SUFF PREVIEWS: Trash Humpers, The Taint, El Monstro del Mar!
August 31st 2010 04:58
The festival kicks off early Thursday night September 9th (with a special screening of Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou) to Saturday late, September 11th, at The Factory theatre in Marrickville. Visit the official website for complete listings, ticketing and other information.
I watched a small clutch of the SUFF screeners that fit the deep trash criteria of my Pleasure of Nightmares like a guttersnipe’s filthy hand in a glove lubricated with unctuous bodily fluids. The SUFF isn’t for subculture prudes or cine snobs, SUFF is for those who champion the truly independent filmmakers who dig deep into the bowels of maverick moviemaking in order to purge their dark, twisted desires, release their inner beasts, pay tribute to the great agent provocateurs of underground cinema, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.
Friday 10th, 7.45pm & Saturday 11th, 2pm
Harmony Korine jerks off and gets friction burns from wanking so fervently. I’ve never seen a flick (of the wrist) so blatantly self-indulgent and contemptuous to its audience. Watching this inexplicable 80-odd minute piece of God knows what was like being tied to a chair and forced to watch paint dry on a turd; experimental filmmaking taken to its appalling nadir. Supposedly following the lives of several sociopathic elderly people in Nashville, Tennessee, but really just several performers wearing full-head geriatric masks (one of them I believe was Korine himself) who spend their time smashing television sets, dry-humping large plastic trash bins, and generally being a pain in the ass. They’re filmed by a documentary crew who are shooting on an old VHS camcorder. This is a movie very much made on the smell of an oily rag. The quality of the picture is dreadful, enough to make your eyes water; tracking problems, picture loss, and super-low-grade focus; all the glorious hallmarks of amateur DIY home movies. I can only assume this is an attempt to create an anti-movie. There is no grimy street poetry on display, no intelligent social sub-text, only reprehensible idiots scratching each other’s skanky backs. If you thought Lars Von Trier’s Dogme manifesto had its fair share of questionable anti-pretense, then Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers will take your sensibility and spit in its face. This is the American Dream as shat upon nightmare. Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void might be considered the migraine movie of the SUFF, but Trash Humpers is the real difficult pill to swallow. An endurance test is putting it mildly.
Friday 10th, 9.30pm
Imagine early John Waters and early Peter Jackson combined and you might have an idea about what Drew Buldoc and Dan Nelson’s outrageous splatter comedy is capable of. The Taint is a perverse and surreal flick that indulges in extreme acts of bloodletting and ejaculation whilst masquerading as a commentary on misogynist representation of women in cinema. Umm, I don’t think so. The Taint just enjoys crushing young women’s heads with large rocks frequently and with graphic glee. This super-low-budget ode to shock legends Waters (think Pink Flamingos) and Jackson (think Bad Taste) is so shamelessly over-the-top that it demands to be seen in a packed cinema of like-minded freakazoids. Vomit, blood, shit, semen; it’s all there in buckets. This is a movie about penile envy, taken to the most absurd extremes. Buldoc and Nelson handle almost every department; Buldoc having written the screenplay and Nelson having shot it. Buldoc stars as Phil O’Ginny, the movie’s protagonist, while Nelson delivers some impressive CGI gore effects (considering the budget). Colleen Walsh plays Phil’s sidekick, Misandra, a gung-ho mercenary. There’s something in the water that’s turning the men into women killers. Will Phil and Misandra get to the bottom of it, or will the bottom of it get to them first? The Taint is very much an acquired taste. Personally, it’s not my cup of sick, but I know there’s a definite audience for this kind of deviant and degenerate shocker, and SUFF is the perfect springboard to dive deep into the bukkake.
Drew Bolduc as Phil O'Ginny
Saturday 11th, 4pm
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! meets The Creature from the Black Lagoon and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Writer/director Stuart Simpson’s B-movie 60’s-stylistic tribute to buxom femme fatales and beasts from the deep is a hoot and a guffaw. His second feature, El Monstro del Mar! (with its tongue-in-cheek mock-foreign title: The Monster from the Sea), sees Beretta (Nelli Scarlet), Snowball (Kate Watts) and Blondie (Karli Madden) arrive in a tiny seaside village after offing two eager young men. They hole up in a beachfront abode and are befriended by local girl Hannah (Kyrie Capri), who warns them not to swim in the water. Hannah’s grandfather Joseph (Norman Yemm) isn’t too fond of the wayward women’s presence, but the lasses are dead-set on having a debauched good time. That is until the Kraken awakens. Simpson certainly knows his mise-en-scene, and the movie is well shot, and sports some amusing stop-motion animation and decent gore effects. There’s also a very cool nightmare sequence. The performances, however, leave a lot to be desired, and don’t do the movie any favours. And there’s no gratuitous nudity either, which is a shame really, since the schlocky, exploitative nature of the movie demands the ante be upped when the acting isn’t that crash hot. Still, I’m sure Stuart Simpson will go on to bigger and better things.
Femme fatales
I’m hoping to get to the screening of Gaspar Noe’s dark odyessy Enter the Void (2010) on Friday, September 10th, 11pm, as I know that his unique and demanding movie demands to be experienced on the big screen.
Trash Humpers trailer:
The Taint trailer:
El Monstro del Mar! trailer:
Kyrie Capri as Hannah
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