The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
BDSM is an acronym for Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism and refers to the sexual enjoyment of these. BDSM is an alternative sexual practice and has sizeable community followings in most parts of the world.
On screen, BDSM tends to be treated as a monobloc – little more than people dressed in fetish gear and wielding whips – whereas in practice it is dozens of differing preferences. These can range between a simple pair of handcuffs and blindfolds enjoyed by a vanilla partnership to hooks, needles and blood-drawing or a full-blown master/mistress and slave relationship. The BDSM community is strict about enforcing a code of mutual consent and safety – anything that does not involve a consenting party is covered under Films About Sadism and Torture.
Most screen portrayals of BDSM are negative. It is either regarded as the preferences of psychos and serial killers, or the secret perversions of various villains. There is the frequent theme that those who indulge are entering into a dangerous territory that can go too far and is likely to cause psychological unbalance. That has changed somewhat in recent years with the mainstreaming of BDSM with Fifty Shades of Grey (2015).
It is worth also noting that the Hellraiser (1987) featuring demons that offer exquisite torture was inspired by Clive Barker’s experiences in gay BDSM clubs.
The big screen version of the 1960s tv series and Charles Addams’ cartoons is a highly enjoyable Hollywood Halloween Party, a chance for name actors to put on costume and ape life with a ghoulish, mildly perverse, moderately subversive spin
The big screen Addams Family films ended with the death of Raul Julia. Subsequently the rights were sold to Saban Entertainment who made this cheap, terrible direct-to-video film with a new cast
Sequel to the live-action Addams Family film that reunites the same cast who fine-tune their roles, while the black comedy has an even more barbed bite second time around
A modern noir-styled thriller about a man who descends into the underground world of fetish. This nether stirs a sufficiently torrid mix nor makes its plot very clear
This is one of the most twisted films I have ever come across in recent years in which a couple have their home invaded by a clown who makes them into his sexual playthings
An imprisonment thriller with a difference, a work of Japanese BDSM erotica where a young teacher is imprisoned and erotically tortured. Quite out there and different to anything Western erotica turns out
From the extraordinary and underrated Scooter McCrae, a dark and very disturbing film about the development of a sex robot for men who like to beat and abuse women
A Basic Instinct-inspired erotic thriller where Shannen Doherty gets into light bondage and attracts the attentions of a killer. A hypocritical film that is predicated on erotic tease then condemns it as disturbed behaviour
Another of Charles Band’s doll horror films a la the Puppetmaster and Demonic Toys films. Here Band goes totally gonzo and makes one of the strangest films of his entire career
One of the key David Lynch films in which cleancut college kid Kyle MacLachlan finds a severed human ear and is drawn into a dark underworld of S&M lorded over by a maniacally deranged Dennis Hopper
The fairytale about a multiple wife murderer is given the lavish costume drama treatment. Featuring Richard Burton at the height of his Bad Actor period in a series of increasingly absurd softcore romps
A Marquis de Sade biopic that was problem ridden behind the scenes. The result is an incoherent mess on screen that feels as though it is being handled by several different directors, each with a different idea about what is happening
Corporate thriller in which Connie Nielsen discovers an underground of snuff S&M. This develops a compulsive hold but its pullback to kneejerk moralism is dissatisfying
Probably the worst film adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this opts for a trashy sordidness with a lunatically over-the-top Anthony Perkins in the centre of the show
A series of short film interpretations of the Frankenstein story, with interpretations ranging from BDSM to kung fu and modern police procedural
After the cult success of Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs and most of the principals returned with a further H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. More outrageously over-the-top splatter effects but this is somewhat the lesser
A film based on true-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy. This adheres to the facts for the most part but is also one of the dullest of the mid-00s spate of serial killer biopics
Mike Flanagan tackles one of the most difficult Stephen King books from a logistics perspective – the book has only one character who is handcuffed naked to a bed for the duration – but pulls it off with great faithfulness
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
Fifth and best of Hellraiser sequels after Clive Barker bowed out. Scott Derrickson made his directorial debut here and infuses the series with some of the wild imagery and perverse darkness that Barker gave the original
One of the key films upon which the Takashi Miike cult is based. Miike takes a nominal Yakuza plot based on a manga where he pushes the sadism and ultra-violence to a mind-boggling extreme
Fascinatingly perverse film directed and written by its star French actress Marina de Van who plays a woman who becomes obsessed with mutilating her own skin
James Franco co-directs and stars as a sinister psychiatrist in a 19th Century asylum who subjects patients to drugs and mind control so they can play in elaborate orgies. Supposedly based on a true-life incident
A quite good thriller where Dolph Lundgren plays a detective who is drawn into a underworld of sadomasochistic sex during the hunt for a female serial killer
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
The original, Roger Corman’s zero budget film about a killer plant is an hilarious black comedy that has become a cult favourite and remains his most well remembered film
Roger Corman’s no-budget comedy about a killer plant is remade as a multi-million dollar musical with top-drawer effects. Missing is the original’s black comedy but this has many appealingly eccentric delights of its own
Low-budget film about a demon slaughtering a woman’s ex’s. Despite being made by industry professionals, this looks like an amateur-made film
A biopic of the Marquis de Sade that is not uninteresting but suffers from being produced by Roger Corman on one of his usual B-budgets
One of the better copies of Basic Instinct with detective Ellen Barkin being tempted as she investigates a serial killer who is targeting women who were involved with a lesbian call girl
Drawing very clear influence from Clive Barker and Saw, this is a delve down into perverse fetish, gateways to Hell and bizarre hallucinations. After watching the film through twice, I still remain confused to what it was all about
Brilliantly twisted Norwegian film in the vein of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and The Tenant about a man whose dealings with two girls living in the apartment next door starts blurring and shifting into some genuinely surreal and out there, not to mention perverse, territory
Another example of Tobe Hooper’s slight into mediocrity in the 1990s, an erotic thriller that features a madly overacting Robert Englund as the Marquis de Sade and an innocent being corrupted by his descendant in the modern day
Michael Winner makes a prequel to the classic, multiply filmed psychological ghost story The Turn of the Screw but erases all the ambiguity in his clodding and unsubtle direction
An abduction thriller that draws much influence from The Silence of the Lambs with Adrien Brody as a smooth criminal genius manipulating his interrogator
Thriller in which a girl is abducted and imprisoned by a mad tattooist who wants to use her body as a work of art
An interestingly strange film with Mia Wasikowska as a disturbed hooker and Christopher Abbott as a man who plans to kill her
Biopic about William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman This covers the key aspects of Marston’s life and how it influenced the comic-book and delves into the highly unconventional lifestyle he led in a polyamorous relationship and exploring BDSM
A second film from John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame where Mitchell sets out to chart different flavours of sexuality in the 00s and does so with sometimes funny, othertimes outrageous effect. Included here for a heroine whose orgasm has the ability to cause power fluctuations
A hardcore and irredeemably nasty film, this has the aesthetic of a snuff movie and features lots of scenes of victims tortured and vomiting
An incredibly refreshing and original psycho film, made with a furious energy. Every bit of the way it is constantly messing with us and turning everything we think is going on on its head
Brazil’s Jose Mojica Marins became a cult figure for his Coffin Joe films; this is an anthology sold under the Coffin Joe banner. Without the Coffin Joe presence, all we have is a series of not very well directed pieces that linger on perversity, although the final segment does stand out memorably
80s outrage rocker Dee Snider writes and stars in this horror film where he plays a freakish serial killer who is demonised by parents
True crime film from Matthew Bright based on serial killer Ted Bundy. Bright remains very faithful to the details of the case and he and star Michael Reilly Burke delve into the psychopathic mindset with considerable effect
One of the darkest films Clint Eastwood ever made where he is a detective who becomes tempted by the world of BDSM during his pursuit of a serial killer
Shinya Tsukamoto returns to the repressions of his earlier Tetsuo: The Iron Man in this frenetic, ultra-violent work about a downtrodden salaryman who reconnects with life by allowing himself to be beaten up in the boxing ring. This feels like Raging Bull remade by David Cronenberg
Ken Russell’s adaptation of The Who’s hit album is filled with gloriously mad, glitter rock excess and wildly over the top acting in the ways that only Russell ever managed
A poorly made Australian copy of Basic Instinct where a detective and his partner are investigated a serial killer. All the heated sexuality comes out tamely
Absolutely fascinating David Cronenberg film that swims with a heady mix of ideas that blur tv, reality and the human body
The always interesting David Blyth returns to screens with what feels like an amateur remake of Nicolas Roeg’s Track 29 that becomes a confused and plotless mishmash of hallucinations, random BDSM scenarios and shock effects