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CAPSULE: BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN (2021)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Katia Pascariu, Claudia Ieremia, Nicodim Ungureanu

PLOT: Scandal erupts as a young teacher’s homemade sex tape leaks online.

Still from Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)

COMMENTS: When a movie starts with hardcore imagery of a pornographic nature, you know you’re in for a wild ride. Bad Luck Banging is an emblematic work that put its creator, Radu Jude, on the map as one of the most controversial, subversive and uncompromising visionaries in the current cinematic landscape. It also dramatically changed our perception of contemporary Romanian cinema: by revealing a completely different direction than the social realism associated with the Romanian New Wave, it laid the groundwork for even more ambitious cinematic achievements like Dracula (2025).

After the brief albeit graphic introduction, the movie divides into three distinct parts. For the first, we follow our teacher protagonist, Emi, around Bucharest as she buys groceries and runs errands. The  almost documentary-like pacing of this section may not be ideal for casual viewers. The camera takes its time revealing  cacophonies and pathogens of the heroine’s urban environment. It’s a subversive “city symphony,” with Bucharest portrayed as it is, not in a celebratory light. It’s a subtle yet caustic commentary on the ethos of a post-industrial consumerist society.

Then, the second section begins. It is an interlude of sorts, disrupting the main narrative while taking the form of an abecedary and a collection of anecdotes and fun facts. Its playfulness and essayistic nature remind the viewer of and the experimentation of the in general. At the same time, it expresses a deeply cynical view of humanity, and especially of Romania.

The third part—slightly longer than the two before it—focuses on an official meeting between our teacher and frustrated parents regarding the online leak of the teacher’s homemade erotic videos, which transforms into a trial of sorts, with every parent acting as an archetype of Romanian society, judging our protagonist’s deeds. Each, from a leftist intellectual to oppressive figures representing the Church and the Army, express long-established opinions, mostly of the conservative kind. Taking place in an enclosed space, the whole segment maintains theatricality, with corresponding lighting. In the end, three possible endings are proposed (let’s just say that the last is the weirdest).

Music plays a major role, underlining the ironic moments. Paeans accompany atrocities, while battle hymns go along with pornographic imagery. Upbeat tunes signal the transition between parts. And let’s not forget M. A. Numminen’s catchy yet seemingly random Wittgenstein-based song “In Order to Tell” (1970) in the closing credits.

Bad Luck Banging can be discussed today not only as a satiric view on western society’s pathologies, but also as a relic of the Covid era. Everyone wears masks and social distancing is all around the news.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s a methodology combining the horrific with the absurd, blending academic inquiry with farcical social critique, à la Buñuel.”–John Kupecki, Austin Chronicle (contemporaneous)

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn [Blu-ray]

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn [Blu-ray]

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Capsules

CAPSULE: VISIONS OF SUFFERING (FINAL DIRECTOR’S CUT) (2006/2016)

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Visions of Suffering is available to watch on video-on-demand in either it’s original 2006 version or the 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.”

BewareWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Anastasia Asafova, Andrey Iskanov

PLOT: A necrophilia-obsessed man is haunted by demons.

Still from Visions of Suffering (Final Director's Cut) (2016)

COMMENTS: Ominously titled, as if to warn potential viewers, Andrey Iskanov’s Visions of Suffering is available both in an original 2006 cut and in a shorter 2016 “Final Director’s Cut.” Given the option of watching both, it seems obvious that 90 minutes of Suffering is preferable to 120 minutes of Suffering. Without having seen the original, I feel confident in saying Iskanov made the right decision to cut out 30 minutes of Suffering.

While the movie is extremely abstract and opaque in its details and methodology, playing like a feature length music video for an industrial noise/death metal crossover band, the basics of the thin plot are not especially difficult to comprehend. Sasha, our bespectacled protagonist, wanders through a misty yellow forest until he encounters a guy wearing a burlap sack on his head (the synopsis explains that this is a shaman and that Sasha interrupts an occult ceremony, perhaps thus bringing a curse on his head). Of course, it was all a dream, and Sasha wakes up and immediately screens a necrophilia porno flick before discovering that his phone is on the fritz. He leafs through books on Jack the Ripper and an anthology of murder scene photos while waiting for the repairman to arrive. While the repairman fixes the phone, they talk about dreams, and the guest casually drops some vampire lore. Phone fixed, Sasha calls his girlfriend (?) Vika, who’s busy shooting lesbian cutter porn. After hanging up, Sasha sees some vampires loitering about outside, and one of them stabs him in the earlobe through the keyhole. Then Sasha has some visions of suffering, and Vika’s car is possessed as she drives to his apartment while wearing iron cross sunglasses. Sasha has some more visions of suffering and calls an exorcist type (played by the director), who explains that Sasha has likely riled up some demons through his desecration of the dead. The director offers to fix the problem for 7000 euros, but that’s too steep for Sasha. So he has some more visions of suffering until the demon Golgatha shows up in his apartment with a sword and starts hacking up the furniture. Then he wakes up, and everything’s OK.

It’s a familiar old story, but Iskanov films it with some genuine style, if not taste or discipline. Much of the film is shot through hazy green/yellow filters that turn cheap costumes and effects that would probably look ridiculous in the full light of day into creepy nightmare fuel. (At times it’s like a less-effective Begotten, without the mythological resonances.) The sound mix is thick, dripping with ooze, spooky noises, and shrieks and moans off one of those atmospheric Halloween sound effect compilations. There is a lot of shock imagery: mutilation, autopsies, explicit sex, implied necrophilia. There are also a lot of superimposed image, especially in the fast-cut opening credits sequence that shows off Iskanov’s gift for montage. But all of this artistry is in service of a juvenile morbidity that seems to arise from listening to too many Marilyn Manson albums under the influence of too much hashish.

Suffering earns the rare and, in some quarters, coveted “” + “” tags. That’s not a recommendation for most folks. The Beware is for content—explicit sex, grotesque real autopsy footage, and some sick stuff that made even me cringe—but even excepting those, the film will prove a bit of a slog for most viewers because of its nonlinearity, tonal monotony, and humorlessness. Still, although it might have worked better chopped up into a series of easily digestible shorts, thanks to some memorably spooky imagery and resourcefulness in disguising his budgetary limitations Iskanov’s movie is not as much of a trial as it sounds like on paper. Fans of experimental extreme horror will eat it up. But please, don’t force me to watch the 2-hour version.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The movie is really about an endless stream of colorful cinematography and visuals, head-trips, nightmares, atmosphere, bizarre creatures, etc… the plot and characters never really develop. In other words, too undisciplined.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

(This movie was nominated for review by “Josh.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SPERMULA (1976)

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L’Amour est un fleuve en Russie

DIRECTED BY: Charles Matton

FEATURING: Dayle Haddon, ,

PLOT: A secret society, said to have developed supernatural powers, mysteriously disappears from New York in 1937, then reappears years later in rural France to spread their anti-love ideology.

Still from Spermula (1976)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Spermula has the unique advantage of being two very unusual and completely different movies; at least one version should make the cut. As conceived by the director, the original is art-house erotica about a cult of libertines who attain a higher plane of existence through renunciation of art and all emotional attachments, including love. The exact nature of their secret society remains vague, and with their elusive backstory, dedication to “immodesty” and disgust with l’amour, even the other characters in the film routinely refer to the protagonists as “weird.” The film was later redubbed for Americans as a softcore comedy.

COMMENTS: As if Ingrid (Haddon) and her cohort of glamorous female companions weren’t strange enough—either as psychic cultists or aliens in human form—the town they arrive in is already a pretty weird place. Run by a corrupt, model plane-obsessed mayor, Monsieur Grop, the residents all connect through a tangled web of political and personal relationships. As the Spermulites insinuate themselves into this incestuous milieu, Grop enlists their next door neighbor to figure out what’s going on with the suspicious new residents.

The Spermulites quickly identify the most repressed citizens as their targets: the cardinal’s submissive housekeeper; Madame Papadéus, a widow obsessed with turning her son into the spitting image of her dead hairdresser husband; Grop’s wife, who exists in an uneasy love-hate relationship with her husband. Caught among them all is Werner (Kier), the mayor’s equally shady assistant scheming to increase his own power.

Determined to marry Sala, Madame Papadéus’ daughter, little does Werner realize she’s already engaged in an affair with the gardener, along with her sister, Liberte (a woman who lives up to her name). Their cousin, Cascade, a Cinderella figure used by her family as a maid, conducts her own secret liaison with an artist, and the couple’s genuine feelings for each other prove highly problematic for the Spermulites’ mission.

The town’s residents also exist in a fraught dichotomy with Ruth’s, the local cabaret run by a black woman. As one of the performers, Ivan the magician (Pieral), candidly states, some people only care Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SPERMULA (1976) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda, Aoi Nakajima

PLOT: A concubine starts a passionate affair with her master in 1930s Japan.

Still from In the Realm of the Senses (1976)

COMMENTS: When a movie starts with a girl trying to force her way into another girl, you know you will probably have a sexually explicit tale. And while Senses is not hardcore pornography, sex and eroticism play the major role here. One sexually charged encounter follows another, as we follow our young prostitute heroine and her relationship with her master, a middle-aged nobleman and owner of the house where she lives and works with other girls. The development of this relationship proves increasingly disturbing as sex transforms into power play, a game of submission and dominance, while the young girl gradually reveals her more possessive self.

Oshima’s infamous sexual psychodrama shocked on release and remains today a classic of provocative cinema, a transgressive and bold narrative portraying sexuality as a power play. While we cannot consider this movie weird, there are elements of the bizarre. Sexual activities increasingly take on a riskier and more sadomasochistic bent. A few intrusive scenes expressing the characters’ states of mind offer a dreamier aesthetic and a healthy dose of Freudian symbolism. And the graphic climax still shocks sensitive spectators.

In today’s cinematic landscape, however, none of the above is too extreme. Contemporary Asian extreme cinema  approaches similar subjects, namely erotic obsession and the relationship of the two sexes, in more shocking ways. Kim Ki Duk’ s movies, especially Moebius, come to mind, featuring similar imagery and then some. Keeping that in mind, Senses feels a bit dated and mild. The underdeveloped characters and their simplistic or incomprehensible (or just unexplained) motives do not help anything.

In the Realm of the Senses is available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The film invites scorn not only because it depicts almost every sex act you could ever want to imagine taking place—God help us—between a man and a woman (right up to and including a woman inserting pieces of mushroom into her vagina and letting them marinate in her lady juices before serving them up to her man; because if he wants more, it must be true love), but also because it dares to couch the entire hedonistic-masochistic exercise as a cinematic cipher, an oozier version of what, deep down, happens in every relationship.”–Eric Henderson, Slant

(This movie was nominated for review by “Der Ubermolch.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THRILLER – A CRUEL PICTURE (1973)

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AKA They Call Her One Eye; Hooker’s Revenge; The Swedish Vice-Girl

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DIRECTED BY: Bo Arne Vibenius (as Alex Fridolinski)

FEATURING: Christina Lindberg, Heinz Hopf, Solveig Andersson

PLOT: A young woman rendered mute as the result of a traumatic sexual assault as a child is kidnapped, forcibly addicted to heroin, and made into a prostitute; after further assaults and indignities, she sets about getting revenge.

COMMENTS: We’re 40 minutes in to Thriller – A Cruel Picture before we finally see our heroine claim some power of her own. Up to this point, it has been a deeply disturbing watch, a rendering of  an accumulated and escalating litany of abuses endured by Frigga (sometimes called Madeleine, and always played by Christina Lindberg with the coolest, most emotionally detached demeanor imaginable). We’ve seen Frigga violated as a child, and deprived of her voice as a result of the trauma. We’ve listened to busybody locals talking trash about her. We’ve watched her get kidnapped, beaten, injected with drugs, and chased through the countryside. We’ve seen a parade of monsters treat her as their mindless personal toys. We’ve learned of her parents’ suicides. And we’ve seen the blood-soaked remnants of the closest thing Frigga might have to a friend. It’s a bleak existence, but we take some comfort in knowing that she’s going to be dishing out some serious payback. It feels like classic exploitation territory, a trailblazer for later tales of rape and revenge like Last House on the Left and Ms. 45. So when she steps off the bus and reveals herself in a kicky little red dress with matching leather eyepatch, it’s the first moment that affords some level of hope. She looks ready to deal out some vengeance. Here we go.

But Thriller doesn’t really work that way. The story beats are there, but the rhythm is all off. In the hands of director and co-writer Vibenius (who previously worked as an AD for Ingmar Bergman), everything is very slow, very deliberate, very thorough. We’re trained to expect a certain cake-and-eat-it-too element to these movies; the female lead endures horrific abuse for our entertainment, but with the reassurance that she’ll turn the tables in a big way, providing a cathartic release and making us feel better about all that pain and misery. Thriller never lets go of that early discomfort. That moment with the red dress is actually the start of an act-long training sequence that will run for roughly 25 minutes. Yes, she learns karate and marksmanship, acquires guns and a car, picks up all the tools and she will need to take down those who have wronged her, but this is not a song-driven montage; we get it in toto. We see every moment of the karate lesson, with the instructor demonstrating falls and then Frigga repeating them. We see how she squirrels money away for her eventual escape, but we’re not spared any of the humiliation and degradation heaped upon her by her johns in order to get that precious cash. And when it comes time to saw off the end of a shotgun, we witness every single stroke of the hacksaw. There comes a point when it stops being a story, passes documentary, and becomes Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THRILLER – A CRUEL PICTURE (1973) →