Dog 1 (1969)

"Where are the products that the arch feminists promise?  The ones that complement and support their rants of brutal misogyny and sociopathic self-absorption?  The pornography that breathes and breeds abuse?  The videos, magazines, and photo sets that exist unequivocally above the common, simple-minded analysis of doggerel and money-charged excesses?  The work crystal clear in motive and hard action that lays waste to any need for the clichéd female rhetoric of thoughts-equal-action?
Where can one go for the good stuff?  The mean, mean evil-minded material that proves the monolithic porno business to be as dirty and sad as the feminists need it to be?" - Peter Sotos
 
"One of my claims to fame is that I knew the dog even before Linda did." - Jamie Gillis

Although certain draconian definitions state that pornography's single-minded purpose is that of sexual arousal, porno has always been a two-sided coin. You do indeed have the aphrodisiac side, your basic jerk-off material. However there's always been a grimy underworld that deals, not in eroticism, but in obscenity and degradation and taboo. Outside of a minority of fetishists, the demand for this darker material is driven almost entirely by basic human curiosity. Enter... Dog 1 aka Dogarama aka Dog Fucker. Although Bodil Joensen's Animal Farm was the smash-hit animal porno among bootleggers and tape trading circuits, Dog 1 was a lesser-known and rarer slice of filth that became highly prized due to its lead actress - Linda Lovelace, an unknown at the time of filming. Just as Linda went on to become the world's most famous pornstar, Dog 1 eventually became much larger than just a dog-sex porn loop, achieving notoriety for considerably more unsettling reasons...

First, to the movie itself: We open on Linda, facedown and spreadcheeked, getting pooned from behind (this was before her mouth became such a desired commodity) by a nameless dude. He finishes up and shoves her away, leaving her unsatisfied. Desperate, she reaches for fulfillment by other means, of the furry, 4-legged variety. Her sweet German Shephard. Woman's best friend, all too eager to roll over, bury his bone and go fetch the pieces of her broken heart.
 

Jaunty music plays. The air is thick with romance; forbidden lust unbound. She sensually fondles his doggy meat. He tongues away at her delicates in a gentlemanly manner that suggests he'd gladly have bought her a fancy French dinner first, if only he had any idea what was going on. She takes him in her mouth for a mere 2 seconds, as long as his furiously jackhammering pelvis allows, before he returns his probing tongue to her nether regions to repay the favour. Then... he mounts! Tail up, boner a-quiver, he pounds against her, switching from doggy style to missionary with the natural skill of a pro. Then, as quickly as it began, it's over...

Of course, the reality of this so-grainy-its-almost-unwatchable porn loop is far less obscene than I'm making it out to be. Anyone with the most minor interest in bestiality porn will already know that the dog material out there is little more than harmless hilarity. If you've ever seen a dog hump someone's leg, then you'll know that they're far from the most attentive of lovers in the animal kingdom. The canine pornstar is always too desperately frantic in his sexual efforts to allow genuine coitus to take place. Actual penetration is non-existent, outside of the occasional happy accident. W.C. Fields once said, "Never work with animals or children." I'd say that's probably more true of porn than any other line of work.

 
About a decade after Dog 1 was made, Linda Lovelace was taken under the wing of anti-pornography feminist group Women Against Pornography - most notably undercover Playboy bunny Gloria Steinem and unfuckable warthog Andrea Dworkin - and became outspoken about the unsavoury truth behind her porn career. She left her life of "sexual slavery" and became the first big-name "porn survivor", to use Dworkin's own terminology. We all know the story by now: supposedly forced into prostitution and porno by her husband, Chuck Traynor, who would beat her regularly. Gang-raped, hypnotised, forcibly sleep-deprived and threatened with a gun. Some friends and co-stars have backed up her tales of abuse. Others have labelled her a compulsive liar and an insatiable sex freak unwilling to take responsibility for own choices.

 

Dog 1 played a part in this dark tale, though mainly through rumour of its existence; a mystical Holy Grail of depravity that showed just how used and degraded Lovelace once was. Although she initially denied even starring in the stag loop, when video copies surfaced, she professed to have been forced at gunpoint to perform. The cameraman of Dog 1 has since come forth to say that Linda starred with no coercion. Others on the set have stated that not only was she willing, but highly enjoyed herself. The question arises: If Dog 1 is so perfectly emblematic of the misogynistic brutalisation of women that's rampant in the porn arena, why did she deny her involvement? Her unwillingness to even acknowledge its existence suggests her anti-porn crusade was driven as much by shame as it was abuse. And, of course, a good deal of the shame forced upon porn performers comes from, you guessed it, anti-pornography groups like Women Against Pornography.
 

You see, some founding members of Women Against Pornography were proponents of an especially vehement brand of radical feminism that insisted that almost all forms of sex equate to sexual subjugation of women, that sex itself is inherently disempowering to females. You enjoy a hard peen inside you, ladies? Well, then you're assisting in the enforcement of male sexual dominance. Feel confident when you wear a sexy outfit? Sorry, you're merely beautifying yourself to satisfy the all-powerful male gaze. What about if you don a studded leather dominatrix get-up and horse-whip a man into submission, that's pretty powerful, right? Nope, wrong again. You're only fulfilling male desires, shaping yourself as a slave to male expectation.

These attitudes were even more extreme when it came to pornography. Female porn performers were labelled as "objects" or "things" or "commodities" or "filthy" or "inferior". All of these words were supposedly employed in the defense of women, yet effectively served purely in the offense, with not a hint of self-realisation that, in denying any form of female sexual power, women are relegated solely to the role of victim. I am woman, hear me roar... but only because men enjoy the sound of my roaring. This is 'feminism'?? And these broads actually had the nerve to call other people misogynists???
 

Don't get me wrong, in the midst of all the varying stories about Linda Lovelace, there lurks the undeniable fact that she was physically abused, to an unknown extent. Make no mistake, Chuck Traynor was a grade-A scumbag. But why should porn take the blame for his douchebaggery? The porn industry is certainly not the only big business to treat its workers like meat. As far as I can see, porno offers a comparatively high rate of reward for a comparatively low level of work. Unlike other industries, a lifetime's employment in porn is not gonna lead to crippling back and joint pain from heavy manual labour. Nor do you find ex-pornstar's spending their twilight years frantically gasping for air into asbestos-filled lungs. No risk of Carpal tunnel syndrome, unless one specialises in handjob vids. The only potential damage is psychological. I'm supposed to care because getting fucked on camera for a bit of easy money might lead to self-esteem issues? You gotta be kidding me.

Fact is, life is a series of mistakes, some of which you learn from. We protect children from the harsh realities of life, because they're not yet equipped to handle the obstacles that life presents. When you're an adult, you're on your own. Expressing concern about the role of women in pornography is essentially saying that women should be treated like children. That women are too stupid to make their own life decisions, too weak to deal with their mistakes and too fragile to handle the consequences. There's no way around it. The porn industry is more honest and upfront about itself than any of those who oppose it.

 

The most loathsome thing about Lovelace's whole ordeal is the way that, without a shred of irony, the anti-porn feminist brigade objectified her, in a different manner than that which they accused the porn industry of doing, but no less dehumanising. Instead of viewing her as tits, ass and cunt, they used her as a symbol. She was their trump card. The misused piece of meat that proved all their cock-fearing speculation about the grunting, knuckle-dragging, woman-hating porn industry to be every bit as depraved and misogynistic as their wildest, most rape-filled dreams. She was no longer a woman. She was women. She was the face of an entire demographic. She was every female who'd ever been filmed getting filled with man-meat and later regretted it. They reeled her out in front of rallys, sociology lectures and government hearings. They quoted her in books. They put her name on placards. And, much like the porn industry, they gave her a small sliver of their profits, then left her to fend for herself. What a pack of hypocrites.

A human being is always objectified and condescended to whenever they're considered part of a demographic. Reduced to a gender or a race or a sexual preference or a career choice. So, to conclude, I'm gonna say that, as a person, as an individual, I like Linda Lovelace. I like her despite her hypocrisy in turning against the institution that made her a superstar. I like her unequivocally, because she stood tall in front of a judgemental world and proclaimed with a beaming smile that she gives a damn good blowjob, and that giving a good blowjob is something worth being proud of. In doing so, she irrevocably changed the psychic landscape of human sexuality, far more than Krafft-Ebing or Freud or Kinsey or any other high-falutin' academic could ever dream of. And she did a damn sight more for the sexual freedom of women than anyone who tried to use or control her. The fact that she also starred in a mildly entertaining dogfuck tape... well, that's just gravy.

Dog 1, in all its hi-definition glory

Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)

Be forewarned, this review is going to be overwhelmingly positive. Some may find this attitude a tad distasteful. I mean, wholehearted enjoyment of insensitive Nazisploitation? That's anti-Semitic! Well yeah, but you're no better. Ask yourself this simple question: When was the last time you had a conversation with a Jew and thought to yourself, "Golly, I wish there were 6 million more of these guys in the world!"? I'll answer for you: Never. Okay, maybe some of you have recently chatted with Larry David and thought that. But otherwise, you've never thought those words, not even once in your entire life. So shut your mouth, keep your judgements to yourself and just read the damn review, you Jew-hating prick.

We start with a short text disclaimer from the producer, informing us that the movie is "historically accurate" and based on "documented fact". Sweet! I love history lessons that you can masturbate to! It continues on to say that the movie was made in "the hope these heinous crimes will never occur again". You see, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS is not just an exploitation film; it's a highly moral work of social responsibility ensuring that atrocities of the past will not be repeated... with lots and lots of tits.

Nowhere near as hot as Ilsa.

Cut to some bagel-munching schmuck getting his circumcised schvantz cowgirled to ecstasy by our big-boobed Nazi hostess, the titular (*snigger*) Ilsa. I already disagree with the disclaimer - I'd be happy for such a "heinous crime" to occur to me repeatedly. My tune changes quickly though, when he's lead away to have his dick chopped off. Oy vey! This is Ilsa's modus operandi when it comes to male prisoners - ride 'em hard, drain 'em dry, give 'em an extreme bris, then toss 'em away. It's a great intro to the character, establishing her as a sexed-up, dick-slicin', swastika-salutin' praying mantis-like figure. The kind of uber-hardass dominatrix bitch that'll have most male viewers thinking that the post-fuck castration would totally be worth it.

Moving on, a rollcall is held for a new group of prisoners, who all seem to be hot naked young ladies parading around with their full lustrous bushes on display. Again, I'm not seeing anything "heinous" here. The prisoners are informed that they'll be used to help the cause of medical research, before they're promptly directed to a room to have their pussies shaved. Vaginal grooming habits aren't what I'd personally consider to be an urgent medical matter, but I suppose the surgical procedure of thatchectomy had to be pioneered at some point. It's kinda weird that it eventually became known as the Brazilian. I guess most chicks nowadays aren't comfortable with the idea of having a Nazi German between their legs. Every trip to the downstairs beautician would be like a pubic hair Holocaust. Hot wax strips would be considered like Zyklon-B for pubes.

Still not as hot as Ilsa.

As Ilsa peruses the male wares, checkin' out which schlong she next wants to shag and sever, we're introduced to our hero, a blonde American dude. Seems odd having a blonde hero in a Nazisploitation flick, almost like it's somewhat siding with Nazi ideology, but I guess thematic consistency is not of prime importance here. Blondie aims to satisfy Ilsa so thoroughly that he'll get to keep his johnson. IMO he should orally pleasure her anus. That's certainly what I'd do if a hotass Nazi wanted to hack my cock and balls off. Even if he fails to avoid castration, he'd still be left with some sweet memories of tongueing out some Nazi goddess's shitcunt to carry him through life as a eunuch. It's a win-win situation. Sadly it turns out that our Yankee pal is a big-dicked, everhard, sexual dynamo, so there was no need for any ass-eating. That didn't prevent my mind from being flooded with analingus imagery for the duration of the film. Probably why I enjoyed it so much.

Almost as hot as Ilsa.

On the flipside of our heroic sex machine, we also get a female prisoner who's meshuggenah enough to plan an escape from the camp. While the men dig holes and poon Ilsa, the ladies have it considerably worse. They're beaten, tortured, experimented on and forced to pleasure the male soldiers. This serves to test Ilsa's personal hypothesis, which is as she states, "A carefully trained woman can withstand pain better than any man." Feminism at its finest right there. Unfortunately for our brazen little Jewish princess, her boldness and spunk make her the perfect test subject for Ilsa's experiments. She gets pushed to the limits of her pain threshold, via a series of tortures so vicious they'd have even the most highly submissive gay man screaming out the safe word.

There's a rather unsettling subtext to the 2 heroes journeys here. While the male hero succeeds in defeating Ilsa with the sheer power of his bitch-taming boner, the female heroine is utterly destroyed in the most cruel fashion, violated into helplessness for daring to show personal strength. Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, and in fact Nazisploitation in general, could be perceived by some as being somewhat sexist and offensive. Just thought I'd point that out, just in case there are any absolute morons reading this.

Hitler would have definitely dumped this bitch for Ilsa.

All up, this is nowhere near as grimy as The Gestapo's Last Orgy, but it's immensely charming and oh-so-wrong fun, dishing up delightful displays of saucy sex, gory experiments, dildo torture and even a little bit of watersports. Good wholesome entertainment. The awesomeness levels are elevated considerably by a fearless and fiercely committed central performance from Dianne Thorne as Ilsa, her bitchin' cleavage and faux-German accent making her any masochist's wet dream. She rocks the Nazi uniform like she was born in one. Cult movie favourite George 'Buck' Flower has a small part as a Nazi scientist, although sadly he never says the line, "Crazy drunk concentration camp prisoners!" Nudity is in abundance, including an uncredited cameo from everyone's fave Meyer girl Uschi Digard, where she's required to show her enormous hooters and not say a word - pretty much the ideal role for her "acting" range.

So, I guess the big question surrounding Nazisploitation is this: What's the point? Actually, most people wouldn't even ask that question; they'd simply dismiss it all as pointless trash that exploits tragedy for base shock value. That's far too simplistic and reductive. Even if it were true, it doesn't answer anything, only creates more questions. The Holocaust may not be the worst tragedy of the 20th century, but it's the most well-publicised and talked-about, hence it holds the most weight. The burden of that weight fell primarily on the shoulders of the following generation/s, required to be intensely respectful of events that they have no memory of, and forced to carry the guilt of actions that they took no part in. 6 million corpses is far too much for any man to carry without some kind of release. Catharsis takes many forms and Nazisploitation is one of them.

In 1950s Israel, while the Holocaust victims were still nursing their psychological wounds, a form of pulp literature known as 'Stalags' became popular - erotic novels involving concentration camp prisoners being sexually brutalized by buxom female wardens, with titles like 'I Was Colonel Schultz's Private Bitch'. Holocaust pornography. Ilsa in word form, 20 years before the movie was released. The main audience for these stalags was the children of Holocaust survivors, rebelling against the guilt placed upon them by their parents, just as Catholic schoolgirls become blowjob queens to spite the nuns that chastise them for wearing short skirts. When Jewish porn star James Gurman (aka Jamie Gillis) banged a young German lady of Nazi descent, he spiced up their sex by asking her to hurl anti-Semitic abuse at him in German, which she did with ferocious enthusiasm. It's all catharsis; a release from carrying dead people's baggage.

Beneath the superficialities that divide us - different races, different skin colours, different opinions - there's still a force that can bind us all as one people. We're united by the fact that, deep down, whether we realise it or not, we're all just fucked-up, weird, disgusting perverts. Our blood is always red and our buttholes all basically taste the same after a good shower. So let's say nay to Nazis, but a big yay to Nazisploitation. Let the freak flag fly high and proud over all of us. It's the only symbol worth saluting.

Aah yeah, that's the stuff.

Emanuelle in America (1977)

I remember renting a VHS of Sylvia Kristel's Emmanuelle around the mid to late '90s. I can't recall anything about the movie itself, but I can easily picture what my viewing experience would have been like: Started with a couple of bonghits, fast-forwarded through all the non-nude scenes and ended with me cleaning all my virile teenaged sperm out of my hair and off the wall behind my couch. Fast-forward 15 years and things have changed a lot. I no longer smoke weed, my hair's speckled with grey, the jizzloads only reach mid-chest level at best, and I'm about to have my first fling with the other Emanuelle. Let's hope this one's a bit more memorable.

We're introduced to Laura Gemser's Emanuelle in her day job photographing naked models - pretty much the perfect job for a softcore porn character, allowing tits and vag to appear in copious amounts without any need for explanation. Shortly after, her car is hijacked by one of the models boyfriends, some prudish virgin who holds a gun to her head and accuses her of corrupting his beloved. Fortunately, as Emanuelle's talents go, photography takes a distant 2nd place to being a slut extraordinaire. After sucking his cock for a few seconds, he sees the error of his ways and dashes off to bang his missus. Interestingly, Emanuelle isn't bothered in the slightest and laughs heartily about the whole ordeal. Women are strange like that. I'm guessing that might be why they go to public bathrooms in groups, so they can share hilarious anecdotes about all the gun-wielding psychopaths they've blown recently. Yeah.

"... and then he said he'd blow my brains out if I didn't swallow. LOL!!"

This first scene sums up Emanuelle's escapades for the rest of the movie. It's a simple formula - go somewhere, take photos, fuck some people, repeat. The scenes tend to blur into each other a little, so I'd sometimes find myself thinking, "Where the fuck is she now and who the fuck is that she's fuckin'??" Things are spiced up a little by her second job as a daring investigative photo-journalist, eradicating crime one shag at a time. With two jobs, she's a busy lady indeed, which may partly explain why whenever she meets someone, she just gets straight down to the fuckin'. Too busy for all that finding out the other person's name rubbish.

As in all porn, soft or hard, the devil is in the details and so is all the fun. I mean, we've all seen naked women pleasuring horses before, but it's different here because the horse's name is Pedro. Bwahahahahaha! Pedro!!! If that doesn't have you rolling on the floor with laughter then... well, it's a horseporn thing, you wouldn't understand.

"Hey, I understand!"

And then we come to the movie's most notorious scene, where our intrepid young photographer/reporter/trollop stumbles upon a snuff porn tape. And it's a genuine doozy of a scene. 2 minutes of genuine pseudo-snuff heaven. In 1976, it would have been in the top tier of the most graphically violent, depraved and hardcore pieces of footage ever filmed. Grimier and nastier than anything in Salo. It still packs a punch today. I have no idea what possessed director Joe D'Amato to throw this vile slab of sexual butchery into the middle of a fuckflick for the raincoat brigade, but I'm calling it a stroke of genius on his part.

"Bravo, D'Amato. Bravo."

  
Having said all that, aside from a handful of scenes, the movie overall is a little boring. "What?", I hear you say. "A Joe D'Amato porn flick, boring? How can this be?!?!" Sadly, it's true. Ultimately, your mileage will vary according to how much you'd like to have Laura Gemser's snatch in your face. My personal tastes lean toward a slightly more rubenesque figure. Don't get me wrong, she's an attractive lady. And my teenage self would have been happy to get stoned, skip through the plot and *ahem* "enjoy" the movie. But it wouldn't have been the kind of enjoyment where you're fearing for your eyesight, ducking and dodging cumbullets like some protein-soaked parody of a soldier on D-day. More like where the enjoyment all pools up in your belly-button and you have to keep your torso roughly horizontal while you go find tissues.

This was the 2nd of 5 Emanuelle collaborations between D'Amato and Gemser. I haven't seen any of the others, but I'm predicting that by the end of the 5th movie, Emanuelle will have succeeded in fucking every single human being on the planet. I look forward to finding out if I'm correct. Please don't spoil it for me.

Modify

Dear Santa,

Hey man! What's up? I trust this reaches you in good health. Hope you and the missus and the reindeer are all doing well. Sorry this is reaching you so late, if it reaches you at all, but I only just got what I wished for last year. I was starting to think you'd forgotten me! But hey, I figure you've got a lot of eager young 'un's to attend to first, so I'm cool with waiting a few extra months. It's not like you're gettin' paid for this job, amirite?

Just to refresh your memory, last year I wished for a documentary that showed the nitty-gritty of cock-splitting. I'm sure you get requests for that all the time, alongside the usual shit like bikes and Playstations and Samsung Galaxy 4's. As I wrote in my letter, I'd just seen a pretty cool doco called No Body Is Perfect, which covered a good sector of the body modification community. It's a fascinating subject for me and it's all the rage down here in the non-snowy lands. I bet the trend has even drifted up your way and you've got quite a few elves showing up to work in the factories with nose piercings and tramp stamps. A symptom of the modern age. But my major disappointment with the doco is how it suggested cock-splitting but didn't have the cojones to show it. That's why I wished for something a little more graphic.

Lo and behold, you sent this baby my way - the 2005 work entitled Modify. I accidentally stumbled across it on a torrent site, but I know it was you, Santa, who pushed me in the right direction.

Modify is a great documentary that comprehensively covers all bases of extreme bodily modification - tattoos, piercings, brandings, scarification, implants, plastic surgery, sex changes, etc. And it doesn't pull any punches in showing the real gore. Dicks, clits, lips, tits, cunts, butts, septums and rectums - if there's any sensitive body part, then this doc shows it being sliced, diced, pierced or punctured. I've seen my fair share of real gore in my time. I've seen mondos and addios; autopsies and biopsies; homicides, suicides, genocides and even a few episodes of Ironside. But I ain't seen nothin' that made me squirm quite like the sight of a man putting plastic implants under the skin of his own penis, using a scalpel and a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Such precise, self-inflicted invasions of the flesh slice into the psyche at a more personal level than any Taliban televised beheading.

What's more interesting is how this doco unwittingly explores the line between hobby and lifestyle, between want and need. A simple nipple piercing, like I have, doesn't impact on my life in any way. But when you get 70 piercings in your face, it defines who you are, whether you want it to or not. First impressions make all the difference. When you've got a buttload of steel bars rammed through your facial flesh, any initial impression immediately impacts on how anyone, whether friend or acqaintance or passerby, is going to view you. Not to mention how it narrows your potential career path.

Even milder cases are covered in the doco, like extreme, 'roid-free bodybuilders, intent on making themselves into muscular works of body-art. Such dedication toward a strict dietary and iron-pumping regimen means there's no such thing as a day off to relax. Unlike you Santa, what with you getting 364 days off for every 1 night of work you do, right? Haha, I'm just kiddin' with you. I know you work hard, keeping the elves in line and the reindeer well-fed.

The downside to watching those dedicated to body modification is that tattoo and piercing needles often hit what I like to call the "pretentious twat gland". Thus you inevitably end up with a few folk talking bollocks about how some cranial studs or an eyeball branding is an amazing spiritual experience. There's a dude in this doco who states, "The decision to get my face tattooed was the greatest challenge I've faced in my entire existence". Fuck that douchebag and fuck everyone like him. There's little challenge here and piss-all in the way of spiritual experience. Body modification is mere imitation of tribal ritual, removed from its original context. Modern primitivism is pure luxury; an expensive middle-class pastime for those privileged enough to be bored with their own meat. So cram all that spiritual hogwash up your tattooed anuses, you self-important fuckwits.

Anyway, I've talked enough about the flick.It's worth a watch and it totally gave me the graphic cock-splitting footage that I asked for. I don't know what your internet connection is like up in the North Pole (you're probably still on dialup, haha!), but here's a link to the trailer. I'd have liked to send you the full movie, but some fuckfaced cuntswab took it down from youtube -

 I have to confess at this point, I watched this to ease my own pain and curb my own urges, but it only provided temporary relief. I long for a catharsis that never seems to arrive. I'm no longer cutting myself, but the voice is always there, impelling me to do so. My nightmares persist on a nightly basis and I sometimes awake with explosive rage when I can't remember them. I try to grasp onto anything concrete, but all I feel is sands slipping through my fingers, until I'm once again left empty-handed. The only thing I hope for is a single day better than the one that preceded it, but even this humble dream is always denied. Last week, I was on the bus home from work and I started crying uncontrollably. I don't know why and I couldn't stop, even when the paramedics were carrying me away. I wish this was an isolated occurrence, but, truth is, I'm a 30 year old baby.

Since my mother died, I have not a single person left in this world who loves me now or ever will again. I've accepted that and learned to deal with it. But what's so much worse is the prospect of never having another friend, noone that even likes me. Every future relationship I have will be built on a foundation of pity. There's nothing about me left to like. I feel like I have a black hole inside my ribcage, sucking in entire universes of emptiness. Everytime I think my body can no longer contain so much anti-matter, another blast of nothing gushes in to prove me wrong. Carving a hole doesn't let any of my pain out, it just creates another vent to let more in. The doctors keep telling me that none of this is my fault, bludgeoning me down further with their textbook psychologies. The fact that I didn't ask for this and don't deserve it, that noone deserves this yet it happens regardless, only serves to make me feel more helpless and hopeless and empty and alone.

The thing is, Santa, we can modify our flesh in so many ways, but we're forever stuck with the mind we were born with. I wish I could carve my brain into a fresh mould, create a new architecture of synapses with strength and stability. Pierce every bit of neural tissue that brings me pain. Use a branding iron on my memory centres and burn the whole lot into oblivion. Tattoo over my misery with sunshine and beauty and wanky little tribal designs that don't mean anything. Take a scalpel to my cerebral cortex and split it like a cock, letting all the hurt bleed out through my eyelids.

I'm falling apart here, Santa. It's been nearly 20 years since you last visited me. I used to look forward to Christmas Eve, when you'd sneak into my room and into my bed. Snuggling me from behind, your big beard tickling the back of my neck, filling me up with the Christmas spirit. These are my happiest memories. Even though it would sometimes hurt a little, I felt warm and safe in your arms. Then my parents started arguing real bad and my father committed suicide and I never saw you again. I know you have your own life to worry about, but it felt like you abandoned me right when I needed you most.

I've kept our secret safe for all this time, just like you told me to. I never let slip a word of it to anyone, not even the doctors when they kept prying. But now I have to break my silence. I'm desperate. I need to see you. The post office keeps returning my letters, so I'm putting this one publicly on the internet, in the hope that someone who knows you will read it and pass it on. It'll be the last letter I write. Hope to see you on Christmas Eve. I'll leave milk and cookies, as usual.


Forever and always,
Your special boy



PS. Remember a few years ago, I asked you to get Choi Min-Sik back into film? I'm so glad you managed to pull that off. I Saw The Devil was awesome! Thanks a bunch for that, man.

The Beardliness of Beards: A Short Essay about Beards

I'm currently in the process of growing a beard, an effort I seem to attempt on a bi-annual basis. Once again I'm saddened and disgusted with my face's beard-growing abilities. Some parts of my face grow beard in the wrong direction. Other parts refuse to grow beard at all. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm terminally sideburn-deficient. Plus, my Zappa-style soulpatch is nowhere near as bold or lustrous as I would like.

^^ What I hope to look like someday.

On the positive side, since growing a beard, I'm been informed by more than one person that I look like a terrorist. Noone ever told me that when I was clean-shaven. I'm taking that as a positive sign, as any bearded man would.

 

The Master approves of beards. So should you.

Here are a few amazing facts about beards that will entertain, educate and astound you -

Amazing Beard Fact #1: The beard is the only body part that a man can compliment another man on, without said compliment sounding like a gay pick-up line. Take a simple statement like - "Hey man. I really like your beard." Nothing homoerotic 'bout that. Now substitute another body part, like this random example - "Hey man. I really like your penis and balls." Notice how, in making the compliment about something other than beards, the same sentence develops subtle, homosexual undertones? Fascinating stuff.

The Amityville Horror - Crap movie. Great beard.

Amazing Beard Fact #2: All women love beards. Upon seeing a man with a good beard, the average woman will think to herself, "Golly gosh, I wouldn't mind having that handsome fellow's facial fuzz tickling my landing strip!". Every woman who reads this has thought those exact words on many occasions. That's scientifically provable. If a woman claims to not love beards, she is in fact openly admitting that she loves beards even more than those women who wear their beard-love proudly.

Beards can help fending off both icy cold weather and flesh-assimilating alien creatures.

Amazing Beard Fact #3: The only member of ZZ Top without a beard is named Frank Beard.

They've got beards. And they know how to use them.

Amazing Beard Fact #4: This is the greatest beard ever grown -

Asbestos Felt: Patron Saint of Beards.

Anywayz, I can't think of any clever way to end this post. So instead, here's a song about beards by a band called The Beards.

 

Maniac (2012)

I don't like violent horror movies, nor do I approve of them. The 1980 film Maniac was well-known for its poster art, showing the lower half of a man bearing a bloody knife, a scalp and a protruding bulge in his pants, suggesting that he enjoyed stabbing innocent women to death and then showering their bleeding bodies in semen. What filth. However, the recent remake has been getting high praise among horror fans, so I felt it was my duty to watch it. People need a reminder that violent art should not be judged for its aesthetic qualities, but rather from my own personal moral standards, which you all should share.

The film is admittedly well-made and stylish, but the words of the great James Ferman have never been more true. It’s all right for you middle-class cineastes to see this film, but what would happen if a factory worker in Manchester happened to see it? Don't be swayed by the veneer of artistic pretension. Remember who the true target audience is for such trash and how they will react - drooling ape-like men fueled by violent lustful cravings, fiercely massaging their engorged erections with grubby fists, spurting rope after rope of warm semen onto their burly bellies and into their thick chesthair. This image should always remain in the forefront of any sane mind when watching violent horror.

Adding to the worrisome nature of the film is the fact that it's almost entirely shot from the first-person perspective of a bloodthirsty psychopath. That essentially makes it a POV murder fantasy of a world where females exist for only 2 reasons: To be naked and to be killed. A worldview specifically designed so that sadists can unleash gushing fountains of semen from their tumescent penises.

Some dude watching Maniac (2012). Possibly.

 Despite bearing a semblance of a plot, the entire movie is essentially a series of murder set pieces, where women are mercilessly stalked, then brutally murdered. Some dazzling cinematography and an atmospheric musical score create a strong sense of mounting tension, mirroring the mounting tension of semen in the swollen testicles of sexual deviants across the globe. When the kills arrive, they are blunt and unforgiving. Blood splatters across women's bodies and streams in rivulets down their faces, like money shots of crimson semen, clearly meant to emulate those degrading pornographic films where women are shown as pure sex objects. Blank canvases awaiting to be painted... with semen.

One can only imagine the amount of semen that will be hatefully spurted into the world as a result of this revolting movie. From the opening kill scene, where great arcing geysers of semen will volcanically erupt from rock-hard penises, splashing onto the depraved viewer's chest and limbs. Right through to the grotesque finale, where all that's left in the viewer's drained testicles is small dribbles of semen to run down the glans, over the frenulum and fingers and scrotum, to finally soak into the couch, among other encrusted pools of semen.

Some other dude watching Maniac (2012). Probably.

 This is not a film I'd recommend. It offended me deeply. The world needs to wake up and realise that my feelings are more important than art. Enough semen has been spilled. I consider myself fortunate that I'm blessed with strong moral values and I'm mentally sound enough to resist the film's temptations. I shudder to think of what might go through the mind of a deranged pervert when they watch this reprehensible filth.

Ebert's Chaos: A review of a review

Roger Ebert was not just the greatest film critic of all time, but in fact the most amazing human being that ever lived. I would compare him to Jesus Christ, but that would be an insult to Ebert. Jesus only turned water into wine. Ebert turned language into platinum. Every letter he gave us was a gift that we should all be grateful for. He was never wrong about anything, even when he was. Especially when he was. Unlike the rest of us, he didn't type words. He typed majestic unicorns that shat rainbows covered in galloping fuzzy kittens. Those kittens galloped their way into my heart, making me a better, more loving human being.

Obviously, none of this is true, but you'd never know that from reading all the many tributes to his genius that have flooded the internet since his death. I realise that, when any celebrity dies, their flaws get understated when memorialising them. In this case, the flaws have, for the most part, been ignored altogether. I ain't down with that, so here's my take on the tragedy that started the whole filmworld crying.

 In light of Ebert's passing, I revisited his writing for 2005's Chaos, both the review and his following correspondence with the film-makers. An intensely negative review which wound up being the film's major selling point. The makers happily cherry-picked quotes from the review to splash across the DVD cover and Ebert's futile splenetic fury helped push a grimy low-budget exploitation flick into the mainstream public's eye, despite his insistence that "I urge you to avoid it". Poor old Rog' never did fully cotton on to the truism that all publicity is good publicity.

As was often the case when Ebert disliked a film, he really has nothing interesting to say about it. There's a bunch of quoting from other reviews (a truly lazy tactic for any professional film critic, one which Ebert would occasionally resort to), a brief plot outline and not much more. This was one of his major flaws - if he disliked a film, he disregarded his duties as a critic and stopped paying attention. He made the assumption that he was better than the film, as if spending an hour or two writing a review is a comparable achievement to the months-long process of making even a low-budget independent movie. In fairness to Ebert, he was a freaking good writer who actually could lay claim to creating art better than some of the drek he watched. Let's not forget, he wrote perhaps the greatest line of dialogue in cinema history. You know the one I mean. Sadly, his lofty assumed position of greatness was extremely influential and has been adopted by all manner of worthless critics, both professional and amateur.

What's more problematic is that, when the makers of Chaos suggested he didn't "get" the film, his response was an extensive merciless form of literary bullying, questioning any film-maker's responsibility in depicting "evil". A rant fueled by the same false premise that every single pro-censorship argument is built upon - the idea that morality is a purer form of human expression than art. In his original review, he asked "Why do we need this shit?" and, when pushed further on this stance, he questioned "To what end?" should evil be portrayed. Why even ask these questions? Haven't enough films and film-makers been attacked, censored and banned for these reasons? A few years after Ebert's bludgeoning of Chaos, Iranian director Jafar Panahi was imprisoned along with his family and friends, because his government felt they didn't need his shit and objected to what end its purpose may lead. Ebert lived and worked in the US, a country where artistic expression is protected by law. Others are not so lucky. 

I'd have thought that any true lover of film would feel thrilled at how fortunate they are to live in a society where all art is given the freedom to not be necessary or to not have a purpose or an end or a reason to exist. Apparently, I was wrong in this assumption.

When Ebert truly hated a film, he was unable to accept that "it's only a movie... only a movie... only a movie...". He genuinely attempted to destroy what he disliked and shamelessly used his considerable clout as semi-celebrity to achieve that goal. His review of I Spit On Your Grave (or rather, more accurately, his review of the audience he saw it with) was followed up with a campaign to have it removed from theatres in the US. His crusade against slashers aka 'dead teenager movies' contributed heavily to the stigma placed upon horror in the '80s and helped give legitimacy to David Edelstein's coining of the term 'torture porn' decades later. Not content with limiting his slammings toward only the artwork or artist, he would happily make snap moral judgements about any appreciative viewer, labelling them as morons, degenerates and people who should be avoided, simply because they enjoyed a movie that he didn't. I'm not bothered by what he hated. I'm bothered by how he hated.

 In the final piece he wrote for his website, he told us, "I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review." Just over a day later, he was dead. Such a shame that he didn't decide to follow his dream earlier, preferably several decades earlier. When he wrote about movies he truly had a passion for, he was very, very good indeed. One of the best there ever was, for sure. But when it came to movies he despised, he revealed himself as nothing more than a petty, vindictive book-burner.

His writings on Chaos hold a dark irony regarding his eventual fate. He wrote of the movie that it "denied the possibility of hope". He deplored that "the monster is given no responsibility, no motive, no context, no depth. Like a shark, he exists to kill." A very real monster robbed this eloquent man of his ability to talk and eat. It did so with no responsibility, no motive, no context, no depth. Several years later, at the moment when he was looking forward to a life he'd fantasized about, that same monster took everything left of him. Like a shark, cancer exists to kill. His optimism and his positivity were not enough. The possibility of hope was denied. Hope did nothing to prevent him winding up in the cold, eternal grave. Hope couldn't even prevent a douchebag like me from spitting on that grave. Chaos was proven right.

 To conclude this rant: Less than a week before Roger Ebert's death, Jess Franco also died. Franco was a fearless and truly individual artist; a renegade who spent his formative years combatting a fascist political regime with the power of art. He fought against censorship with every bone in his body and forged an unmatched enormous catalogue of work that wholeheartedly celebrated the boundary expansion of artistic freedom. In contrast to this, Ebert was born into privilege in the one of the safest, most tolerant and most free societies in human history. And he unashamedly used his position to try to restrict any artistic expression that hurt his pissy little feelings.

2 major film figures dead within the space of a week. I'll only be mourning for one of them. The other guy gets a thumbs down from me.

 

Oriental Techniques in Pain and Pleasure (1983)

Phil Prince is one seriously classy guy. I'm sure you know that already, coz you've all seen the delightful moment in The Taming of Rebecca where a dude beats his meat while his hot daughter pees on his balls. Nothing says pure class quite like a bit of incestuous watersports. Oriental Techniques in Pain and Pleasure, a later effort from the Princester, may not be his best, but by golly it's among his classiest.

Just to illustrate how classy this movie is, I'll be interspersing pics from the film with official photos of the 2011 Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The resemblance is so uncanny that I guarantee you won't be able to tell the difference.

The royal couple

Annie Sprinkle and George Payne

The "plot" revolves around an ancient Chinese manuscript that's somehow important. We're not told why it's important, but some dudes want it for some reason so it must be real important. These guys can't even read Chinese, yet they still want the manuscript. That's how important it is. It's so important that it gets casually mentioned 3, maybe even 4 times throughout the movie.

So, Annie Sprinkle somehow gets a hold of this manuscript and obviously gets raped as a result. What a classy way to open a movie. Annie's a classy lady in general. She was one of Zebedy Colt's faves and that guy has high standards for class. Adding to the classiness is the fact that the lead rapist is George Payne, the classiest guy in history. Payne here plays against type as a deranged misogynistic pervert - quite a stretch for his thespian skills. He even goes down on her during the rape. If only all rapists were that classy. This classy cunnilingus scene also shows us Annie's clit piercing, which she received onscreen during Phil Prince's previous masterclass in class, Kneel Before Me.

The blushing bride, accompanied by a pair of gentlemanly servants

Some porno slut and a couple of rapists

Sadly, the rape doesn't get Annie to reveal anything about the important manuscript that neither she, the rapists nor the viewer know anything about. In such a situation, the rules of etiquette dictate that she be forced to fist her brother, which she does with gusto and class. She even classilly licks his balls during the fisting. That's a fine lesson in class for all viewers - if you ever find yourself elbow-deep in your bro's butthole, it's only polite to tongue the scrotum a little. Manners cost nothing.

The gorgeous one-of-a-kind ring

The gorgeous one-of-a-kind ring

 A 15-inch dildo, on the other hand, will set you back a few bucks, but a little financial outlay is inevitable when your own fist is not a classy enough tool for anal-stretching. I say splash out on the Lexington Steele model. It's worth it. You can't put a price on class, certainly not when it comes to sibling sodomy. Annie agrees with me, quite enthusiastically in fact.

After a little live cock-and-ball torture which has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else that's come beforehand, the movie reaches a satisfying conclusion. By which I mean, it abruptly ends without warning or explanation. That's cool though, because this film isn't about making sense, it's about being classy. Making sense is for philistines and degenerates. You won't find any of those here. Just a solid, if unspectacular, hit of classy perviness.

Random members of the wedding party

Some serious cock-and-ball torture

24 Hours of Explicit Sex (1985)

Back when I lived in London, I worked with a lot of Brazilian guys and they were all relentless horndogs, constantly trying to bang anything with tits and a pulse. You could have asked any of these dudes what he was thinking about, at any time of the day, and the reply would almost always be either football or pussy or both. Thus, I'm lead to believe that Brazil is one seriously horny country, hence why vaginal waxing is named after it.

A typical Thursday afternoon in Brazil

No surprise then that, during the 1980s, around 70% of the films produced in Brazil were pornos. With Coffin Joe on a hiatus, director Jose Mojica Marins decided to go with the flow, ditch the horror and embrace the fun of zooming in his camera on penises entering vaginas. When in Rome and all that...

 I watched this without subtitles, but the plot is easy enough to follow. A bunch of horny dudes devise a competition to determine which of them is the alpha sex maniac and hole up in a beach house with a bunch of cock-hungry sluts for a day-long orgy. They also bring along a fruity gay Ron Jeremy lookalike to be the judge of their sexual prowess. As with your typical Brazilian orgy, we also get a talking parrot who commentates the sex scenes and a few conversations between a talking penis and a talking vagina. Ya know, the usual. And of course, there's the obligatory scene where a chick rips a massive fart while she's being done from behind. Every porno needs a good fart joke.

Money shots are plentiful and creative, my favourite being when a dude splooges directly onto the camera lens. It's a great moment, almost like the film itself is blessing the whole audience with a good facial. My skin didn't feel any healthier afterwards, but I still appreciate the sentiment.

So far modelled after Euro sexploitation, Jose Mojica Marins decided to push things a step further. His run-ins with the Brazilian censors had previously left several of his movies eviscerated and one movie outright banned. With newly relaxed censorship laws, it was time for revenge. And so it came  to pass that Brazil's cinema audiences finally got to see their first bestiality porn scene, when the vagina of a lady of lax morals met the lipstick prick of a German Shepard named Jack. She had an ass that no male could resist, whether human or canine. He was a suave fellow with a smooth coat, a prideful gait and puppy-dog eyes that would melt the hardest heart. Together, they made history. Frantic, lustful and oh-so-wrong history. Jack's performance was so grand that screenwriter Mario Lima would later declare him "the best actor in the movie". I don't disagree.

The happy couple.

Sadly, this special moment would later be tinged by tragedy. The female performer pocketed a hefty paycheck and no doubt popped over the border to Colombia, purchasing a mountain of uncut cocaine so enormous it would've lasted Keith Moon an entire weekend. Jack, however, died soon after, under suspicious circumstances, at the tender age of 5. Rumours spread that Jack's sudden fame had angered his owner, who poisoned him under the belief that the celebrity canine pornstar was having an affair with his wife. A promising career cut short before it had even begun.

Farewell, sweet prince.

Nevertheless, 24 Hours of Explicit Sex was Marins's biggest ever box-office hit, thus proving my theory that Brazilians are all dirty sexopaths. The groundbreaking bestiality scene opened the floodgates for Brazil's extreme porn scene that flourished in the following decades. The country later produced works like 2 Girls 1 Cup and 4 Girls Fingerpaint, easily the two most famous scat clips in history. They also gave us Human Snot Tissue, generally considered by the planet Earth's 7 snot fetishists to be the ultimate experience in snot porn. In recent times, they've also become the only country to combine bestiality with scat. Just to unnecessarily spell that out for you, that means hot nubile babes chowing down on animal excrement for your erotic viewing pleasure. Ain't the human race grand??

Jose Mojica Marins, hard at work.