Last year at this time, I told DM readers about the impending limited Blu-ray release of a slasher film set during the Thanksgiving holiday, Blood Rage (which, incidentally, will soon be reissued in a standard edition). In that post, I also mentioned another Thanksgiving-themed horror picture, Home Sweet Home (1981).

Home Sweet Home stars Jake Steinfeld as homicidal maniac Jay Jones, an escaped mental patient, convicted for killing his parents. Steinfeld will be familiar to many as the fitness guru behind the “Body by Jake” brand of books, TV shows, etc. He even has his own catchphrase: “Don’t quit!”
 

 
Like so many other horror movies from the era, Home Sweet Home incorporates elements from John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), the most obvious aspect being the holiday setting. As far as I can tell (and I know our dear readers will correct me if I’m wrong), this is the first horror picture to take place during Thanksgiving. It’s also one of the few slasher films directed by a woman; in this case, one Nettie Peña.
 

 
When we first lay eyes on Steinfeld/Jones he’s about to strangle a guy sitting in his station wagon. After he kills the dude, Jones steals the wagon, and we then watch him inject PCP into his tongue—! Moments later, he’s running over an elderly woman. We’re now but four minutes into Home Sweet Home.
 

 

 

 
You’d think with this beginning you’d be in for a wild ride, but as is often the case with exploitation cinema, what’s initially implied isn’t always the way things go. Instead, the picture settles into a more stable pace, with Jones periodically killing innocent people and laughing maniacally every time he offs someone. Eventually, Jones focuses on terrorizing a group of friends and family who have assembled for Thanksgiving dinner. You might presume he targets them as part of some jealous rage because he has no family of his own (he’s got “Home Sweet Home” tattooed on his hand), but who knows—his motive is never even mentioned in the film.
 

 
Aside from Steinfeld, the one to watch in this cast of characters is a young man that lives at the house where the party is taking place. You can’t miss him; for the entire movie, he walks around playing guitar with a portable amplifier strapped to his back, merrily annoying everyone within earshot. And he has the greatest name: “Mistake.” It’s not even apparent that’s his name until the closing credits, as everyone calls him “Stake,” for short. Oh, and he’s wearing whiteface the whole time. I guess he likes KISS?
 

 
Home Sweet Home largely alternates between goofy and scary, though the mood isn’t always predictable. One aspect of B-movies I love is the established tone can flip on a dime—anything is possible. The film does not disappoint in that regard. Take the scene in which Jones holds a knife to the throat of one of the female guests and Stake pleads with the madman to “take me instead.” The moment is surprisingly touching, but it’s also unnerving, as we know by now that Jones is probably going to kill them both anyway. As Stake whimpers while awaiting certain death, there is actual sadness for the dumb kid in whiteface. Home Sweet Home also has its share of striking images, which at times appear for seemingly no other reason than to shock the viewer.
 
More after the jump…

Picture from Needles and Sins.
 
Well, it feels like quite a while since we’ve had a genuine “ban this filth” furore kicked up over a horror film in the UK. Moral panic over celluloid work is something the British do very well - and not just the infamous Video (Nasties) Recording Act of 1984, but also the public and private reactions to films such as Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Child’s Play 3, The Exorcist, Visions of Ecstasy and more. Now there’s a new film to be added to that list, or if you will sown on to the end of the chain. The British Board of Film Classifications (the BBFC) has taken the decision to place an outright ban on director Tom Six’s soon-to-be-not-released Human Centipede II (Full Sequence).

According to the BBFC’s website, here are the reasons for the ban:

*Spoilers Alert!*

The principal focus of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is the sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, and murder of his naked victims. Examples of this include a scene early in the film in which he masturbates whilst he watches a DVD of the original Human Centipede film, with sandpaper wrapped around his penis, and a sequence later in the film in which he becomes aroused at the sight of the members of the ‘centipede’ being forced to defecate into one another’s mouths, culminating in sight of the man wrapping barbed wire around his penis and raping the woman at the rear of the ‘centipede’. There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience. There is a strong focus throughout on the link between sexual arousal and sexual violence and a clear association between pain, perversity and sexual pleasure. It is the Board’s conclusion that the explicit presentation of the central character’s obsessive sexually violent fantasies is in breach of its Classification Guidelines and poses a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers.

 
I saw Human Centipede (First Sequence) at the cinema, and enjoyed it a lot (it was in fact a first date, and we are still very much together). While I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was a classic, it was well made, delivered some good scares (mostly centred around the excellent, unhinged performance by Dieter Laser as herr doktor, above) and it wasn’t as gory as I was expecting. The horror did indeed come from the central idea, a rare feat in today’s saturated, torture-porn market. While last year’s A Serbian Film featured some very heavy sexual violence, and was heavily cut by the BBFC, it still played in cinemas and on DVD systems across the land. It seems that mere graphic sexual violence is not enough to get a film banned, it is indeed about the film maker’s intent. And herein lies the problem.

Personally I do not believe in the power of prohibition, and feel particularly irked by the thought that there are a group of people somewhere making decisions on what I can and cannot watch without knowing a single thing about me (and yet assuming the worst about my character). What is the point in this day and age when uncut versions of pretty much anything can be obtained at the click of a mouse? However, I also know how the horror industry works, and absolutely any whiff of scandal that can be created must be exploited for maximum exposure. Human Centipede II (Final Sequence) was shot in England, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that director Tom Six knew the BBFC guidelines and decided to deliberately flout them. The UK has a relatively small market but a powerful media presence, and let’s face it, the film will get a hell of a lot more column inches now than it would have otherwise. For a series of horror films based on a truly disturbing central idea, getting one banned is a masterstroke. Because no amount of onscreen depravity will ever match up to the dark fantasies we create in our heads when imaging how bad a banned film might be.

Writing this post (which I wouldn’t have done were it not for the ban) I decided to look up the trailer for HC2FS, and was rather dismayed at the result. It’s all going a bit Von Trier for my liking - that is when a director’s ego and persona becomes much larger, and more of a focal point, than the actual work they are creating and promoting. Thus bad film making can be excused through a cult of personality. And before any fan people jump on me for that statement, it’s acknowledged that Von Trier has used his own persona, and people’s perception of it, to break his films out of the Danish art market and on to the international stage. It’s not a crime per se, but it still pisses me off, especially if the directors are just not as interesting as they think they are, as is the case here. So, principle photography and at least the first edit of HS2:FS must be ready for the BBFC to pass a judgement, but when it comes to trailers all the public can we see is this rather self-indulgent and poorly executed “personality director” clip. Is this supposed to brew disturbing images in my mind and make me want to see the new film? Sorry Tom Six, but it doesn’t. It bores me and makes me want to see it less: 
 

 
Thanks to Keith Jukes for the headline!