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.  

The Devil in Miss Jones 3-5 (1986-1995)

Sequels have long been one of the most parodied aspects of adult film and justifiably so, with there being thousands of gonzo adult videos released as part of numerous series who's entry numbers are into the double digits. Even some of greats were susceptible of falling into the never-ending sequel trap given the various changes the adult industry throughout the years. For instance John Leslie's Voyeur series lasting for 37 entries before Leslie's death in 2010. Still, much like mainstream films, there are instances of adult sequels that break the mold, even if they're destined to be overshadowed by their predecessors. One of the most crucial and influential titles from the “golden age” of porn or “porno chic”, Gerard Damiano's The Devil in Miss Jones (1973), first got a sequel in 1982 from Henri Pachard in which star Georgina Spelvin returned to the titular role of Justine Jones. Four years later the series would take a drastically different turn under the direction of Gregory Dark with The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning and its immediate follow-up The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage. Dark would return to the franchise years later with The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno, which once again saw Dark putting Justine Jones through his warped vision of the underworld while continuing to take the adult video into more bizarre and difficult territories.

Following a terrific opening credits sequence set to the infectious tune of the Gleaming Spires “A Christian Girls Problems”, A New Beginning introduces a new variation on the character of Justine Jones. After an argument with her cheating boyfriend, Justine (Lois Ayres) hits the town and brings home a despondent groom (Paul Thomas) who was dumped at the altar, though their rendezvous is cut short when Justine hits her head on the headboard, breaking her neck. Awakening to total darkness, Justine is greeted by Negro (Jack Baker), welcoming her into Hell. Not believing any of it, Negro informs Justine of a way out, a treacherous trek through the various sexual perversities of Hell.

New Wave Hookers (1985) may be the film Dark will be best remembers for, but there's a strong case to be made for The Devil in Miss Jones 3 being his finest work. Perhaps no other hardcore film of Dark's best represents just how different and innovative a filmmaker Dark is and just how much he stood out from his contemporaries working in the adult field in the 80's. The only possible comparison being Stephen Sayadian's Nightdreams (1981) and Cafe Flesh (1982), with Dark's immaculate production design fully embracing the artifice of his unique vision of Hell, each new scenario Justine is either witness to or a participant in being more arresting than the last. Equally eye-popping is leading lady Lois Ayres, who's “new wave hooker” look and irritable mood are in perfect synchronicity with Dark's “fuck you” attitude. Always an incendiary filmmaker, the film feels even more daring the older it gets, the racially charged barbs hurled back and forth between Ayres and Baker are sure to have some blushing more than the outrageous, oftentimes taboo shattering sexual content. Both play off each other brilliantly, virtually every line of dialogue uttered by Baker and Aryes responses being hysterically funny, though the film is also a who's who of some of the biggest names in the adult field of the time like Tom Byron, the previously mentioned Paul Thomas, Amber Lynn, and Vanessa Del Rio who, in one of the films most unforgettable scenes, finds herself ravaged by a gang of rat men.

Shot as one long film but split up into two releases, The Final Outrage continues where A New Beginning left off with Justine continuing her trek through Hell. Dark takes the racial element even further with a specific section of Hell, “the racist room”, designated for individuals condemned to fornicate with those they felt superior too while living and later in the film Dark obliterates a specific taboo that, while hardly rare in adult films, is approached in a manner so blunt, very few if any other directors would have the nerve to attempt. Part 4 also carries over another, crucial aspect that featured prominently in the third and which would become a staple in Dark's films, the interview concept. Throughout both films, there are numerous cutaways to interviews or testimonials with various people from Justine's life, each giving their impressions of what kind of person she truly was. These segments are equally funny and bizarre as the rest of the film and while character development wasn't exactly Dark's main priority with the films, they do serve to make that previously mentioned taboo scenario all the more perverse. The idea of the interview, or “interrogation”, is one of the few parallels that can be drawn between Dark's hardcore work and his erotic thrillers, with several of his softcore protagonists “confessing” the narrative to either an interviewer or directly to the camera and later hardcore works like Snake Pit (1996) and the Shocking Truth (1996-'97) films being centered around interviews with the female performers.

The Inferno, the fifth in the series and the last to be directed by Dark, is also the most surreal and abstract. While the film is built around the premise of yet another recently deceased Justine Jones, played by an almost entirely silent Juli Ashton, being thrust into a variety of sexual scenarios by Satan himself, this time played with scene chewing gusto by non-sex Dark favorite Rip Hymen in an absurd devil costume, Dark takes the same approach as he did with New Wave Hookers 4 (1995), nearly dispensing with narrative altogether in favorite of a Dante-inspired tableaux of highly imaginative and immaculately designed sex scenes. While not as charged as the third and forth films in terms of sensitive subject matter, Dark does take some none-too-subtle shots at feminism, with Hymen describing Justine as a virtuous drag and if the name Justine didn't already make it obvious, the influence of the Marquis de Sade is apparent in all the films and perhaps moreso in The Inferno, with Justine's “initiation” into the various sexual proclivities of the underworld being very Sadean in nature. Like New Wave Hookers 4, The Inferno was shot on video and finds Dark using the format to become even more experimental with editing, the film being the most delirious of Dark's entries in the series, making use of music video-esque quick cuts that would only become more pronounced in Dark's future adult videos and it would only be a year later that Dark began directing actual music videos.

While speaking to Psychotronic Video in 1997, Dark explained DMJ5 by saying “In a sense, DMJ5 is sort of the concept of the tarot card as a joke, the devil as a jokester manipulating reality through media images. Media images really interest me so we worked that into the script.” The Inferno was also the end of the line for Dark and VCA, who had been his distributor since his first adult feature with the second half of the Dark Bros. duo being Walter Gernert, AKA Walter Dark, co-owner at VCA. In the same Psychotronic piece, Dark explained “I probably could have sat down with VCA and worked it out... VCA's attitudes about music, content and dialogue are very conservative. And in my films it's not that I want to denigrate or be misogynistic so much. I just want to explore visual imagery which VCA doesn't find particularly erotic. My stuff is about, visual interesting shit with sex going on. It's not necessarily about eroticism.” It's precisely that attitude that made gave Dark's adult films their reputation. Being sequels to one of the biggest titles of the porno chic era, The Devil in Miss Jones sequels are perhaps going to be overshadowed by the legendary first film, but Dark's three films in the series stand as some of his best work with the fifth film leading to a new chapter in his career.

New Wave Hookers 2-4 (1991-1995)

Terms like “trailblazer” and “pioneer” tend be awarded rather liberally but in the case of director Gregory Dark, they're more than earned. With a body of work consisting of adult films, softcore erotic thrillers, a horror film starring a WWE superstar and music videos for acts ranging from the Melvins to Brittney Spears, Dark's career trajectory has been as idiosyncratic as anyone in the entertainment industry could hope to have. While directing the adult industry centered documentary Fallen Angels (1985), Dark became convinced that he could make a better adult film than any of the people he was interviewing, so he did. Much like Stephen “Rinse Dream” Sayadian had done a few years prior with Nightdreams (1981) and Cafe Flesh (1982), Dark's films changed the perception of how adult films looked and sounded with colorful, surreal visuals and scenarios and contemporary soundtracks. Dark made history from the very beginning with Let Me Tell Ya 'bout White Chicks (1984), one of the very first interracial sex films, but it was New Wave Hookers (1985) where Dark really changed the game. Easily transcending the Tracy Lords controversy that surrounded it, the film is widely considered one of the best films of its kind, though it wasn't until 1991 did Dark returned to his most famous title and two more sequels under Dark's direction would follow with Dark's avant-garde tendencies becoming more pronounced with each sequel.

Taking the idea of using new wave music to program women to become prostitutes from the first film to even stranger places, New Wave Hookers 2 follows “L” (Rip Hymen, a frequent non-sex actor in Dark's hardcore features), a cult deprogrammer who's just apprehended Kimberly (Madison), a prostitute involved with the “Cult of Willie”, run by its namesake (Jack Baker), a pimp who keeps his girls under control by playing hypnosis-inducing music before sending them out to turn tricks. Throughout his interrogation of Kimberly, L learns how the Cult of Willie operates, though is in for a major shock upon discovering Willie is at the mercy of a bigger, much more dangerous operation.

While the general New Wave Hookers premise of using music to hypnotize women into prostitution is outlandish in itself, Dark ups the bizarre ante considerably with New Wave Hookers 2. The idea of the music technique being appropriated by a pimp, a typically hilariously on-point Jack Baker, who holds sermons for his girls reading from “the good book”, Pimp by Iceberg Slim, makes for an already berserk scenario, Dark outdoes himself with a twist involving a cabal of women from the lost city of Atlantis hellbent on world domination. A standout film in a year ripe with unusual adult fare like Sayadian's Nightdreams sequels, PartyDoll a Go-Go! as well as John Leslie's Curse of the Catwoman and Laying the Ghost, New Wave Hookers 2 is a film Dark himself has claimed as a favorite of his own adult works. Still shooting on film, New Wave Hookers 2 is one of Dark's most colorful, with the visuals matching the story in the lunacy department, with Dark's sex scenes consisting of men in Phantom of the Opera-esque masks on leashes and human lamps, eroticism seeming like an afterthought. Dark also opens the film the same as the first, with a montage of the films female talent set to the Plugz “Electrify Me”, the theme of the series. Along with Madison, the top-shelf ensemble includes the likes of Savanna and Patrica Kennedy as well as Peter North, Randy Spears and Randy West, giving the film some casting ties with the aforementioned Sayadian and Leslie features.

Only slightly less outlandish but still outrageous is the narrative Dark concocted for New Wave Hookers 3 (1993). The film opens with John Baxter (Jon Dough), addressing the audience via video from Heaven where despite being dead, he's happy as a successful pimp and proceeds to tell the story of how he got where he is. In desperate need of money, John proposes to his beautiful wife Tiffany (Crystal Wilder) that she begin selling herself to bring in extra funds. In need of business advice, John turns to Sol (Rocco Siffredi), a shifty lawyer who informs John of a “deep house”, a brothel where women are programmed to have sex for money with the aid of musical earpiece. Tiffany is coaxed into going and John's plan works, though he begins to regret it once Tiffany starts charging him for sex and Helen (Tiffany Million), the head mistress of the deep house, affectionately known as “Boss Mama”, grows more and more fond of Tiffany due to her resemblance to a past lover and hatches a sinister plan to keep Tiffany all to herself.

With a nearly two hour run time, New Wave Hookers 3 is certainly the most involving film of the series script wise, with Dark somehow managing to work in a fairly damn endearing story of marriage into yet another spin on the central New Wave Hookers ingredient. Being a Dark film, of course the film was incendiary by design and it's not as if he gives anyone in the film a truly happy ending in the classic sense of the term, but there is something about the Baxter's that has a certain sweetness to it and Dark's warped sense of humor is ever present. The film is also notable in that it was one of three Dark hardcore features made during the same year that Dark also directed four exceptional softcore erotic thrillers, and while Dark himself deliberately tried to keep the two separated, with New Wave Hookers 3 there does seem to be a bit of overlap with Dark's Secret Games films with the central theme being prostitution, and the fourth wall breaking video playback was a crucial element in Secret Games 2: The Escort. Visually though, New Wave Hookers 3 is unquestionably a hardcore Gregory Dark film. The Phantom of the Opera masks return, Dark spruces up a sex scene with a bed with an imposing chain link headboard and the films most memorable image, as so wonderfully uttered by Wilder in the film, a “gaggle of quacking duckmen”, one of the most brilliantly deranged instances of Dark utilizing animal masks.

The most abstract and surreal entry in the series and one of Dark's strangest as a whole which is quite a feat, New Wave Hookers 4 (1995) is as different from the previous films as possible. While the opening credits is in a similar style to the previous three films, gone is “Electrify Me”. Also gone is the hypnotic music device, or any attempt at telling a straightforward story. If New Wave Hookers 4 is “about” anything, the sexual scenarios seem to all be from the imagination/hallucinations of an institutionalized midget named “Half-Pint” talking to himself in a mirror, opining on the nature of women, sex and prostitution. The inmates appear to be running the asylum as the doctor observing Half-Pint (Jon Dough) fancies himself a frog, ribbiting in-between his observations. Dark does ultimately bookend the film the way it began, but at the time New Wave Hookers 4 was Dark at his most unhinged and provoking. Dark had never catered to the trappings of conventional adult films but New Wave Hookers 4 was a different type of film even for Dark and would be a sign of things to come when Dark would go even more free-form. Deliriously seguing from one scene to the next, arousal seems to be the furthest thing from Dark's mind, with Dark dressing his male performers up as clowns, dogs, puts bird cages on their heads and in the films most infamous scene, two performers in seal costumes beg for fish on a set of ice blocks.

Following New Wave Hookers 4, several other sequels followed, though Dark had no involvement in any of them. There was even a reboot of sorts with Neu Wave Hookers (2006). New Wave Hookers 4 was also one of the last films Dark made for VCA, who had produced and distributed the series as well as Dark's other hardcore films with Walter Gernert, a co-owner at VCA, being “Walter Dark”, the second half of the infamous Dark Brothers. After leaving VCA, Dark formed his own production company, Dark Works, and secured distribution though Evil Angel, his subsequent adult work following the template set by New Wave Hookers 4, becoming more abstract, confrontational and uncomfortable, pushing the sex as well as the slick, music video style editing into even more challenging territories. Speaking to Hustler's Erotic Video guide and quoted in Psychotonric Video magazine in 1997, Dark philosophized a bit on New Wave Hookers series saying “One of the key ideas running through the New Wave Hookers series is the transference of power, inverting the normal situation and turning the male into the sex object.” While the first New Wave Hookers will perhaps always be the film Dark is most well known for, the second, third and forth films are classics in their own right, each showcasing the talents of one of the most original and innovative artists to ever work in the adult medium.

Fando y Lis (1968)

In January 2019, a planned retrospective of the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky at New York City's El Museo del Barrio, a museum dedicated to Latin artists, was canceled by the venue, the reasoning being provocative comments Jodorowsky made in 1972 regarding shooting a scene depicting rape in his landmark acid western El Topo (1970). The cancellation of the retrospective, cowardly as it was, was all too predictable. A symptom of the pathetic and regressive sociopolitical climate, a period which should be judged harshly by legitimate historians for its anti-art, pro-censorship sentiments. Still, useful idiots are hardly in short supply, ready and willing to be gaslit and marched to the cultural gulag, erasing the works of important artists who were persecuted and at times even prosecuted for their work in the past, so while the canceling of the Jodorowsky retrospective is symptomatic of contemporary culture's failure, authoritarian censorship is ultimately a historical cockroach. In the case of Jodorowsky, the man certainly is a provocateur in the classic sense. The definition of a larger-than-life personality, Jodorowsky stunned unsuspecting audiences with films like El Topo and The Holy Mountain (1973), the outrageous films almost demanding a visceral reaction, so Jodorowsky hardly shied from controversy. This was made clear from the outset at the Acapulco Film Festival where Jodorowsky's overlooked debut feature Fando y Lis had its premiere and subsequently caused a riot to break out.

The roots of Fando y (and) Lis can be traced back to the Panic Movment, an surrealist ensamble formed by Jodorowsky along with Fernando Arrabal, director of Viva la muerte (1971) and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973) and chameleon creative Roland Topor, author of The Tenant, later adapted by Roman Polanski in 1976. Originally a play by Arrabal, Fando y Lis, a “Panic film”, has often been described as having been shot with only Jodo's “hazy memories” of Arrabal's play, though the general idea remains the same, that of Lis, a paraplegic and her boyfriend Fando traversing an imposing landscape searching for Tar, a mythical city, encountering a plethora of bizarre characters along the way.

Given that the film was constructed with Jodorowsky working only from his own memories of Arrabal's play, which was keeping with Panic ethos, Fando y Lis the most loose feeling of Jodorowsky's films, playing out very much like titular characters trek to Tar, a strange, random and at times painful, yet unforgettable journey. It's fitting that the Panic Movement was influenced by Henry Becque's Theater of Cruelty, later pioneered by Antonin Artaud, as despite the mythical paradise that is supposed to be Tar, Fando and Lis' journey is fraught with the cruelty of the real world Tar is an escape too. This is perhaps best represented by the change in Fando's treatment of Lis throughout the film. At first loving and care-giving, promising Lis eternal happiness once they reach Tar and pushing and carrying her around everywhere, Fando eventually turns cruel and violent. Lis is a tragic character from the start, with a past trauma being presented by Jorodowsky in a brilliantly realized moment of surreal horror, the multiple religious and spiritual interpretations of the film make it seem as if Lis is a saintly figure of sorts, destined for greater things while suffering a life of torments. The landscape of the duo's journey is also harsh, a desert wasteland that brings with it an ambiance of its own, Jodorowsky also brings out the beauty inherent in the landscape, shooting the film in high contrast black and white using the locations as a backdrop for a barrage of jaw-dropping surreal imagery and scenarios.

Like so many other places around the globe, Mexico in 1968 was in a period of intense civil unrest and social uprising. With large student movements and major protests against the Olympics taking place in Mexico City with the Mexican government spending massive amounts of public funds on the games which would lead to the massacre of many demonstrators, the atmosphere was highly charged when Fando y Lis premiered at Acapulco Film Festival. Unsurprisingly, following the films riotous reception, the film was banned in Mexico. It's damn near impossible not to draw parallels between Fando y Lis and another maverick feature film debut, Jean Rollin's The Rape of the Vampire (1968) which also premiered in the midst of high tensions, tensions which eventually shut down the Cannes Film Festival, and caused an already on-edge audience to physically revolt against the film. Fast-forward to 2019, and while having a museum exhibit canceled might seem like small potatoes compared to causing a riot, it's nevertheless a prime example of the well-worn adage “the more things change the more they stay the same”. Over fifty years after his first feature film was banned and Jodorowsky's work once again found itself hidden from public view because of things he said over forty years ago, which only proves once again that Jodorowsky's work possesses a quality that transcends time. It challenges repressive dogma. We're lucky to have him.

Love (2015)

One of the most exciting filmmakers to emerge during the resurgence of boundary-pushing cinema in the 90's and early 2000's, Gaspar Noé is both celebrated and dismissed for his confrontational and provocative works like I Stand Alone (1998) and Irreversible (2002). Noé's films have become synonymous with many things, but if there's one descriptor that could accurately be attributed to each of his films, it would be “intimate”. Though referring to a visceral gut-punch like Irreversible as “intimate” will no doubt have some gasping in horror, intimacy is most commonly associated with closeness and that's exactly what Noé does, gets up close and extremely personal, often in unpleasant scenarios. I Stand Alone, Noé's first feature and companion to his earlier short film Carne (1991) earns the tag with the nearly non-stop interior monologue of The Butcher driving the film, something Noé would take even further in Enter the Void (2009) by literally going inside the head of it's main character Oscar, having the entire film play out in first person. Irreversible may focus on multiple characters, but Noé's presentation of a night out gone horribly wrong in reverse order is unflinching. Noé's third feature, Love, is perhaps his most intimate yet. Just as challenging as his other works albeit in a slightly different way, the film is also Noé's most underrated and one of the most accurate and affecting portrayals of a relationship gone wrong.

Murphy, an American filmmaker living in Paris with Omi, the mother of their young sun Gaspar, wakes on New Years morning to a voicemail from the mother of his ex-girlfriend Electra asking if he knows her whereabouts as she's been missing for months and was feeling suicidal prior to her disappearance. Having never gotten over his tumultuous split with Electra, caused by his impregnating of Omi who was their neighbor at the time, Murphy is extremely concerned about Electra's well-being and after taking some opium he'd been saving given to him by Electra, Murphy reflects back on his impassioned romance with Electra while lamenting his current life situation.

Considering what came before it, Love probably seems downright subdued and to a certain extent it is, with Noé trading visceral, physical violence for emotional turmoil and a much more calm filming technique following the hand-held mania of Irreversible and innovative acrobatics of Enter the Void, but it would be hard to mistake Love for the work of another filmmaker. Returning to the first-person narration of I Stand Alone, one of the most common criticisms of the film is Murphy's unlikability which is funny seeing as Noé has him repeatedly criticize himself during his voice-overs, referring to himself as a literal “dick” and owning up to his past mistakes which led to his current unhappiness. Noé is also once again playing with time, but rather than have the film play out in reverse like in Irreversible, Noé scrambles the entire timeline of Murphy and Electra's romance with an approach that is similar to Nicolas Roeg or Atom Egoyan. Much like Irreversible, this approach to time works in the films favor, giving the flashbacks to the happier moments between Murphy and Electra added weight and making the final moments of the film incredibly powerful. It's also appropriate that opium is is the catalyst for Murphy's flashbacks. Just like DMT was the influence behind Enter the Void's metaphysical head trip, Love plays out like an opium induced stream of regrets, very slow and ponderous with the scenes of the early stages of Murphy and Electra's romance representing blissful high with the inevitable crash being debilitating.

Much like Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac (2013), Love was another film featuring unsimulated sex scenes not regulated to the adult marketplace and predictably that aspect of the film became the most talked about during it's per-release hype phase and after the fact. A bit surprising, seeing as Noé had used hardcore in the past with a scene in I Stand Alone featuring a clip of a hardcore adult film and Noé's short We Fuck Alone (2006) was part of the Destricted (2006) series of shorts which explored the seemingly eternal art/pornography question. Noé was also inspired to use Erik Satie on the soundtrack for Love by the use of Satie music in Stephen Sayadian and Francis Delia's Nightdreams (1981), a landmark adult film. One of the more unusual things regarding the film is Noé's choice to shoot the film in 3D, hence “Love 3D” moniker on some posters, which does seem a bit mischievous when the format had become cliché for mega-budget blockbusters, though one scene in particular really stands out and it's fairly obvious why Noé would shoot something like it in 3D. With the brilliant Climax (2018) added to his oeuvre, Love holds an interesting place in Noé's filmography and whether viewed in 2D or 3D, Love shows a slightly different side of Noé while still retaining his distinct personality and like all of Noé's films, will cause a strong reaction.

Sun Scarred (2006)

The Japanese have always been filmmakers who've had their cake and eaten it, too. While Japanese genre and sex films have understandably gained an international reputation for transgressive extremities, the strong handling of drama many Japanese films are known for is ever present in sometimes even the most outlandish Japanese genre work. The entire filmography of Takashi Ishii springs to mind, with Ishii delivering the expected pink film exploitation while also making devastating psychological drama's with films like The Brutal Hopelessness of Love (2007), A Night in Nude: Salvation (2010) and Sweet Whip (2013). One of world cinema's greatest chameleons, Takashi Miike has also long balanced the profane and profound. One scene in Audition (1999) may have had international festival goers screaming for the aisles, but the film as a whole is tragic and heartfelt. Heartfelt may also be an appropriate description, much to the disgust of others, for Visitor Q (2001), with the core of the film always being a fractured family, the hilariously wrong ending scene is damn near sentimental. Miike has never been one to stick to one formula and sometimes his approach to certain material can be rather surprising. With Miike's keen dramatic sense, a revenge film would be a perfect fit which ultimately proved to be true with Sun Scarred, Miike's take on a classic revenge scenario, an affecting film in ways that will catch many off guard.

On his way home from work for his birthday with his wife and daughter, the mild mannered Katayama stumbles upon a gang of young teens viciously beating a homeless man. Katayama stopps the kids, but ends up putting a good beating on Komiki, the leader of the gang, who days later lures Katayama's young daughter away from her mother and murders her. Komiki is later caught and sent to juvenile prison, but Katayama's life is forever altered, his wife soon committing suicide unable to deal with the grief. Three years later, Katayama learns of Komiki's release on account of good behavior. Enraged, Katayama confronts the “reformed” Komiki who reveals himself to have not changed at all and has assembled a gang of armed kids online to take Katayama out, leading Katayama to right the wrong done to him the law ignored.

Although the premise of Sun Scarred (Taiyo no kizu, 太陽の傷) is reminiscent of Death Wish (1974), Katayama even having the same architect job as Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey, anyone going into the film expecting a montage of Katayama taking to the streets shooting random juvenile delinquents is bound to be disappointed. Much like Audition, Miike prefers a slow burn approach, and in fact the idea of “revenge” doesn't really become a main concern until a bit later in the film. Following the killing of Katayama's daughter, much of the film is spent portraying the void left in Katayama's life, which Miike interestingly presents by switching from color to black and white for a time, as well as Katayama's building frustration with the legal system, particularly the way violent young offenders not of age to be tried as adults are treated. Age is also a core question of the film and Miike does seem to be asking some tough questions of the Japanese legal system. When the revenge angle does fully kick-in, there is very little gray area left as it relates to the age gap, at least where Komiki is concerned, Katayama's quest being fully justified by that point. Miike does however portray some of the young teens coerced online by Kamimi as in over their heads. At the same time, like most films with vengeance at their core, Miike asks the all important question of whether or not the brutality Katayama has been pushed to was worth it.

The film could also be seen as a none-too-subtle jab at the media, in particular the habit of news anchors sensationally editorializing while also omitting certain facts surrounding the case. There are several moments in the film where media talking heads essentially blame Katayama for the whole ordeal due to his beating on the teens. The film is, it should be noted, rooted in fact as it relates to the Japanese legal system and the way it handles juvenile offenders. In Japan, any boy under the age of 15 is considered a “shonen” and there are even multiple types of “shonen” offenders cataloged by Japanese juvenile courts. There has been controversy over the way juveniles are handled in Japan and there have been several debates as to whether the age at which a defendant is to be considered a juvenile or adult should be raised. It was an especially hot topic in the late 90's going into the 2000's, so the subject matter was still fresh in the minds of many in Japan when Miike presented Sun Scarred. Thanks to his versatility and exhaustive output, Miike has become synonymous with many things but Sun Scarred highlights a key strength, that being Miike's mastering of harrowing, emotional drama while also providing quality genre thrills. Sun Scarred is subdued when compared to his Miike's more infamous titles, but the lasting memory is just as vivid.

El mirón (1977)

The cliché of “better late than never” certainly applies when it comes to José Ramón Larraz. Although Vampyres (1974) has long been a favorite among fans of European horror, it's only been in more recent years that other crucial Larraz titles like Whirlpool (1970), Symptoms (1974) and The Coming of Sin (1978) have made their way to home video with presentations they'd long been deserving of. It's also worth noting that Larraz didn't enter the realm of filmmaking until he was in his 40's, having previously been a fashion photographer and comic book artist and writer. He wasted no time however diving headfirst into the horror and thriller genres with the aforementioned Whirlpool, Symptoms and Vampyres along with films like Deviation (1971) and Scream and Die (1973) which established Larraz as unequaled in terms of conjuring atmosphere out of location shooting and delivering visceral sexuality and violence. Spending the majority of his early directorial career in the UK, Larraz returned to his home country of Spain in the mid-70's when censorship became more laxed and proved himself to be a versatile talent behind the camera. While his Spanish period contains a handful of horror films like Stigma (1980) and the infamous Satanic sex horror of Black Candles (1982), Larraz also found himself at the helm of a few sex comedies and drama's, El mirón being a standout example of Larraz's more dramatic side.

Roman and Elena (Alexandra Bastedo) find themselves at a crossroads in their marriage stemming from Roman's fetish of watching his wife with other men. Despite trying to fulfill her husbands fantasies, even going so far as agreeing to let Roman bring strangers home, Elena can never fully go through with sleeping with any of them, much to Roman's frustration. With the rift in their marriage growing wider, the two become more withdrawn from each other with further complications arising when Elena becomes friendly with a young neighbor.

Feeling and looking very much like a soap opera, El mirón (The Voyeur) is certainly one of Larraz's most subdued films, surprisingly so given the subject matter and director, yet Larraz's approach still manages to retain certain traits that gives Larraz's work its own identity. The idea of a marriage in dire straits must have been on Larraz's mind a lot around the time as he would follow El mirón with La ocasión (1978), another film with an indifferent married couple at the center of it. The biggest difference between the two being La ocasión gradually becoming a thriller in the vein of Deviation, whereas the even more interior El mirón is more focused on the dissolving marriage itself. Despite its lack of genre thrills, the film is nonetheless filled with an uncomfortable tension, with Larraz starting the film with Roman's fantasy having long been established making nearly every scene between Roman and Elena distant and awkward. The presence of Roman's near-death mother living in the same apartment further adds to an already combustible domestic situation, a key element in so much of Larraz's work. An especially fascinating aspect of the film is Roman's curious mentality behind his fetish, especially as it relates to Elena's acquaintanceship with the young neighbor leading to questions of jealousy and more importantly, control. Larraz does give a bit of an opening for Roman and Elena to reconcile their differences, though at the same time Larraz, rather affectingly, concludes the film on a bit of an ambiguous downer.

El mirón was the first Larraz film to feature Alexandra Bastedo, though the former Champions actress was no stranger to to world of Euro horror from which Larraz came. One of Bastedo's finest roles was that of Mircalla Karstein in Vicente Aranda's adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, The Blood Splattered Bride (1972). Bastedo also appeared alongside Peter Cushing in Freddie Francis' The Ghoul (1975). Following El mirón, Bastedo would again work with Larraz on Stigma which was another in a series of Spanish films Bastedo appeared in throughout the mid-to-late 70's. Larraz seemed to be comfortable in the world of the domestic drama around the same time period with El fin de la inocencia (1977) and Luto riguroso (1977) preceding El mirón the same year. Larraz would then focus mostly on comedies like ...And Give Us Our Daily Sex (1979) and The National Mummy (1981) before making a return to horror in the late 80's with the trio of Rest in Pieces (1987), Edge of the Axe (1988) and Deadly Manor (1990). This middle Spanish period of Larraz's career remains the most underexplored. Save for The Coming of Sin and possibly La ocasión, the films lack the genre credentials that would make them marketable which is an unfortunate reality of economics as the films offer a slightly different side of Larraz while still making sense within the context of his other films.