 |
| Images courtesy of Unearthed Films |
Boutique labels like Liberation Hall with their forthcoming Shelf
Life blu-ray and MVD sublabel Unearthed Films have jump started a new trend
of releasing previously unreleased films on home video for the very first time
anywhere. Movies that have had, for one
reason or another, difficulty securing distribution whether it be theatrical or
on the small screen, the latest endeavor is the multi-national anthological
horror project The Profane Exhibit.
A kind of The ABCs of Death by way of Deadgirl or A
Serbian Film (both also available via Unearthed Films), The Profane
Exhibit brought together ten directors including Ruggero Deodato, Nacho
Vigalondo, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Sergio Stivaletti, Marian Dora, Michael Todd
Schneider, Anthony DiBlasi, Uwe Boll, Ryan Nicholson and Jeremy Kasten. Though some directors initially attached to
the project like Richard Stanley, Andrey Iskanov and José Mojica Marins didn’t
make the final cut, the years-in-the-making work-in-progress production written
and produced by Amanda L. Manuel languished on studio shelves for years until
Unearthed Films finally picked it up and secured a deluxe special edition
release with plentiful extras.
Each segment varying in length as well as shifting aspect
ratios between 2.35:1 scope and 1.78:1 from director to director, our film starts
out with Malum director Anthony DiBlasi’s Mother May I involving
a demonically possessed nun played by Ellen Greene from Little Shop of
Horrors. Next is Tokyo Gore Police
director Yoshihiro Nishimura’s The Hell Chef featuring Audition actress
Eihi Shiina doing what she did best in the aforementioned Takashi Miike shocker
with a culinary twist. For a little
while, things get actively disturbing with an incestuous Uwe Boll segment Basement
starring Clint Howard as you’ve never seen him before or since. Ruggero Deodato also gets into it with Bridge
involving two children coaxing a suicidal woman into crossing a
bridge. Though disappointing, Sergio
Stivaletti’s Tophet Quorum more than makes up for it involving a mother
with a dark secret involving a missing twin.
Ryan Nicholson’s Goodwife on the other hand is certifiably mean
and nasty with a bit of a twist on what happens when a devoted wife finds out
her husband is a killer.
I swore I’d never see a Marian Dora film in my life though my
hand was finally forced by The Profane Exhibit in Mors in Tabula. It’s the story of a boy in what appears to be
small village in Nazi Germany undergoing an emergency tracheotomy under the
pretense the operation will save the youth’s life. Bleak and rainy, grotesque and transgressive,
in the time-honored tradition of Dora being the world’s self-proclaimed most
extreme filmmaker sounds of Adolf Hitler raging on the microphone at a Nazi
rally invariably have to be played on the soundtrack cause Dora. While brief, it is one of the most thoroughly
twisted offerings in an already fucked up anthology. Next is actor/director Nacho Vigalondo’s Sins
of the Father about a man locked up in a mock up of his son’s bedroom with
the intention of getting the man to pay for his past sins. It proves to be an intriguing segment with an
unlikely coda closing it up. Last but
not least is Michael Todd Schneider’s near-pornographic Manna involving
a man in an S&M club having sex with prostitutes that turns into torture
and castration in grisly graphic detail.
Think of it as a companion piece to the equally perverse and twisted L
is for Libido from The ABCs of Death.
A film that languished in releasing Hell for almost a decade,
this overtly disgusting and disturbing shock fest is a visually stunning
smorgasbord co-written by Scott Swan, Carlo Baldacci Carli and Sergio
Stivaletti. Comprised of six different
cinematographers interspersed with a wraparound section of a butcher cutting up
meat, the vibe of this short anthological horror film is one of edgy
transgression ranging from darkly humorous to terribly devastating. The meanness of the whole thing compounded
with a downbeat electronic score by Maurizio Guarini and David Klotz wafts off
the screen like a foul odor emanating from a corpse in an abandoned
alleyway. The film is all over the map
in terms of makeup effects with some ranging from realistic to obviously fake
funning around.
Finally on blu-ray disc for the first time, this vulgar and
gross but transfixing shock fest comes stacked with extras including a running
audio commentary with director Michael Todd Schneider, producer Amanda L.
Manuel and Ultra Violent magazine author Art Ettinger. There’s also a ten-years-later interview
conducted by Marian Dora with the principal actors of his short. Footage of festival premieres and interviews
with Michael Todd Schneider, Uwe Boll and producer Amanda L. Manuel also comprise
the extras. The set also comes with a
collectible slipcover albeit with a most unsafe-for-work front-and-back
cover. Longtime fans of these directors
might come away disappointed, as was the case upon the original festival tour,
while fans of Unearthed and extreme movies in general will be happy to eat up
whatever chum and fleshy meat is dumped on the cinema plate.
--Andrew Kotwicki
