Water Power (1977)

Disclaimer: This review is of considerable length (not to mention girth) and contains a high degree of dirty, dirty sexiness. At first, you may be a little intimidated by the size of my review, but if you sit back and relax, I think you'll enjoy it. If at any point it becomes too much, just keep pushing onward. The climax is worth it.
For those of you who are game, here's a smooth soundtrack to enhance your reading pleasure - 

Enjoy.

Water Power

Wrong time, wrong place, man. That's the story of my life. Nowadays I wander down to my local cinema and all I see is screaming teens, 7 dollar popcorn and glossy Hollywood crap. It's a consumerist nightmare. A world made by fatcats for people who aren't me. What I really wanna do is strap on my bell bottoms, primp my killer 'fro and take a DeLorean ride to the mean streets of NY City, circa 1977. Walk on past all the jive cats selling smoke and coke on dirty street corners (picking up a few bucks worth of reality enhancement for myself naturally), down to the porno district and find a dingy little adult theatre. And when I'm there, what better movie to check out than the enema-themed, roughie porn classic Water Power.

These days I check out the latest releases and all the eye candy is tanned, toned, scrawny little girls who look like they've spent way more time in the gym than they have in the bedroom. What happened to all the women? I wanna see chicks where the eyes are full of lust, the inhibitions are non-existent, the tits are real and the minges are so untamed you could lose a set of keys in all that wilderness. What's even worse is all the films around now where the guys are girlier than the women. The concept of the man's man, the kinda dude you can idolise for the duration of the movie, is dead. All we get now is wimpy little douchebags like Shia LaBeouf and Jake Gyllenhall. "Men" who wax their chests and spend 120 bucks on a haircut. There's no new Clint Eastwood. No more Warren Oates. And there sure as hell ain't anyone close to the legend known as Jamie Gillis.

Gillis really is the driving force behind the awesomeness of Water Power. It's one of those rare times where an actor inhabits a character perfectly; where the character seems tailor designed for that actor. Because Gillis, aside from being a decent actor, is one grade A sleazeball. He was once praisingly described by fellow porn star Rick Savage as "by far the most perverse person I've ever met". When the world's biggest perverts are in awe of your perversity, I'd say that makes you pretty damn perverted. And that's exactly why Water Power works so well - the guy was turned on by anything so long as it was dirty. When the misogyny and enema fluid start to spray all over the screen in equal measures, there's nothing fake about the sheer enjoyment that Gillis displays. Even in the opening credits, we get a close-up screen of his face, and with one glance at his eyes, you can tell that the soul behind them single-mindedly yearns for extreme sleaze. He's so sleazy that I like to think he was somehow conceived when his mother was fucked in the ass. Such an unimmaculate conception would only too fitting for this anti-Jesus.

That's not to say there aren't some similarities between Gillis and Jesus. Just as JC washed the feet of his disciples to teach them humility, Water Power revolves around Gillis washing out the colons of dirty bitches to teach them... umm, not to be dirty bitches I guess. It all starts when Gillis's character, Burt, a loner who spends his evenings spying on the hottie across the street and taking naked photos, takes a trip down to his local brothel. At first he just wants to look around, but pretty soon the madam has convinced him to try their $10 introductory offer. As she says, "it's less than a cab ride to the airport, and it's so much more fun!" Woah, more fun than a cab ride to the airport?!?! Who could resist that sales pitch?! I sure as hell couldn't and neither can our man Burt, so quicker than you can say "junkie pornstar gobjob" he's handed over his 10 bucks and is gettin blown by Sharon Mitchell.

But that's not enough for Burt, so the madam allows him to sit in on one of their 'specials' - a fellow dressed as a doctor giving a young lady an enema. Personally I doubt this guy's credentials, because even I know that "extreme disobedience" is not a medical condition, and I'm pretty sure that it's not appropriate conduct to get sucked off by a nurse whilst performing a medical procedure. Regardless, the enema is given and, lo, a fetish is born in the heart and balls of our hero.

So, Burt's decided that enemas are where it's at and, unfortunately for the woman he spies on, this is when she decides to *gasp* have sex with a man. Obviously Burt can't let that behaviour stand so, with enema kit in hand, off he goes to clean her out. The rest of the movie basically consists of Burt giving a few more enemas to random women, all the while leading toward a final confrontation with the female cop who's trying to put an end to his bowel-cleansing rampage. Bet you can't guess what happens to her! If you guessed that she gets sold car insurance by a one-armed Chinese midget in a leather G-string then... well, you'd be wrong. And frankly, a little weird. Weirdo.

Kudos here has to go to director Shaun Costello. Water Power could have been a one-note premise, but he keeps things creative in a number of ways. There's the Taxi Driver esque portrayal of Burt's declining mental state. The bizarre soundtrack ripped off from several Bernard Herrmann scores. Even the enema scenes are done with variety, escalating levels of wrongness and, most importantly, a great deal of wit. I could go on but I need to wrap this up so I can wipe the semen of my laptop before it damages the keys.

All up, Water Power is an exploitation masterpiece, the likes of which we'll never see again. A filthy, depraved and hilarious ride with a magnificent, one-of-a-kind, centrepiece performance from the god of sleaze. If, like me, you've ever wanted to spend 80 minutes in the smoke-filled, jizz-soaked atmosphere of a 70's porno theatre, then it's a must see. Dare I say it, it's even more fun than a cab ride to the airport.

Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood

These Hollywood parties never get boring. The sex, the drugs, the bubblegum pop. It feels good to be young, rich and famous, and there's never been a better year to be those things in than 1985.

Bowie and Jagger extol the virtues of dancing in the street, tantalising your ears with cheesy auditory bliss. The chemical sludge of phlegm mixed with quality cocaine oozes through your sinuses like a slow-motion river of pure heaven. Surrounded by the beautiful people where you belong, in this opulent mansion of decadence. Your eyes awash with narcotic glaze, you make your way through the throng of leather, denim and hairspray to the bar, where you grab a large unwatered-down scotch that's worth more than the bartender's annual salary. You quickly down two more, then head underneath the mirror ball to show off a few moves which look utterly ridiculous, but in this place, at this time, you will not be judged so harsh. The vibrations in the air urge you forward toward your latest conquest - another frantic, sweaty coupling that you'll immediately forget... but she never will. Who will the lucky lady be this time?

And then it happens. You spy a vision of pure beauty across the dance floor and your eyes lock. She's perfect. Like a mixture of Farrah Fawcett's sensuality, Madonna's attitude and Molly Ringwald's innocence. Her leather pants are so tight that removing them in under an hour would require an angle grinder. Her fluoro pink midriff top barely covers her natural, untanned tits. Her hair stands a full 8 inches high, like a lion's mane. But she's no lion. You are. And you've spotted your prey.

As you close in, the amount of product in her hair causes your eyes to sting and water, but it doesn't deter you. This is fate. This is destiny. It was meant to be. You move with fame fueled confidence into the cloud of CFC's, until you are finally face to face with this exquisite dream. And as the opening bars of Mr Mister's Broken Wings fill the room with liquid ecstasy, you stare deeply, passionately into her cleavage and utter the sacred words, "I am the Keymaster. Are you the Gatekeeper?" That's what you intend to say anyway, but your drug-addled vocal chords can only produce a stream of garbled nonsense. She seems impressed regardless. Of course she's impressed! After all, you're not just some nobody. You're Charlie fucking Sheen.

You take her hand to lead her somewhere a little more private. The main downstairs bathroom is no good as you know Rob Lowe is in there, getting blown by a 14 year old anorexic as he vacuums up lines of ketamine from between her jutting, razor-sharp shoulder blades. Living the dream. You drag her onward toward the guest bedroom, eager for that special moment of solitude that will both fulfil her starry-eyed sycophantic fantasies and ease the aching lust in your balls.

Through the living room, past the people crowded arounded the TV, watching some video.  Faces turn your way, shocked expressions set like stone, saying things like "You gotta watch this" and "Dude, I think this is real", but you have more pressing matters on your mind. You glance briefly at the screen to see a grainy picture of a dazed, near comatose Asian girl, barely conscious, tied to a bed as a samurai man slowly approaches her. For a split second, you consider stopping to watch, thinking it's one of the crazy pornos that Emilio picked up on his last Japan trip. But there'll be time for that later, only just before you turn away the man in the video pulls out a knife and drives it hard into the girl's wrist...

...

... and a wave of nausea sweeps over you so damn strong it nearly knocks you off your feet and suddenly you start to really, really regret that 43rd line of coke. The blade digs further into her wrist, carving through flesh, blood spattering onto the girl's face until the hand is severed altogether, the butchered wrist stump oozing blood onto the white sheets. The man starts to talk at the screen, but the words mean nothing to you. All you can think about is the gushing scarlet blood and how realistic it looked. Could this be the real thing? After all the rumours of snuff tapes circulating, are you now face-to-face with the genuine article? The picture is so grainy and the sound so muffled that you can't tell for sure, but then this kind of thing isn't ever likely going to get a crisp remaster with English subtitles now, is it? All you can do is keep watching. You can't not watch.

Now her shoulder is sliced open, gouts of gore spurting out as the blade parts flesh. Your hand is yanked by the woman who was to be tonight's entertainment, notch number 400-something on your tomahawk, but you barely even notice. Your surroundings fade into nothing until all that exists here with you is the fuzzy image of a bloodthirsty madman and his innocent victim, and the realisation that you are watching the slow murder of a human being. Your dream evening has become nightmare incarnate, far worse than any phantoms that have ever existed in a sleeping dreamscape - even worse than the time you dreamt that in the future you'd be a washed-up has-been starring in a terrible sitcom with an annoying kid. That was pure fantasy, but these pictures of a psychotic samurai proudly carrying a severed hand-less arm, this is real.

As a chisel is inserted into the deep rent on her shoulder, the wrenching sound of tearing cartilage vibrates through your gut, the sensitivity of your nerve endings heightened to ungodly levels by enough cocaine to give Tony Montana an embolism; each individual sound of rending and tearing flesh adding extra icicles to the cold sweat dripping down your back. And still it continues...

The girl's legs sawed off slowly, the back and forth slicing of the metal teeth through meat and bone echoing through your brain like a plague of locusts big enough to swarm over the USSR. The blood arcing through the air like crimson flowers. The entrails dragged out of her gut with cold methodical efficiency, slippery and slithering, the full glorious gory viscera that makes the human body function, now just a pile of offal - unattractive and unimportant... meat. The head sliced clean off to land in an unceremonious heap on the floor, only to be retrieved for further degradation as the eyeballs are clumsily scooped out. This is more than just murder. This is a complete deconstruction of the human form - splayed out on a butchers slab and taken apart piece by piece, treated like a carcass before it was even dead.

You can take no more. Your hands are shaking, your heart is pounding and your brain is throbbing like it's trying to escape your skull. You watched it; you can't unwatch it. Grabbing your companion by the arm (what was her name again?), you wordlessly drag her roughly to the guest bedroom, still in a state of disbelief at how someone could be so inhumane as to treat another person with such total disregard, as merely a source of personal amusement. Tomorrow, you'll turn the tape over the authorities. But for now, it's time to give this piece of ass a good 3 and a half minutes of passion that she can brag about to her friends afterwards. Snuff tape aside, you still have a reputation to uphold.

Gusomilk

There are very few films that achieve legendary status. Citizen Kane is legendary for the ground-breaking way in which it smashed through accepted ideals of cinematic storytelling. Apocalypse Now is legendary for its cursed, problematic, 2 year long filming shoot. Murder Set Pieces is legendary for its reports that, during production, the director smelled really bad and continually ate his own boogers. And Gusomilk has become legendary as an endurance test for even the most jaded of shock-hounds.

Gusomilk opens quite suspensefully with an anonymous fellow leading 3 cuties (also anonymous) into a hotel room, where another hottie is fast asleep. They all undress her and fondle her body for a while, before one of the cuties decides to take a squat and let loose a mound of rectal fudge onto Sleeping Beauty’s chest. Naturally, the other 2 girls follow suit, each squeezing out their own turd onto this blissfully unaware young lady. Oh by the way, did I mention that this movie is Japanese?

What strikes the viewer immediately is just how different and distinctive each of the pooping styles are. From huge deluges of brown matter, through to sickly mucus-covered sludge-balls, through to thin, delicate strands, the variety of poops on display always keeps the viewer guessing just what exactly the next butt-belch is going to look like. I can’t help but wonder: Was this a planned decision on the director’s behalf? Do these girls have to audition for the roles at all? Are there ads in Japanese newspapers that say “Wanted: Actresses who are willing to be filmed whilst pooping and/or being pooped on. Own transport required.”? Does some casting director watch dozens of girls poop and then select the ones whose poop has the most on-screen charisma? Are different poops compared side-by-side to see if there’s any chemistry between them? This is thought-provoking cinema indeed.

But the attention to detail doesn’t stop there. There’s labia cover to ensure that visual fogging can be kept at a minimum. When the girls are ready to poop simultaneously, they’re carefully grouped together to provide the most visually appealing tableau of Asian ass. When the giant anal syringes full of milk are brought out, they’re kindly shown with measurements on them, so any trivia freak watching will know that each colonic dairy expulsion to be sprayed over our snoozing protagonist is exactly 200 mLs. You have to applaud when scat porn is produced with such craft and care, sensitivity and respect for the viewer’s intelligence.

Finally, our heroine wakes up and seems strangely unconcerned that she’s been coated in feces and ass-milk. If I woke up in a similar situation, I’d be a little annoyed. But then again, I’m not Japanese.

In the next scene, our sleepy lady is back, now fully awake and has a friend with her. This your basic lesbian romance story – Girl meets girl. Girl 1 shoves weird things up Girl 2’s ass. Girl 2 expels objects from ass. Girl 1 puts afore-mentioned expelled objects in mouth, chews them to a fine paste and spits them in Girl 2’s mouth. Girl 2 does gargantuan crap into Girl 1’s hands. Girls smear crap on each others bodies and in each others mouths. And they both live happily ever after. How many times have we heard that one before … This scene is not only the finest of the film, but also the most famous as it provided us with the Eel Girl clip that I’m sure you’re all familiar with. If not, then look it up. I ain’t givin no links, folks.

Scene 3 starts and our sassy girl is back, this time dressed up as a dominatrix and doing all dominatrixy things like crapping on some guy and extinguishing a cigarette on his chest. It’s here that the whole theme of the film starts to solidify. In using the same actress in a succession of varied scenarios, the experience becomes, not just a series of gross-outs, but one woman’s personal exploration of the intricacies of sexual power dynamics, a fantasy exercise where she gets to take on the roles of the submissive and the dominant in varying degrees. With poop.

This theme is cemented in the final scene where we see our girl in a sexual encounter where the power dynamic is 50/50. They meet. There’s a little foreplay. He goes down on her. She goes down on him. And then they couple in the traditional missionary position. It’d be a typical porno scene, were it not for the line-up of random people taking turns unloading steaming dumps on our star’s chest and squirting colonful’s of milk on her face. When the climax arrives, he naturally jerks out a ball-load of baby snot onto her chin, and she flashes the camera a winning smile and a saucy wink.

This final shot really summarises what is so pleasing about the movie, because the smile she gives us is genuine. Unlike other Jap-scat flicks, your Squirmfest’s and what not, where the focus is entirely on degrading the female, this one is full of folk who honestly enjoy what they’re doing. If someone can get to the end of a working day and truly be happy with what they’ve achieved, then that’s a reason for all of us to smile. We all get crapped on in life, but if you can do something that makes you happy, then at least you’ve held on to your dignity.

So, that’s Gusomilk. A journey through sexual power dynamics and a treatise on human dignity, both shown via the medium of anal excretions. Or it could just be people pooping on each other. I don’t know. Hey, you try thinking straight after watching 90 minutes of Japanese scat porn.