Snake Pit (1996)

Given their radical, surrealist approach to adult films and the fact that both are often labeled as the godfathers of “alt-porn”, the names of Gregory Dark and Stephen Sayadian (Rinse Dream) often seem intrinsically linked. While there are obvious parallels that can be drawn between the two, just like whenever Jess Franco and Jean Rollin or to a lesser extent Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, are held-up alongside each other, the results are the same. Similar in some ways, yet ultimately the styles of both are entirely singular. With that in mind, one undeniable trait that both share is the way in which both, in their own unique ways, managed to subvert what the adult video had become in the 90's when plotless, all-sex gonzo became the industry standard. Sayadian did this brilliantly in both Party Doll a Go-Go! (1991) and Untamed Cowgirls of the Wild West (1993), pulling the rug out from under unsuspecting video store back room patrons expecting typical adult fare. While his films were always out of the ordinary, Dark's work in the mid to late 90's became even more experimental and confrontational with Dark exposing not only the bodies of his performers but their minds as well, a tactic that began with Snake Pit, a fairly extraordinary and at times distressing piece of video art that delivers exactly what it's cover promises, “the ultimate descent into erotic insanity.

Described at the time of its release as a porn take on Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957), it wouldn't be fair to label Snake Pit as 100% plotless, though the film is one of Dark's most abstract, rendering any narrative cohesion obscure from the get-go. Structured around a back alley dice game with toy bones, skeletons and grotesque masks with “Hatman”, as he's billed, being the luckiest player, Dark segues to a sex scene when Hatman dons a new mask. The first thing that stands out about Snake Pit is the grungy, shot-on-video look and feel of the film. Whereas Dark's previous features were notable for their striking and colorful design, Snake Pit is scaled back considerably and as a result feels more prurient and dirty. Being a Dark film, of course the masks from the dice game come into play during the sex scenes and with there being no context to speak of for the actual sex, the addition of the masks makes an already uncomfortably odd film feel slightly more sinister, further subverting the formula of non-narrative sex videos. The film could also be seen as the culmination of the editing techniques Dark had been experimenting with in films like New Wave Hookers 4 (1995) and The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno (1995) with Dark loading the film with mind altering, almost subliminal cuts that are somewhat reminiscent of the flash cuts utilized by Alain Robbe-Grillet in films like Eden and After (1970) and Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974).

What makes Snake Pit such a fascinating watch however, are the interview or “interrogation” segments that bookend the sex scenes with Dark getting inside the heads of his performers with a series of questions Dark developed along with a psychologist. Just as his films are worlds removed from standard pornography, the kind of penetrating questions Dark asks go far and beyond the realms of cliché casting couch Q&A's. The question of whether or not the girls in the film see themselves as sluts comes up often, along with more existential questions regarding the nature of evil, what scares the performers or do any of them see themselves going to Hell. It's especially interesting to see how each girl differs in their answers, some a bit more coy than others, some confused while some hold nothing back, almost to the point of concern. Kim Kataine, for instance gives one of the most memorable answers claiming that she doesn't fear Hell as she feels like she's already there, but it's Roxanne Hall that outdoes everyone in both her interview and subsequent sex scene. Among other things, Hall states that she believes it's her destiny to burn in Hell and that she fears herself, knowing that one day she's going to take things too far sexually and die with a smile on her face. “...I brought too many fucked up things out of her fucked up head” Dark told Psychotronic Video. “We were just moving her through her psychological landscape and she just overloaded... went crazy.”

Shorty after Snake Pit, Dark made his first foray into music videos, collaborating with the brilliant band the Melvins, directing the video for “Bar-X the Rocking M” off the masterful Stag album. Much of the videos imagery is informed by Snake Pit, including multiple instances of a dancing Hatman, the band playing a similar game with the same bones and skeletons as in Snake Pit and most startlingly, flashes of Roxanne Hall submerged in a bathtub full of worms, extended scenes of Hall featuring in the full uncut version of the video that played in select night clubs. Hall would take an extended break from adult films following Snake Pit, though she didn't think twice about doing the Melvins video with Dark. “...I didn't push her too hard in this video” Dark joked to Psychotronic Video in 1997. Dark said of the Melvins video “I really believe it's the best piece of film I've made in eight years, even though it's the first music video I've done”, though it was soon to become a full-time gig for Dark as the 90's drew to a close. Dark would incorporate flashes of the Melvins video in his follow-up to Snake Pit, Shocking Truth (1996), which would also take the interview concept even further, dispensing with narrative entirety, Dark fully taking on the role of psychoanalyst and pushing the psychological comfort levels of adult video viewers.

Sex Freaks / Flesh (1996)

It might seem strange to refer to an adult film distribution company as “conservative”, even stranger when when said company has released films from the likes of Stephen Sayadian, John Leslie and Gregory Dark, yet “conservative” is exactly the term Dark used when describing VCA. From Let Me Tell Ya 'bout White Chicks (1984) to The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno (1995), VCA was Dark's main distributor, with the second half of the infamous Dark Bros team being Walter Gernert or “Walter Dark”, a co-owner of VCA. Despite this, Dark has gone on record saying that he and VCA CEO, the late Russell Hampshire, often butted heads, with Hampshire never really “getting” Dark's work, his radical approach to adult films being the antithesis of the classic type of eroticism Hampshire was used to. While being interviewed in 1997 by Psychotronic Video, Dark claimed “...I think Russ Hampshire is concerned about making good movies when he can... I just want to explore visual imagery which VCA doesn't find particularly erotic.” Following The Devil in Miss Jones 5, Dark formed his own production company, Dark Works, securing distribution through Evil Angel (just as the aforementioned Leslie had done around the same time) and came out of the gate swinging in 1996 with Sex Freaks and Flesh, two films which saw Dark taking his already renegade style into stranger, more perverse and confrontational territory.

One of his last attempts at anything resembling a narrative, Sex Freaks centers on Julio Midnight (Rip Hymen) the owner of an avant-garde performance theater who answers to Lips, literally a set of lips (belonging to Sharon Kane) on a TV screen that gives Julio his orders. Using a voodoo-esque type of hypnosis aided by Barbie looking dolls, Julio lures everyday citizens to his theater to perform in surreal sex shows, after which they are turned into upstanding citizens, though Julio soon meets his match in Sweat Meat, who's fierce sexuality transfixes Julio, rendering his methods of control impotent.

Given that most of the sex in Sex Freaks is presented as performance art pieces, the obvious film to compare it to would be Stephen Sayadian's Cafe Flesh (1982), but just as Cafe Flesh is unmistakably a Sayadian film, everything about Sex Freaks is quintessentially Gregory Dark. Being one of the first of his own Dark Works productions, Dark's typically crass attitude even more pronounced here. Always an outrageous visualist, Dark outdoes even himself here, with sex scenes featuring performers dressed as giant bugs, clowns and skeletons, the later becoming more prominent in Dark's next few films, Sex Freaks is certainly one of Dark's most visually accomplished works and the last of his adult features to be shot on film. Dark also outdoes himself when it comes to offending every special interest group possible with the film taking barbed shots at feminism, one feminist performance artist's act in the film being titled “The Importance of Being a Filthy Fucking Whore”, and pretentious artist types who, as Hymen puts it in the film, are “staunchly conservative in their liberalism”. There's also a curious exchange of dialogue between Hymen and the previously mentioned feminist performance artist regarding the first amendment, and Dark's jabs at the censorious anti-porn feminist types and “staunchly conservative liberals” make the film even more relevant than it was in 1996. Never shy about racial content, Dark once again obliterates any and all taboo with Hymen wearing blackface and a group of masturbating, sex act viewing onlookers in Fu Manchu like get-up's.

Flesh, although narrative based, is a much looser affair. Held up in a hotel room, Eric Shank (Tom Byron), a hitman on an assassination mission, is late in getting the job done, much to the annoyance of his superior who continuously berates Shank. A resting Shank is soon overtaken by an altar-ego, Nipples the Clown, who “broadcasts” bizarre sexual scenarios into Shank's head causing an already on-edge Shank to slip further into a state of sexual psychosis.

One of Dark's more insular films, there are times where Flesh comes across as a surreal stage play, with the film playing out on a limited number of sets. Given that most of the sex is presented as Shank's hallucinations, technically the story never really leaves Shank's hotel room, though the whole story of Shank's job is essentially window dressing, this being a hardcore Dark affair it becomes apparent very quickly what the main focus is going to be. Despite this, Dark does achieve a nice feeling of paranoid claustrophobia during the moments of Byron alone in his room and Byron certainly holds nothing back in his portrayal of his prurient, face-painted altar-ego, his dialogue as Nipples featuring several of Dark's cynical musings on sex. In a lot of ways Dark can be compared to Jess Franco in that both drank from their own personal wells time and again and more often than not, did so in a way that didn't feel lazy and that's certainly the case with Flesh and the sex scenes. While it doesn't reach the heights of Sex Freaks, the sex in Flesh is about as far removed from what would be considered typical adult fare. Clowns have always been a go-to visual for Dark but voodoo based, graveyard imagery is once again used as a backdrop and while much more scaled back than Sex Freaks with Dark going back to shooting on video, the staging of the sex does make the film an appropriate follow-up to Sex Freaks.

The voodoo influence in both films stems from Dark's childhood and his anthropologist father. In the Psychotronic Video piece mentioned above, Dark recalled “My father was also an occultist, very interested in the works of Aleister Crowley. He used to sing me voodoo songs in French when I was a child, so I pretty much grew up with it... Then when I was around ten, I heard he disappeared mysteriously in Haiti. So naturally I became more interested in occultism as I grew older. My mother tried to get me away from the voodoo thing, but I started getting back into it at age eleven and just remained interested in it. People look at the voodoo religion the same way they do ritual magic, as if it's evil. But it's just as gray as everything else – neither good nor bad.” Speaking specifically about Sex Freaks, Dark said “Yeah, there's some symbolism there. I'm still very interested in the voodoo religion. With the dolls there's sort of this sympathetic magical relationship between the human and the artifact of the human. Rip Hymen's character is very much like a Maldoror type of person...” It's an influence that would become even stronger in Dark's subsequent video projects, though Sex Freaks and Flesh ushered in a new, more free period for Dark, giving political correctness and adult video conventions a defiant middle finger in the process.