But I'm going old school here. Some of you have heard of Subconscious Cruelty. Others have not. But if you have seen this visual mind fuck, you know where I'm going.
So introducing yet another ongoing feature, I bring you WTF Films. Films that are waaaaaaaaay over the edge when it comes to extreme underground horror.
Directed by Karim Hussain and produced by Mitch Davis, Subconscious Cruelty isn't an actual story driven movie but more of vignettes that make you question your morality. Truly one of the first shock movies of the 90s and early 00's, its there to obliterate your senses with scenes of full frontal nudity, deviant sex, masturbation, cannibalism and religious defamation.
Plus there is lots of bodily fluids oozing all over the fuckin place. Wanna see what I mean? Check out the clips below (OBVIOUSLY NSFW!)
Here is a weird Japanese trailer of the flick. Hahaha. I like how they compare it to David Lynch and David Cronenberg. It's a little more extreme than that dude.
Here's a couple of scenes of nekkidness and cannibalism and religious fuckedupness.
Not sick yet? Wanna see what they came up with for a birth of a baby scene No? C'mon yeah you do you fucked up mental case you.
I'm not saying it's good or bad, but you do start to wince quite a bit after watching the whole 92 min film. I mean even the clips above are quite gruesome and sickening. Sure it could all be artsy fartsy and avante garde. Showing tons of taboo shit in a film while narrating with Bad Religion like lyrics may be "intellectual" and metaphoric to some. Others will find it just a pile of heaping, smelly shit.
Who knows what the hell Karim Hussain was smoking back in 99. All I know is I remember this film for pushing me beyond what I could take visually in a "horror" film. Insano Steve and I always tried to go over the edge with our horror resume by searching and eventually seeing the supposed craziest, weirdest most fucked up shit possible.
Subconscious Cruelty was one of the first and most memorable.
So it's important I get on the bandwagon and watch this new trend in it's infancy.
Hence, I watched a Canadian horror machine called End of the Line, a very awesome flick that will probably be the instigator of this new sub genre's progeny.
2 minutes in I was flinching from some quick scares. Seriously. I actually got scared and I don't scare easily. When you're a jaded viewer like me, this is very hard to do.
But End of the Line, opens freakin strong, blasts some WTF, adds in some serious bloody splatter and ends with a whimper (it's only drawback).
End of the Line is high velocity fun, stopping at the right moments for scares and gore that it's destined to be a cult classic for the 21st century.
In this unsettling and creepy thriller, Karen (Ilona Elkin), a young nurse who works in a psychiatric ward, boards the last subway train of the night only to have it stop suddenly in the middle of the tunnel. As those around her are brutally murdered, Karen and a handful of survivors must face supernatural forces, homicidal religious cult members, as well as their own fears and suspicions of Armageddon, in order to survive.
Awesome Review-O-Matic
The quick cut to something frightening is a staple in horror films. And the first half hour is filled with suspense and goosbumpy madness. You know director Maurice Devereaux wants you to jump out of your seat by creating some quick glimpses of the scary. And he does this by establishing the life of our main final girl Karen.
But it's the train that's the other "character" we have to get use to in this vague Canadian city that has some a metro. If you live in a city with a subway or transit system and have taken the train late at night, there's a little bit of you that's screaming "I'm fuckin scared".
End of the Line taps that piece and doesn't let go.
The train stops mid-ride and we get intro-ed into the many passengers who will turn out to be our Scooby Gang vent on survival.
We've got:
1.) Final Girl Karen 2.) Hipster Mike 3.) Jock Neil 4.) Guido Mike 5.) Virgin Sarah 6.) Raver Julie
It's an eclectic group of ordinaries that now have to be all Kill Bill in order to survive the night. Nobody stuck out as somebody I could root for and cared about. They were all designed to be slightly lovable and turned into cult corpse fodder.
Oh. Did I mention there was a killer cult from God on this train too?
And that's the middle of the movie. After the cult gets a message on their beepers (they still have those?) they get all slaughtery and start attacking and killing everybody on the train.
The scenes are utterly brutal, as they go all stabby with their crucifixes that turn into knives.
As our gang runs like hell, they meet up with some transit workers and work out a plan and explain motive and yada yada yada.
The cult members (in matching uni's) are a cross between a David Koresh imitation and some Christian conservative, Republican carnies. The brainwashed citizens are insane as they believe all should be "saved". The kill scenes are savage. Some OJ multiple stabs, throat slashing, a sword head decap and 1 that even made me cringe.
The cult take one of their own and multiple stab a 3rd trimester pregnant woman and her husband. The scene concludes as they lay the newborn with their parents, with the infant semi moving. Wow. On the fucked up scale, that went off the charts.
More chasing and huffing and puffing and a few more axes to the head. Even kids went all mental and tried to kill our scoobies. Wow, there was more kid and infant-cide in this flick than I thought I would see.
The negatives are clearly nitpicks but took away that 1 extra spinkick that would have made this into the spinkick HOF. The movie's premise hinted on the supernatural, then steered me towards some cult crazies then went back to demonology. I wasn't sure if the vagueness of it all was thought bubbled intentional.
I wanted it to stick with just being about some fundamentalist cult crazies but it went waaaaay off which kinda made me say "Huh?". This is further amplified by the ending which was a blah huh.
Add in the fact that our final girl was sorta hot, kicked some ass in the end but her personality needed a total recall. I mean all the characters did.
One of the evil cult baddies was a sexual pervert serial semi rapist. He added some ha ha's and some evilness but just didn't look menacing to make me want this revenge served cold.
End of the Line is the Canadian version of The Midnight Meat Train (which took home the #2 spot on my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2008). As I'm not sure what year this falls into (06 or 07 or 08) it would have definitely made my top 10.
The vagueness of the chaos that erupted and characterology was my only double fault but everything else was super awesome terrific.
I am putting End of the Line posthumously as one of the top horror films of 2008 or 07 or 06.
Now stand clear of the closing doors.
Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)
Multiple Stabbings Throat slashing Sword Head decap (gorehounds rejoice!) Pregnant woman stabbings Infanti-cide Kid-icide Ax to the head Hammer to the head Lip biting Knife to the head
Nude-ipedia (because you like boobies)
Some boobie cleavage
WTF moment
Infant-cide
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
I forgot to mention that the Canadians are rivalring the French, Aussies and Brits in ushering the new wave of kick ass horror. Maurice Deveraux also directed the straight to DVD Slashers (a reality game show horror movie) which I vaguely remember watching.
It'll be interesting to see what he does next.
If movies like End of the Line is whats to come from him, I say "All Aboard!"
He's back after a 16 year hiatus and returns with a blood pumping, pulsating, throbbing (pun so intended) and wacko of a movie called Bad Biology.
Plot-o-matic tells us the story is about a Jennifer, a woman born with 8 clitorises?!? who has the sexual appetite of a porn star on acid. She kills any man she sleeps with. Batz is a dude with a John Holmes-ian johnson who is totally off his rocker. They meet up.
See the trailer below (NOT SAFE FOR FUCKIN WORK!!!)
Did you just watch that? Seriously, aren't you totally spazzing right now?
Basket Case is one my all time favorite cult movies. Such a classic. Reminisce and watch the trailer again.
I've documented how my horror persona "the jaded viewer" came to be. With posts about the 5 Horror Movies that shaped my horror psyche and 5 websites that inspired this site, its a little glimpse into how the jaded viewer became jaded. The fact that I did a bit of horror trading back in the day has indeed made me witness some of the worst the best and the WTF of horror films.
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