Metal City - Hai Ina Ia Mai Ana Ka Puana

Bad is good. Except when it's bad for the wrong reasons. Then it is just bad.

Okay. So, I'm gonna slap down a few words for you turkeys on why I spend my miserable life chasing these rotten movies. I know they are no good. I was a cinema student for (deleted) number of years - I know my Coppola from my Copperart. I know my Kubrick from my House Brick. I know my Orson Wells from my Mork Calling Orson. I know my Warhol from my "Phwoar. A hole." So, I am not simply some scumbag degenerate with a filthy taste in perverse movies. Lordy, no. There are punishing academic reasons behind my love of trash - reasons that I will share with you.

I started with horror movies. They were, after all, readily available available. As the early 1980's video boom began to slowly ebb by the early to mid 1990's, a lot of debris remained after the smoke cleared. Wonderful, wonderful things - "The Incubus". "Silent Night, Deadly Night". "I Spit On Your Grave". "The Toxic Avenger". "Basket Case". Nasty films, all - yet accessible. You could stride confidentally down to your local Mum and Dad video library, slap your three dollars on the counter, and walk away with a feast of carnage - a litany of human excess at your fingertips. And, as I grew up and devoured every title I could find in the horror section, I began to realise why I loved these things. People would ask me what the fuck was my problem, and why was I such a sick, demented weirdo - and for the longest time, I had no answer. It took hindsight to give me the answer. And the answer was this - they WEREN'T HOLLYWOOD.

I know what you're thinking. 'Here we go. Another fucking art student whining about Big Bad Hollywood and the movie machine. Heard it before.' And you'd be right! I'm NOT going to say anything new. I'm just going to justify myself. It's about time.

They weren't Hollywood. By 15 or 16, I was already sick of American cinema - especially the fucking mainstream 'blockbuster'-style movies that were being forced down my gullet at every opportunity. And it wasn't because of some high-falutin' future lefty art student bullshit - it was simply because they were all *the same*, and they were all *boring*. As ridiculous as Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning was - and it WAS... it had soul. It looked like it was made by people. Stupid people, yes. But people. The film looked handmade - the reasons for the film's creation were irrelevant. I'm not stupid. We all know that Jason existed to make moolah for fat guys with pinkie rings.

And then, as the Internet took off, and my dorkiness found a new way to escalate towards unheard of heights, the joys of overseas ordering became available. Finally, I was able to access all kinds of degenerate sleaze - grindhouse movies, roughies, ghoulies, gore movies, eurotrash.. a world of demented pleasures beckoned towards me with a manicured, vermillion fingernail - an innocent flower of a smile playing across the lips. And, being an easily led sort of guy, I followed.

What a world it was. Herschell Gordon Lewis's 'The Gore Gore Girls' was the sleaziest, trashiest, filthiest thing I'd ever seen - and I loved it.

I loved the insanity - the raw, screaming fury of these films. They were assaultive and vicious - striking out of the screen at the viewer in an attempt to shock, repulse, confuse, and bewilder. They embodied a savagery that was numbing - and as I began plowing through the cannibal subgenre, which reached an apex of some sort with the unforgettable 'Cannibal Holocaust', I began to upset and disturb myself. Why? Why was I watching these horrible, repulsive things? Why was I so fascinated by such odious, exploitative images?

Because they were real. The low budgets of most of these films meant that the director could do whatever the hell he wanted - as brutal as he felt it should be. They were like diary entries - bleak, nihilistic expressions of time and place by men and women who had no interest in genre, narrative, culture, boundaries, or taste. They did what they liked, when they liked. And if you didn't like it, fuck you.

I'll tell you something for free, girls and boys - there's a lot more truth in a H.G Lewis gore movie, or a Findlay roughie, or a $10,000 Warhol movie than in the combined output of the mainstream American cinema over the past 20 years. And at the moment, truth is the most valuable - and scarcest - commodity in the world.

And THAT is why I'll take 'The Kiss Of Her Flesh' over 'The Matrix' every time.

Posted by David at February 11, 2004 10:48 PM | TrackBack