Being an avid consumer of all
forms of cinema ranging from the G rated to intolerable transgression, nothing
should phase me. There was a point where
I was obsessed with A Serbian Film,
not so much because of the content but because it was told in such a masterful
and technically proficient fashion. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is
one of the great nonjudgmental character studies of our time. Salo is
the work of a great artist at a moment of artistic crisis in his illustrious
career. I even sat through the terminal August Underground movies, familiarizing
myself with Toe Tag Pictures’ ongoing efforts to promote their visual effects
technology despite the films’ obvious lack of anything substantive to say. Let’s not get started on the rampant animal
cruelty exhibited by Ruggero Deodato or Umberto Lenzi’s pictures. Needless to say, I love extreme movies that
push the envelope in search of something we haven’t seen before and never
thought I’d be on the opposite side of the fence…until now.
Shock is inherently always
going to be an important aspect of the cinematic medium and how it is used will
illustrate the difference between art and trash. With all of that in mind, the question then
becomes at what point can a film cross that thinly veiled line of what’s
acceptable in film and what isn’t? With
Nick Palumbo’s utterly vile and hateful 35mm serial killer shock fest Murder-Set-Pieces, it is safe to say for
good or for ill, the line is no longer thinly veiled but instead is easily
identifiable. The story of a German
photographer played by Sven Garrett who shoots erotica by day before raping and
murdering prostitutes at night, it begins and ends there. The rest consists of porn actresses in the
nude being penetrated, mutilated, tortured and degraded with lip smacking glee,
often for extended periods of time. Then
it gets into exposing child actors to sex, nudity, violence and graphic
murder. Not even hardcore BDSM
pornography is this degrading to the cast members unlucky enough to be involved
in it, some of whom tried and failed to get their scenes cut when they found
out the hard way just the kind of puerile exploitation they unknowingly agreed
to be in.
There was a heated debate over
parents allowing their children to participate in A Serbian Film, a film that depicts graphic child rape including of
an infant. While obviously designed to
shock and horrify, everything in that film was created through the power of
editing where none of the child stars were exposed to anything. It was an illusion created through
craftsmanship and blocking. With Murder-Set-Pieces, seemingly over and
over again, Nick Palumbo places his child actors and the graphic murders in the
same shot together, clearly exposing minors to things they shouldn’t be exposed
to. There’s a point in Murder-Set-Pieces where a woman is
killed and the serial killer picks up a sobbing and screaming infant, smearing
blood on her face before letting her go as she runs sobbing up to her dead
mother. Reportedly this scene was shot
with the real mother on set and the fear and trauma the child experienced was
indeed very real. Even with all the
wallowing in wall-to-wall rape, murder, mutilation and tortures, it is that one
scene with the infant child covered in her mother’s blood sobbing her heart out
that solidified Palumbo’s reputation as one of the most unprofessional sideshow
geeks who ever picked up a camera. The
irresponsibility of this one scene is staggering. No amount of cameos from horror icons like Gunnar
Hansen or Tony Todd will dispel that view.
Worse still, it just so happens editor Todd C.
Ramsay (Star Trek: The Motion Picture;
The Thing; Escape from New York) has his name on this thing and will
forever have this abomination on his resume.
Moreover, at least five different composers have their name on this
including Necrophagia, Zombi, The Bronx
Casket Co., The Giallos Flame and Eric Galligan, making it something of a
smorgasbord to listen to. To be fair the
35mm cinematography is far classier than it should be thanks to Tromeo and Juliet, Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie director of photography
Brendan Flynt, giving Toe Tag die-hards a clearer view of their effects work
than what the VHS tape footage in August
Underground afforded them.
Technically speaking the effects work is well done and very realistic
looking but the problem is between Fred Vogel’s films and now Nick Palumbo’s, there
isn’t much more use for them than pure shock value. Rick Baker and Greg Nicotero have created
some of the goriest images the silver screen has ever seen but you can make a
valid argument that all of their creative efforts were put to valuable use.
According to Palumbo, Murder-Set-Pieces got him in a lot of trouble before, during and after it was made. Like A Serbian Film, film labs refused to develop the material. Unlike that film however, police were called on the filmmakers multiple times after screams from porn stars emanated from a basement and officers found quite a horrendous sight. Palumbo even did some jail time over it. Further still, Murder-Set-Pieces was refused classification outright in the U.K. and a limited director’s cut was issued before Lionsgate released an R rated cut which removed over twenty-three minutes of footage, making it the most heavily censored film in cinema history. It is worth noting the director’s cut includes a new opening of footage of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks intercut with footage of naked women nailed to chairs in between panic and trauma defecating because, why not? Anything to offend whether there’s an iota of insight behind that or not.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki
- Andrew Kotwicki