Three Extreme Cinema Guilty Pleasures
These controversial cult movies aren’t considered great art, but I find them immensely entertaining.
Even the most serious cineastes have guilty pleasure films. If they say otherwise, they’re lying. I’m upfront and unapologetic about mine, having written about seven of them previously here, but in this article, in response to GB Rogut’s recent Cinemania prompt, here are three more offerings of dubious merit, for your consideration. These all hail from the more extreme and controversial corners of cinema.
A note on my definition of guilty pleasure: Although such evaluations are subjective, I believe a guilty pleasure cannot be too good. It must be objectively ropey enough to qualify, either budget-wise, subject matter-wise, performance-wise, or else it must be deficient in some other major way. They can’t be so-bad-they’re-bad either. For instance, you’ll never catch me talking about Michael Bay’s interminable Transformers films as guilty pleasures, because they aren’t pleasurable in any way.
Without any further ado, here are my three selections.
Flesh + Blood (1985)
Paul Verhoeven is one of cinema’s most entertaining provocateurs. Notorious for controversial films such as Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls (1995), and more recently Elle (2016), he has prompted endless outrage, but is a much smarter director than many give him credit for. The quality of his films wildly varies, with Flesh + Blood constituting one of his less critically revered efforts. Yes, it’s an excessive film by any sensible definition of the word, with enough blood, nudity, sex, violence, and sexual violence to give the Mary Whitehouses of this world heart failure. Yet I give credit to Verhoeven for having the sheer guts to make a film this outrageous.
The plot concerns vengeful medieval mercenaries who decide to get back at a treacherous Lord (Fernando Hilbeck) by kidnapping the bride of his son Steven (Tom Burlinson). Said bride, Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), naturally isn’t chuffed with being hauled off and raped, ultimately by Martin (Rutger Hauer), leader of the mercenaries. Then she tries to ingratiate herself with Martin as things start to head south of Stockholm Syndrome. A siege ensues, and there are lots of horrible moments (including crude biological warfare involving the plague). But as the bodies pile up, and the sex scenes with Martin get hotter, does Agnes really want Steven to rescue her?
Featuring full-throttle performances, especially from Rutger Hauer and the admirably game Jennifer Jason-Leigh, this is never less than compelling, with Verhoeven depicting an amoral medieval world where life is nasty, brutish, and short. There are shades of grey in all the characters, and although the sexual politics will shock, it is worth remembering Verhoeven is deliberately jabbing raw nerves in his refusal to tell his tale through the eyes of modern sensibilities. The aforementioned rape scene will undoubtedly and understandably offend, but such heightened melodrama serves the overall lurid tone.
Ultimately, Agnes is no mere passive victim, and her conflicted feelings about Martin and Steven keeps the viewer on their toes. To my mind, Verhoeven handles the lust triangle aspect of the narrative with aplomb, deftly manipulating the viewer (assuming they haven’t stopped watching in disgust by that point). Is Flesh + Blood sordid, gratuitous, and completely over-the-top? Absolutely. Is it offensive? Doubtless to many. But I’d rather be offended than bored, and I find it a shamelessly entertaining romp well worthy of the guilty pleasure accolade.
Bad Taste (1987)
Watching Peter Jackson’s debut, you’d have to be psychic to spot the directorial prowess that would go on to transform The Lord of the Rings into one of the greatest cinematic epics of all time. Jackson shot the film during weekends over a period of four years, using friends in the lead roles, and without any shooting script. They simply made it up as they went along, and boy does it show.
Despite all this, Bad Taste is a glorious gore-fest with some genuine, albeit repulsive, imagination. Ridiculous, riotous, and repugnant, its extreme approach once seen is never forgotten. The aliens-harvest-humans-for-fast-food-meat-in-New-Zealand plot is nothing more than an excuse for an increasingly inventive blood and guts bonanza. Aliens (disguised as humans) scoop brains out of heads with spoons and eat them. They are shot, sawn, sledgehammered, dismembered, and chopped in half by speeding cars. In one truly puke-inducing moment, an alien (in human form) vomits in extended and graphic detail, before said bowl is passed around the other aliens to drink from, in a sort of grotesque communion. “Aren’t I lucky, I got a chunky bit,” one alien comments.
Pitted against the alien invaders are four agents of AIDS (Alien Investigation and Defence Sector). In addition to insensitive acronyms, we get one character, Derek (Jackson), who after an encounter with an alien, smashes his head on a rock, causing his brain to fall out. He then manages to stuff the brain matter back in and close the skull (which acts like a flap), tying it in place with a belt, before joining the fight. (“I’m a Derek, and Dereks don’t run!”) There are also exploding sheep and jokes about the Beatles.
It’s a fool’s errand to try and describe this any further, suffice to say, Bad Taste is a film that certainly lives up to its title. It won’t be a film anyone watches in polite company, but with an appreciative audience and a few beers, it proves hysterically funny. The film comes with this hilarious disclaimer: “Any similarity with persons living or dead is an accident. Sorry.”
Event Horizon (1997)
Most of the time, I’m not a fan of the films of Paul WS Anderson. However, I make an exception in the case of sci-fi horror Event Horizon. Essentially a haunted house in space story, it concerns the disappearance of the eponymous experimental spacecraft, which after an absence of some years, mysteriously reappears orbiting Neptune in the year 2047. A crew of astronauts is sent to investigate, and all manner of weirdness ensues.
Said astronauts include the enigmatic Dr Weir (Sam Neill), who designed the Event Horizon, alongside the likes of Lawrence Fishburne, Sean Pertwee, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joely Richardson. Various hellish terrors await, with a lot of vivid, gory, surprisingly scary imagery. But the film is damaged goods, pared down from a much longer cut at the demand of the studios, who rushed the film out when Titanic wasn’t going to be available in time for its original summer 1997 release slot. Event Horizon also ran into censorship problems, and much of the more grotesque imagery was deleted, though what remains is pretty damn horrid.
The storyline is hopelessly muddled in this shorter version, with characters going insane far too quickly. A barrage of blood and black holes fails to paper over the narrative cracks, and the whole thing just feels nuts. But whilst I wouldn’t defend Event Horizon as a good film per se, it has the disturbing power of a bad dream. Everyone I know who sees it gets rattled by it. The brief snippets of immolations, disembowelments, and violent extra-dimensional orgies are so eye-wateringly nasty I’m not surprised studio bosses panicked. I’d love to see a full restoration, but since the deleted footage has been lost, I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon.
Featuring outstanding production design, sound effects, and a visual sensibility that cleverly sidesteps comparison to the likes of Alien, this film has big metaphysical questions on its mind too. Did the Event Horizon really travel through a portal to hell itself? Has the ship really been possessed? Why is it making everyone’s worst fears come to life? None of these questions are properly explored, and the film is maddeningly rushed, but at least it doesn’t fall into the trap of over-explaining. A film this scary ought to be inexplicable. For all its flaws, that’s part of its power.
So, what do you think? Have you seen any of the above three? What are your thoughts on them? Let me know in the comments.
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