I suppose one can either tolerate or simply reject outright the recent spate of video horror efforts, cranked out by the thousands to prove (as Warhol did with film) that anyone can make a video. This St. Louis offering is utterly streamlined and simple, of interest only to a structuralist (like me).
To put it into context, the makers of this video as well as a slew of similar items from a local outfit called Wicked Pixel are clearly confident of their talent, and have discarded all that's come before. The clear case in point is a classic (but forgotten) porn film THE INTRUSION from the '70s NY school of roughies, starring Kim Pope. I watched it again recently, and it remains the definitive study of the horror of house intrusion, taken to the limit with XXX rape, violence, bondage and ultimate retribution. It's an unsettling, expertly made movie.
Covering the same territory, BIZARRE LUST is small beer indeed when compared to THE INTRUSION. Here we have a largely MOS tale (with annoying synth music droning on the soundtrack) of nondescript Jason Christ as a self-pitying, self-loathing nut, sneaking up on ugly women, chloroforming them, and then photographing their naked bodies. He doesn't rape them because presumably he's impotent, and doesn't mutilate them for no good reason, other than to cheat the target torture/porn audience. Exposition is lamely delivered by voice-over -newscasts on TV or car radio.
SPOILER ALERT:
Even for sycophants who can't get enough of this formulaic nonsense, the final scene is so poorly written I couldn't believe video-maker Zert Sineca had the balls to include it. Christ's last victim turns out to be his ex-wife and, as telegraphed amateurishly by an earlier scene included solely for that purpose, she's armed with a rifle waiting for him. She chews him out in a rant that was clearly written by a misogynistic male, and then shoots him in the head. Cue the black blood spewing across the floor, putting our hapless hero out of his misery, and letting the viewer go on to better things, too.
Christ is a boring screen presence, and the current "cult of ugliness" casts unattractive women, notably his usual co-star Emily Haack, as the victims. The overweight but otherwise ready-for-porn starlet Angela Zimmerly has a terrible speaking voice, and is just here for extended full-frontal nudity.
In the Silent Era, we had pathos, but this is merely bathos, watching the title jerk wallow in his uselessness. As a case history it adds up to zero, and for shock value, zero again. Why regional cottage industries have sprung up devoted to this dead-end trash is beyond comprehension; no wonder the horror filmmakers of the '60s and '70s have been elevated to the pantheon of being considered geniuses by comparison.
I understand where the rejectionism that spawned this mindless drivel comes from -the Sub Rosa Studios promo that accompanies this particular video proclaims boldly that "Hollywood is the problem". But they have missed the point entirely.
Just to educate the unwashed for a moment, when Paul Morrissey was at the peak of his career in the early 1970s he pointed out in some detail in an interview (in Velvet Light Trap or some other highbrow movie mag) that for his movies Joe Dallesandro was patterned exactly after the strong leading man personality of trad Hollywood pictures, say a Gary Cooper or latterly Clint Eastwood. This insight showed how an artist could learn from and build upon his predecessors. In fact Joe briefly became an international star, tattoo and all, bankable in many European movies. Morrissey did not reject the past but learned from it.
There's no reason that a new generation of filmmakers, and regional ones at that, could not create a renaissance in American cinema, just as the overrated movie brats (Schrader, Scorsese, etc.) did in the 1970s. But they won't accomplish anything at all by turning in low-effort slop like BIZARRE LUST and its tens of thousands of lookalike shot-on-video gore brethren.
To put it into context, the makers of this video as well as a slew of similar items from a local outfit called Wicked Pixel are clearly confident of their talent, and have discarded all that's come before. The clear case in point is a classic (but forgotten) porn film THE INTRUSION from the '70s NY school of roughies, starring Kim Pope. I watched it again recently, and it remains the definitive study of the horror of house intrusion, taken to the limit with XXX rape, violence, bondage and ultimate retribution. It's an unsettling, expertly made movie.
Covering the same territory, BIZARRE LUST is small beer indeed when compared to THE INTRUSION. Here we have a largely MOS tale (with annoying synth music droning on the soundtrack) of nondescript Jason Christ as a self-pitying, self-loathing nut, sneaking up on ugly women, chloroforming them, and then photographing their naked bodies. He doesn't rape them because presumably he's impotent, and doesn't mutilate them for no good reason, other than to cheat the target torture/porn audience. Exposition is lamely delivered by voice-over -newscasts on TV or car radio.
SPOILER ALERT:
Even for sycophants who can't get enough of this formulaic nonsense, the final scene is so poorly written I couldn't believe video-maker Zert Sineca had the balls to include it. Christ's last victim turns out to be his ex-wife and, as telegraphed amateurishly by an earlier scene included solely for that purpose, she's armed with a rifle waiting for him. She chews him out in a rant that was clearly written by a misogynistic male, and then shoots him in the head. Cue the black blood spewing across the floor, putting our hapless hero out of his misery, and letting the viewer go on to better things, too.
Christ is a boring screen presence, and the current "cult of ugliness" casts unattractive women, notably his usual co-star Emily Haack, as the victims. The overweight but otherwise ready-for-porn starlet Angela Zimmerly has a terrible speaking voice, and is just here for extended full-frontal nudity.
In the Silent Era, we had pathos, but this is merely bathos, watching the title jerk wallow in his uselessness. As a case history it adds up to zero, and for shock value, zero again. Why regional cottage industries have sprung up devoted to this dead-end trash is beyond comprehension; no wonder the horror filmmakers of the '60s and '70s have been elevated to the pantheon of being considered geniuses by comparison.
I understand where the rejectionism that spawned this mindless drivel comes from -the Sub Rosa Studios promo that accompanies this particular video proclaims boldly that "Hollywood is the problem". But they have missed the point entirely.
Just to educate the unwashed for a moment, when Paul Morrissey was at the peak of his career in the early 1970s he pointed out in some detail in an interview (in Velvet Light Trap or some other highbrow movie mag) that for his movies Joe Dallesandro was patterned exactly after the strong leading man personality of trad Hollywood pictures, say a Gary Cooper or latterly Clint Eastwood. This insight showed how an artist could learn from and build upon his predecessors. In fact Joe briefly became an international star, tattoo and all, bankable in many European movies. Morrissey did not reject the past but learned from it.
There's no reason that a new generation of filmmakers, and regional ones at that, could not create a renaissance in American cinema, just as the overrated movie brats (Schrader, Scorsese, etc.) did in the 1970s. But they won't accomplish anything at all by turning in low-effort slop like BIZARRE LUST and its tens of thousands of lookalike shot-on-video gore brethren.
