THE BUNNY GAME is no game at all...

THE BUNNY GAME (2012)

 D.Adam Rehmeier
Autonomy Pictures

HD

Some horror fans pride themselves in searching the outer reaches of the genre for those films that will psychologically scar them. Recent years have seen the genre move to those outer edges in a reaction to a not so subtle seismic shift in our culture after 9/11, ten years of a war in Iraq, and watching our economy plummet while people blame each other. The horror film has always been a mirror to the anxiety of the society of the time, and with the viciousness of our current times it is no surprise we have ended up with films like EDEN LAKE, MARTYRS, BROKEN and of course the very ugly and controversial A SERBIAN FILM. Now we have another very unsettling film to throw onto the short list of movies that will lay a long and nasty scar on your brain. Adam Rehmeier's and Rodleen Getsic's searing cinematic assault, THE BUNNY GAME. 

But this one is quite different than even the other (some quite excellent) films mentioned, as it is as much an art film as a horror film. Shot in harsh black and white, and edited with near brilliance at times, this is a movie that is very aware of the artifice being used to bring it to the audience. The film-making on display is never less than completely assured, coupling with a nerve wracking use of sound design and loud and abrasive music all collide to make THE BUNNY GAME an experience that only a brave few will make it out alive from.

The story is really very simple. A young woman played by co-scripter Rodleen Getsic, is BUNNY, a woman who has found herself a prostitute. Whoring her way on the streets to survive. These early scenes, which make up roughly the first quarter to a third of the film, are deeply unpleasant and the perfect flip side to a movie like PRETTY WOMAN which makes prostitution look easy, clean, and never really dangerous. BUNNY is shown plying her trade in hardcore close up, sucking cocks but never for a second enjoying it. Soullessly getting roughed up, but taking it because it means enough money to get through the day. We see her in the shower in tears as she adjusts to getting past her last encounter and on to the next nasty John. Much of this is scored with super loud and abrasive death metal music just to add to the even more aggressive feel.

Soon she is picked up be a seemingly benign old truck driver played by Jeff Renfro. After a brief discussion of exchanging money for sex, he offers her some drugs and next thing she knows she has been kidnapped and her life is about to become a living nightmare.

From here on out the film is an aggressive onslaught of humiliation and torture. The Trucker systematically sets out to break her, emotionally, spiritually and sexually. Holding her captive in the back of his tractor trailer, stripping her down, shaving her head and playing an extending, extremely brutal S+M based game of total dehumanization. Oddly enough he never actually sexually penetrates her, but the entire enterprise is basically one long extended emotional rape of her very being. During some moments she has a rather disturbing rubber Bunny mask on that further dehumanizes her. All the while the Trucker laughs maniacally becoming a very demonic presence, leading the charge in this nightmare.

THE BUNNY GAME could have been just another torture exhibit freakshow for gorenographers to jerk off to. But instead the film-making on display sets it apart from that. There is real force of nature at work here. Seriously unpleasant stuff, but not without merit. Even if I had not known the back story why this was made I would look at this film and see there was more to what was on screen than simply an exploitation of a woman’s suffering. 

One thing that indeed set's this apart from the horror film of it's peers is that NOTHING on screen is fake. That very fact risks making this a bit of a geek show, but it also lends the movie a visceral, raw authenticity that makes it impossible to escape from. So when we see BUNNY being bound, gagged and tormented it is for real. When her head is shaved and she is force fed a whole bottle of vodka, it is real. In the same scene there are cars in the far distance driving by that are clearly not part of the film-making crew. Just people tooling down the highway that adds a very disturbing edge in that we are watching this bound, naked woman being abused and people are just driving past. The sexual scenes early on are not fake, and there are several scenes of things like cutting and branding that are not fake either.

All of this is possible because Rodleen Getsic comes from a performance art background. Most of her former work dealt with feminist and political themes. She also was very involved with things like political activism and was well known for her charity and philanthropic work during the Katrina disaster. It is this background that allowed her to take the punishment netted out in the part. But more importantly is the WHY she conceived the the film and role. It is my understanding that some where in her past she was indeed abducted by a sexual sadist and suffered greatly while held hostage. To wipe the experience from herself she conceived this project as a way to exorcise the demons. Getsic fasted for forty days to get to a physical place to play the role and they shot the for film for 13 days during which she committed to taking all the abuse as close to reality as possible. Including the very real violence. Once the shoot was finished she went away to a retreat for a month to rid herself of the emotional experience of the shoot and the memories it was based on. 

Some films are not meant to be enjoyed, or even be entertaining. Some are meant to be endured as they very act of making them were acts of rebellion for the filmmakers. THE BUNNY GAME is one such film. It isn't for everyone, only a select few will be able to stomach the horrors on display. Approach it with extreme caution, and understanding that what you are seeing is an act of extreme catharsis. It could damage you if unprepared. 

Andrew Copp © Review

BLEEDER, Nicholas Winding Refn's 2nd feature film

BLEEDER (1999)
D. Nicholas Winding Refn
Import DVD
1.85

After I saw the movie DRIVE this year I became a little obsessed with seeing other films from director Nicholas Winding Refn. I had previously seen BRONSON (2010) which I was very impressed with, and had caught up with his Viking epic VALHALLA RISING (2011) just before seeing DRIVE. But I had not seen any of his older films from when he was primarily still working overseas. So I took a plunge and placed a large order from Amazon UK (grabbed some other dvd's I had been looking for too) and picked up this one and his PUSHER trilogy. This was the first of that bundle I watched and I was suitably impressed.

BLEEDER is a street level drama about a group of friends and how their lives change when the core couple of the group become pregnant. Leo (Kim Bodnia) and Lea (Live Corfixen) have discovered they are going to have a baby, but Leo really lacks the maturity to handle the situation. He hangs out with his video store owning buddies Lenny (Mads Mikkelson who went on to play the villain in CASINO ROYAL) and Kitjo (Zlatko Burik) watching movies all night long, or trailing behind Lea's fairly dangerous brother, low level gangster Louis (Levino Jensen). Louis is not crazy about Leo anyway and he can sense that he is unhappy about the new situation. But as things progress, Leo begins to slip into a sort of psychosis, growing more and more reckless and dangerous, making bad decisions as if to purposefully cause problems for himself until it hits the middle of the film and a huge problem that will impact them all.

The second tier of the story is less tense, and what I suspect is more personal to the director. Lenny, who is obsessed with movies and practically lives at his job at the video story has fallen for the pretty girl who works at the greasy spoon diner around the corner. The problem is that he has no personal communication skills at all. All he can do is talk movies. His friends are used to him, but in the real world his is awkward, even backward to the point that he might even be suffering from Aspergers or mild Autism. His only connection to the real world is through what he knows in the thousands and thousands of movies he watches. So he struggles to connect to this girl, who is actually not too different than he is, because she loves books in much the same way.

The first part of the story grows increasingly tense as the characters play out the situations until it reaches the last act of the film and why it is called BLEEDER. It is not what you think, I guarantee it, and it is far more disturbing that you imagine, But it is thankfully tempered by the second story of Lenny's quest to connect with this young lady.

The movie is told with a constant roving camera, almost always on a steady cam, but never obtrusive, and like his later films, using modern music as a way to punctuate the proceedings and introduce characters and give them an immediate voice. This was Refn's second feature film but his vocabulary was already in place.As his acting company, almost all who were in PUSHER and return here playing mostly very different characters than in that film.

One thing that I will say I have found a little frustrating with his films is that they tend to be a little light on the female character's motivations. He simply doesn't write the most detailed females. His male characters are always fully developed and complex, while his females are always kind of by the wayside, or just plot mechanics to move things forward. With that said, BLEEDER is the one film of the bunch I have watched of his work that suffers the LEAST in this aspect with the two female characters being pretty close to fully formed here. Much more so than the women in BRONSON and PUSHER for sure.

Right now BLEEDER is the hardest of his films to see, but it is for certain worth the effort.

Review

© Andrew Copp

Blood, Boobs, Sand, and Orgasm Nero

SEX AND BLACK MAGIC aka ORGASM NERO (1982)
D. Joe D’Amato
ONE 7
Full Frame

Richard Harrison stars as a writer in a far off island who becomes estranged from his lopsided breast implanted wife (Nieves Navarro). She begins to bang the nubile island hottie (Lucia Ramirez) to fulfill her sexual needs. Lots of picturesque lounging on the beach. Well photographed white sands and sixty nine positions while splayed out with waves crashing into them. Soon The wife is doing more than plowing the public fields, she is teaching the house guest the English language and generally taking her into her lie and heart. When Hubby gets home he is at first oblivious to their transgressions, but it wont take long for him to smell the musky scent of lady lust and put his own manly spin on the situation.

Richard Harrison speaks about shooting this movie in the book GODS IN SPANDEX and what he says is not exactly kind. He claims the script he was given to shoot was a thriller without sex and the movie he was actively shooting was quickly becoming the quasi-porn film we have today. Little did he know that some versions had hardcore spliced in as well (scenes which are extras on this DVD). He also tells stories of crew members teenaged daughters that continuously tried to have sex with him and how he had to fend off their advances... But if he was so in the dark about the content of the film then what about the shots of him almost balls out naked?

"Wading in the waters of island love. Joe D'Amato style."

The movie is typical of D’Amato in that is is generally boring sex fodder bookended by wacky almost horror. Opening with a cannibal tribal ritual in which a man has been killed by a shark and the tribe shares eating his heart for some reason that is not entirely clear. This makes not much sense until the last few minutes when it rears its head again to bring the movie back together. Naturally being the era it is from it also contains the typical lesbian gets raped by the lead of the movie scene. But here done one better when the female lead who has just been bitch slapped away so he can rape her lover decides this is just too good a chance for some hot three way action and joins in. Naturally this repairs their broken marriage and the poor Island girl is just going to have to go back to her savage ways!

Still with all the sleazy sex and offensive non-pc goings on, the movie has one nearly constant thing going for it. It is unrepentantly boring. It looks nice, D’Amato was always a talented cinematographer. But his movies were always paced like doughnuts packed into a colon. they often just refuse to move.  This is no different.

This new dvd has some cut scenes, those mentioned hardcore shots and a different end credit sequence. The transfer is nothing to write home about but it is at least in Italian.

Review by Andy Copp