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| Images courtesy of Unearthed Films |
Somewhere along the way, writer-director-editor Alex Chandon
and Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth’s Australian 2001 shot-on-digital-video
horror anthology Cradle of Fear, released on Blu-ray in the United
States in a collector’s edition via grindcore boutique gorehound label
Unearthed Films, stopped being a film for me.
An anthology horror homage to Amicus Productions split up into three
disparate segments bookended by a recurring omniscient The Crow-like
character simply known as “The Man” (played by Dani Filth), the project began
initially over some music videos Chandon did for Cradle of Filth before
working them into the picture with frequent cameos. Structurally and visually with decent visual
effects by Creature FX and Tristan Versluis, there’s a mostly good looking and
inventive little horror movie in here.
But by the time we reach the third segment about an internet
porn junkie who whiles away his time looking up shock videos of real human
deaths, Chandon and Dani Filth decided to throw in the background television
screen in one scene a real video of a genuine beheading. Granted it happens at the 75% mark and is
preceded by tons of graphic gore already and the disc has a little warning
label on the back about ‘graphic content’.
But really, in all my years of reviewing films for the Spoiler Free
Movie Sleuth, this is the first time I’ve been asked unknowingly to give my
time to a snuff film. It begs the
question, why include it? I was with
your film until this wholly unnecessary moment of puerile exploitation kicked
me out of it and the last thirty minutes of the film I stopped caring about as
I couldn’t stop ruminating on the fact that there’s a real death in this movie.
Spread across two-discs featuring a collection of short
films by the director as well as extras ported over from the German DVD release,
the story of this thing more or less boils down to a serial child murder named
Kemper (David McEwen) who exacts revenge on those who landed him in prison by
commanding the character only known as “The Man” to deploy bloodshed and death. Meanwhile there’s a beleaguered detective
Neilson (Edmund Dehn) who is trying to make sense of the new collection of
mutilated bodies piling up in spite of Kemper’s incarceration. There’s a story involving a girl who becomes
pregnant with a Facehugger like creature following the murder of an elderly man
and thievery of his life savings. There’s
an amputee who kills another man to steal his leg and have it surgically
grafted on his body until the leg starts acting against his will on it’s own
with some tawdry shots of his girlfriend licking his stump. And there’s the third story of Richard
(Stuart Laing) who is using the workplace and office computers as his own
personal murder porn empire featuring the aforementioned infamous beheading.
A movie with an unusual release history, bypassing a
theatrical release following festival chains with UK distributors initially
making it a mail order VHS title before shooting up to the top charts on HMV’s
media chain in 2006 when it landed on DVD, Cradle of Fear has a
following. But for all of the creative
gore and cleaver technical filmmaking in the world, incorporating footage of a
real human death into it brings the whole endeavor down for no other reason than
satiating edgelords. Lose this moment
and you’ve still got a mostly decent and creatively gory little DV flick made
arguably at the height of the format’s reign on the small and large theater
screens. Leaving it in, everyone loses
out including the actors and filmmakers themselves. You could’ve even optically blurred out that
portion of the shot and lost nothing.
There have been plenty of transgressive films I’ve liked
over the years including ones that feature real animal cruelty in them. The documentary 20 Days in Mariupol about
the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war is wall to wall with human as well as infant
deaths onscreen and that might be the most important film of the 21st
century. But to include it in a work of
horror fiction feels mercenary and nefarious and one of the few times I can
recall a writing assignment for my blog being something I regret going
through. If you need genuine snuff
murder porn in your horror, you’re no longer admiring the art and craft of practical
visual effects makeup and have crossed over into the realm of sociopathy. I still mostly respect Unearthed Films for what
they do including some of my favorite transgressive shockers, but I’m sorry
they really fucked up with this one.
--Andrew Kotwicki
