Vinegar Syndrome Labs: Sexmission (1984) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome

Vinegar Syndrome Labs, in the wake of Deaf Crocodile Films’ departure from the boutique label empire and striking a new deal with Diabolikdvd’s webstore, have take it upon themselves to procure and publish distinctly Polish titles ranging from Piotr Szulkin’s Apocalypse Tetralogy to Ryszard Bugajski’s Interrogation.  While not as extensive just yet as the Deaf Crocodile catalog, Vinegar Syndrome Labs’ efforts have ushered in Eastern European movies as well and among their best acquisitions comes in the form of Juliusz Machulski’s 1984 dystopian feminist satire Sexmission.  Working from a studio master supplied to Vinegar Syndrome and released with plentiful extras including an interview with actor Olgierd Łukaszewicz, an interview with film historian Tomasz Kolankiewicz and video essay by Andrew Nette on male versus female dynamics, Sexmission comes to North American filmgoers on blu-ray disc for the very first time.

 
In 1991, Max (Jerzy Stuhr of Camera Buff) and Albert (Olgierd Lukaszewicz) volunteer for a scientific experiment of becoming the first humans to be cryogenically frozen with the intention of being reawakened in three years to boundless fame and fortune.  However, the two oversleep for decades and wake up to a post-apocalyptic future where nuclear war has wiped out the male gender entirely, leaving only women in authority with human reproduction artificially born in test tubes.  The Congress of the World Women’s League rules over the populace with an iron fist and soon the two men find themselves on the run from murderous authorities of The League who themselves might be harboring a dark secret to keep people in line.  Can these two blokes make it out alive with their humanity and manhood intact?  Furthermore, is it too late to turn things around in this newly misandrist society?

 
Allegorical for the communist invasion of Poland as well as a critique of preexisting male anxieties about the opposite sex bearing obvious similarities to the Polish government at the time, Sexmission from it’s electronic funky cool soundtrack by Henryk Kuzniak to Vabank cinematographer Jerzy Lukaszewicz’s glowing illuminated cinematography of sterilized colorless interior corridors and rooms is firing on every possible cylinder.  Anarchic, wide eyed and ready to pick a fight, this hilarious sardonic satire is at once scathing and highly entertaining.  Playing off of the mutual anxieties of being the only two men left alive in this society ruled by women with little to no regard for their casual nudities and clearly channeling iconography of the then-People’s Republic of Poland with respect to the costume design and brutalist architecture, the title itself is something of a play on the notion of evicting men from the table while also taking on themes of totalitarianism or prudism.

 
After narrowly passing through Polish government censors with some elements of the film toned down including some allusions to cultural shock with regards to immigration from the East into the West, Sexmission opened to divisive reviews but strong box office returns and it won the Złota Kaczka (Golden Duck) prize for Best Polish Movie.  In 1996 there was a Polish adventure game for Windows called A.D. 2044 which was based on the film and followed the events of Machulski’s film rather closely.  Following a poll conducted by three film magazines in 2005, it was deemed the Best Polish Movie of the last thirty years.  Looking at it now, the poster on the Vinegar Syndrome Labs box suggests a tawdry sex comedy romp and while on some levels it has those aspects, it is very clearly spoken of the same breath as the aforementioned Apocalypse Tetralogy which tried to use science-fiction satire to critique the timeline of the society they were made in. 

--Andrew Kotwicki