Winner Oct '01

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The sickest film ever made is..?

Posted by: JIMMCLENNAN

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Firstly, we'd better try to come to some common definitions of what "sick" actually is. Looking at the rest of the thread, it does seem as if people are interpreting it is being the same thing as "gross", whereas to me they are entirely separate.

I certainly don't think Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (aka Dead Alive in the States) is particularly sick, simply because it's way too excessive to be taken seriously - it's a great movie, but the gore is totally Pythonesque. It's also wildly detached from reality in that most of the violence is inflicted on zombies, which (I need hardly point out!) don't actually exist.

The same goes, more or less, for a number of the other suggestions e.g. Bad Taste, Demons, etc. They're gory, but there's not a great deal in them which is particularly morally dubious - aliens attack, we fight back, seems fair enough to me. Bloodsucking Freaks has some MOMENTS of extreme nastiness - I'm thinking of the dentist here - but it's mostly comic-book stuff. I Spit on Your Grave is certainly very hard to watch, but that, to me, is the way rape SHOULD be portrayed, as horrific and brutal, rather than the sanitised version Hollywood prefers e.g. The Accused.

Of the suggestions in the poll, Pink Flamingos is clearly intended purely to BE shocking - it's like a little kid swearing - and this defuses its power, because it doesn't have any actual thoughts in its head. Make Them Die Slowly has the potential, but the execution is so woefully inadequate, any emotional impact evaporates since you don't give a damn about any of the characters. And Salo is simply extremely dull - it's hard to call a movie "sick" when it poses more of a challenge to your consciouness than your morality.

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One group of potential candidates would be the Nazi-ploitation genre, exemplified by titles like SS Experiment Camp. Most of these are pretty inept, but the basic concept remains so utterly tasteless you can only wonder at those who came up with it. About the only one worth watching is Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, where Dyanne Thorne drags the film up through sheer force of personality as the sadistic camp overseer whose idea of dinner theatre is a prisoner hanging from a noose while standing on a block of ice. I'm probably going to get flak for this, but I must confess that Schindler's List is, to my mind, not an awful lot better. That's for another thread though...

If we want to include short films, there's a series made in Japan, known as Guinea Pig, that must also be worthy of merit - they have, famously, been reported to the FBI as that mythical creature, a "snuff movie", by none other than Charlie Sheen. Of course, they are not - snuff films don't come with "making of" documentaries! - but one, Flower of Flesh and Blood, is a totally unrelenting depiction of the kidnap and dismemberment of a young woman. It does have a philosophy and a point, but unless you speak Japanese (and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a subtitled release), it's largely lost on Western viewers, leaving pure and undiluted torture.

To Germany, now, for Nekromantik, a film which merits the title, because of the way it doesn't just deal with the unthinkable, it makes it palatable. The hero's job gives him easy access to corpses - a good think given his particular sexual proclivity - and he, ah, takes his work home with him so he and his girlfriend can "play". Which is fine, until she runs off with the corpse...it's pretty much all downhill from there. But by the end, you find yourself sympathising with the guy, and seeing his point of view - hey, he's not hurting anyone, after all. It comes as something of a shock to find yourself siding with a necrophile, which is why this one deserves its place in the pantheon of depravity.

My nominee, however, is Men Behind the Sun, a Hong Kong movie that had a large hand in the creation of the Category III, adults-only rating. It's perhaps cousin to the previously mentioned Nazi-ploitation, but the big difference is that it genuinely reveals stuff most people (myself included) didn't know. In occupied China during World War II, the Japanese used captured POWs and local civilians to conduct the most ghastly experiments imaginable - the film depicts these in graphic detail, with detailed places, dates and people that are all entirely factual, which makes it more sickening than any fictional story. That it first spends 30 minutes setting the scene, and introducing the characters, simply makes the eventual switch into an atrocity exhibition all the more horrific.

In the end, however, the worst thing is that the Japanese scientists responsible got away with it. They traded their data to the Americans at the end of WW2 in exchange for immunity, and the entire subject was kept quiet in Japan for 50 years. This is perhaps the most important point to remember. Life and reality are far sicker than anything dreamt up in Hollywood. The events of September 11th prove that beyond any doubt...

- JIMMCLENNAN

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