L.A. Zombie (2010)

With the recent decease of the Reverend Fred Phelps, I thought I'd honour his passing by reviewing some gay porn. It's what he would have wanted, I think. Perhaps while you're reading, you could also pay your respects by mentally picturing him in a massive gangbang with loads of muscular, hung studs. An image I'm sure the man himself thought about on many an occasion...

I must admit, I was a little disappointed with Bruce La Bruce's Otto Or Up With Dead People. Sure, it had plenty of microbudget creativity, but it just didn't deliver on the gay zombie front. When I hear a movie described as "ya know, that gay zombie porno", I expect a throbbing, pulsating bonerload of gay zombie porn. Scene after scene of sweaty gay zombie on gay zombie bumlovin'. Well-hung gay zombies cornholing pert gay zombie ass, slobbering gay zombie tonguelove all over gay zombie ballsacks, slurping out gay zombie shitholes and spurting massive loads of warm gay zombie ejaculate all over silky-smooth, immaculately waxed gay zombie chests and gay zombie eyebrows. I have standards, and Otto sadly didn't meet them. Fortunately, Brucey well and truly rectumfied this gay zombie shortage with his follow-up feature, LA Zombie, a movie that fully deserves the title of "Ya know, that gay zombie porno".

It's important that I state upfront that I'm not the target audience for this movie, because I'm not gay. Seriously. Not even a little. My fashion tastes are rubbish, I don't own any skin moisturising products, I'm a terrible dancer and I didn't get one single erection when I watched Fight Club. Given the choice between eating a chocolate icecream and having a lengthy bout of frantic anal sex with another man, I'd choose the icecream everytime. And I don't even like chocolate icecream all that much. If a male friend of mine wore a trendy new pair of pants, I probably wouldn't notice, and even if I did, I'd just say something like, "Hey bro, cool pants." I definitely wouldn't say, "Hey bro, cool pants. The tightness in the crotch really accentuates your nicely-sized and highly desirable penis which, incidentally, I'd love to have thrusting vigorously inside my aching man-minge over and over until it gushed baby yoghurt all over my lower back." Nope. Wouldn't even think something like that. That's how not gay I am.

So now that any doubts about my sexuality are out of the way, it's time to press Play and watch a bunch of hot, big-dicked studs fuck the fucking shit out of each other. FUCK YEAH!!!

Our undead homo poonfest begins with the main character, hereafter referred to as "Z", wandering out of the ocean, looking all zombieish and with his dead gay johnson flappin' around in the waves. He hitchhikes naked for a while, as gay zombies tend to do, before being picked up by a handsome young man. In fact, almost everyone in the movie is a good-looking male - a fairly sensible casting choice for any gay porno. Anyhoo, a car crash ensues which leaves the driver splattered all over the road and Z with an aching death-boner in need of a warm hole to be filled. He has sex with the dead guy's intestines for a while, which brings him back to life. Not particularly plausible, but I applaud any movie that prizes gutfucking above medical accuracy. The two dudes have some more sex (this time in the bumbum instead of the abdomen) before Z pulls out and delivers a massive bloodspunk facial from his horned cock. Even for a straight dude, this is already way more badass than that fancy-schmancy Pirates crap.

The movie is, like most porn, structured around the sex scenes, only with a gay zombie twist. We get a series of unrelated events where Z happens across tragedy and raises the deceased with his unholy hard-on. Death lurks behind every corner, ready to fucked back into the light.

There's enough variety to keep things interesting though.

Take the scene where a dead gangbanger is dumped out of a car with a gunshot in his forehead and Z does his Lazarus thing by rubbing his dick on the bullet hole. Original, to say the least. This moment also highlights what a low-budget endeavour this is. A higher budget would have been nice for better FX, to give us viewers the full pleasure of a forceful skullfucking. I guess, even among gay porn enthusiasts, not many people want to chip in funds to see some dude in zombie makeup pounding his fuckin' hardon into another dude's gaping cranial wound. That's the tough thing about being a filmmaker - balancing cash against pure artist vision; making allowances and on-the-spot aesthetic judgements; forever being assaulted with difficult questions like "Does my movie really require graphic closeups of a zombie splunging his fuckstick into a corpse's trephinated skull-pussy?" All the greats - Murnau, Welles, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Coppolla, Spielberg, Nguyen, etc - have had to ask themselves this exact thing at some point in their career.

Given the cheapness of the production, it all looks quite nice though. Hard to judge porn on its technical qualities really. I'm not gonna pretend the acting is Oscar standard, but I can say that the main actor, Francois Sagat, is totally hot. I'd blow him. Not in a gay way obviously. But after a few beers, if he asked nicely, I'd tentatively give his penis a squeeze and delicately wrap my lips around his glans (wiping away any precum first, coz I'm not gay), then rub the tip of my tongue over his frenulum and corona while jerking his shaft (only lightly though, coz I'm not gay), cupping his scrotum in my other hand and tickling his perineum with my index finger, slowly moving it further back to softly probe his anus (only up to the first knuckle though, coz I'm not gay), while I finally engulf his entire length and work it with hand and mouth while massaging his swollen testicles, until he reaches exploding point and jets man-seed in my hair (obviously I wouldn't swallow any, coz I'm not gay). That's as far as I'd go though. Just a totally straight dude giving some other dude a non-gay blowjob for being especially handsome. Ain't nothin' gay about that. Hell, I'm so goddamn hetero, I'd probably pretend it was a woman's dick in my mouth.

An extra layer of interest is added to the film by reality

becoming skewed as the perspective flips between Z being a zombie and being a homeless bum. Is he an actual undead saviour with a life-giving boner, or just a mentally ill tramp? The latter option adds an extra layer of discomfort, purely due to the scene where Z gets his asshole tongued out. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally cool with analingus. I thought the mass ass-eating orgy was the finest scene in Sorority Sex Kittens 4. Even for fellas that love fellas, if you've got some fresh-faced twink who's just had a shower, then sure, go wild. Part those silky smooth ass cheeks and give his pristine, pink, puckering hole a tongueload of passionate loving. But a scungy homeless guy? How's that erotic in any way? You yank down his piss-stained pants that haven't been changed in a month. You stretch apart his grimy buttcheeks. Congealed anus-sweat causes his ass hairs to cling together, with dried ancient dregs of unwiped shit caught in them, like flies trapped in a spider web. You part the strands and dig your tongue inside. Slobbering saliva causes the dags of feces to moisten and smear against your cheeks and mouth, as wafts of unwashed rectal stench assaults your nostrils, so thick you can feel it in the back of your throat. Anyone turned on by that? Cause I'm not. And I'm a pretty weird guy.

On the other hand, this zombie/bum dichotomy does add depth and provide the movie with its overarching theme, which is alienation. Regardless of which he is, Z goes about his business deliberately ignored or abhorred by everyone. The freeform, non-plot driven porno style gives the whole thing an almost existentialist slant; the lonesome wandering of the outcast, trying to understand an alien world. This is outsider art about the plight of the outsider. Director Bruce LaBruce is an anomaly among gay filmmakers, in that he produces queer art that rejects standard gay culture as being no less normative than any paradigmatic exemplar of the hetero status quo. He uses the queer film template not to conform the culture to the norm, but to be anarchic within it; gay porn designed to be rejected by the gay community. From the Nazi regalia of Raspberry Reich, to the anal amputee stump-fucking of Hustler White, to the zombie porn here, to the zombie terrorist porn of his photographic art, LaBruce is the black sheep of the gay world, relatively unacknowledged even among the most liberal and accepting. This is quite special considering the GayVN happily handed a lifetime achievement award to Roger Earl, director of the piss-and-rape gay classick Born to Raise Hell. In a world where those desperately trying to stand out from the crowd are starting to become the biggest crowd of all, LaBruce makes being a genuine oddity seem natural and effortless.

I can't help but think that LA Zombie is an intentionally

grotesque satire on the whole porn industry. Watching porn that you're not turned on by really shows how ludicrous it all is. At the end of the day, zombie makeup, fake gore and blood facials ain't that much different to excessive eye-shadow, silicon tits and money shots. But more than that, it drives home how silly-looking sex itself is. All the tangled limbs and sweat and moaning and shuddering and protein mess. Take off your libido goggles and the whole thing is quite ridiculous. In a way, that's what makes good sex so awesome, because you don't care about looking ridiculous. It's where you can leave behind all your worries, forget about the outside world and truly live in the now. An orgasm is where you shed your entire personality and momentarily become a being of pure sensation. Even zombies deserve that feeling.

Bruce LaBruce: Artist. Iconoclast. Pervert. Legend.

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.