychosexually charged and Giallo inspired goopy classic. The creative team that unleashed Re-Animator re-assembled the following year for another searingly modern and luridly pulpy adaptation of one of famed horror writer H.P Lovecraft’s stories. When Doctor Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is institutionalised after being found next his bosses recently decapitated corpse it’s up to Doctor Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) to venture in to an attic laboratory and grapple with the Resonator, an otherworldly device that connects the human mind to an other world.

An exploration of the brain both inside and outside the body, the film is an incredible mixture of charged character drama and astoundingly composed gore cinema awash in flowing glossy colours and burning bisexual lighting. Barbara Crampton, usually relegated to supporting roles, has her first true star making turn here as the lead, commanding her wills and wiles in to a performance that transcends an already transcendent film.

04.12.2024

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986)

dir. Tobe Hooper, 100 min. English language
All at once more jovial and comedic and more gruesome and intense than its predecessor, Tobe Hooper’s Sequel to his 1974 masterwork is a strangely balanced piece that manages to maintain the rawness and unconscious social commentary whilst reeking of a distinctly 1980s excess. The film is a ride through a dilapidated funhouse, metaphorically and literally, with a distinctly adolescent charm that delivers its big characters and bigger set pieces with honest intention to entertain.

In between the wonderfully operatic performances, most notably from Bill Moseley as the indelible Chop Top Sawyer and wonderfully affected Texas Ranger played by a wonderfully affected Dennis Hopper, and imagery so flagrant it feels like self parody is a truly human understanding of violence that creates a wonderful contrasting tone that keeps the film nothing short of riveting as it explodes with colour and movement within the frame. Definitely one to fry the nerves, din the ears, scorch the eyes, and burn the brain. DOG WILL HUNT

niche avant-garde queer trash niche avant-garde queer trash