Dangerous Films

This week end London was hosting two very different events.
Notting Hill Carnival doesn't need any introduction but maybe some of you aren't familiar with Fright Fest.
Originally based at the world famous London grindhouse cinema The Prince Charles, the festival quickly grew and moved to The Empire Cinema and is screening some of the best horror, bizzare films since 2000.


This year has seen 1 movie taking the spotlight. "A Serbian Film" was finally pulled from Fright Fest after the British Board of Film Classification demanded 49 individual cuts that amount to nearly four minutes of screen time.

After spending a few hours online reading blogs, users comments, i can safely say A Serbian Film seems to be the most disturbing, disgusting and dangerous film ever made.
I still don't understand why someone would try to break every single human taboos in 1 film and mentally scar its viewers. (the director justified the worst scene in his movie saying it is a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government.
I thought it would be interesting to look in the past and try to figure out which other films left a mark on the last 40 years.
How the hell did we go from Dracula to Irreversible, Funny Games or 2 girls 1 cup?


Even if the 70's were the golden age for slashers (Halloween, Friday the 13th etc.), porn horror (Forced Entry) and exploitation flicks from people like Tobe Hopper or Wes Craven, Dario Argento and Mario Bava's Giallos, it was also during that decade that another italian director left us with his swan song.



Hailed by some, hated by others, banned and cut in many countries, Salo showcases in extreme detail the lack of morality of fascists, exploring the themes of political corruption, abuse of power, sadism, sexual perversion.
It was released in 1975, shortly after Pasolini's murder. (he was run over several times with his own car and the even if it is still not completely explained, denouncing the fascists and being a notorious homosexual/communist should be enough to get killed by a crazy person in Italy).


In the 80's another italian dude managed to come up with something gross, Cannibal Holocaust, famous for its on-screen killings of animals and the arrest of the director, charged with killing his actors (had signed contracts with him and the producers ensuring that they would not appear in any type of media, motion pictures, or commercials for one year after the film's release). Others not to be missed in that decade (or to absolutely miss, depending on where you stand) are Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Threads "a 1984 television docudrama depicting the effects of a nuclear war on the United Kingdom and its aftermath".


But one of the heights of the 80's has to be 1987's Nekromantic, the sickening excursion into the twisted life of a necrophiliac couple (hands down one of the best horror poster ever made).

Japanese cult director Takashi Miike may have given us some of the most gore and disturbing scenes in modern cinema with Visitor Q, Dead or Alive or Audition and its haunting kirikirikiri, it all started with Men Behind the sun.


A film about WWII biological weapons experimentation camp Unit 731.
Like Mengele did for the Nazis, the “doctors” and biological inventors at 731 used inmates to conduct the kind of pointless and creatively disgusting experiments only insane concentration camp does seem capable of.
As a result the director became vilified, investigated in his home country of China and received death threats.


Flower of Flesh and Blood, the second video of the Guinea Pig serie, is supposed to be based on an actual snuff film sent to the director Hideshi Hino by a crazed fan.
After Flowers of Flesh and Blood was released in the U.S., actor Charlie Sheen saw it one night in the early 90s, and became absolutely convinced it was a genuine snuff film (of a samurai serial-killer no less). The effects are that convincing. Granted, an early 90s Charlie Sheen was probably not the clearest thinker on earth, but at least he took time out from what Sheen was doing in the early 90s to watch a horror flick, flip out, and bring it to the FBI.


Finally, in the snuff register, August underground Mordum seemed to be considered as a "malignant seething hatework" or simply "the sickest film ever made". Before A Serbian film came out.
The fact that the director used to work as a special effects creator and considers his movie more like a showreel doesn't seem to calm the hatred from traumatised spectators.
I definitely think the world would be a better place without it existing. said someone on a forum.