The Insect Who Dreamt He Was A Man

I would say that in general, film remakes are a lazy bag of wank that are made as cash-ins on the fame and success of the superior original. I could rattle off the ones that I hate and why but really, what's the point when we all know which they are and the rage would only result in me rupturing something and shitting blood. However on principal I'm not against the idea of somebody doing a film again so long as there's an actual creative reason for doing it- some Hollywood Executive needing a quick buck to pay off a pimp whose whore they've just murdered is an example of a non-creative reason. However there's surely no denying the fun of something like A Fistful of Dollars which took Yojimbo's idea of a Samaria gang war and then turned into a western starring Clint Eastwood. In fact, ignoring the genre switch, I can't think of a single film that couldn't be improved by having Clint Eastwood simply replace the lead character. Well, not other than Deep Throat, anyway.

However, if A Fistful of Dollars is one of the few morsels of nutrients in a steaming pile of remake shit then there is one film buzzing around it that I probably love even more. The Fly was released in 1986 and was itself a remake of a 1958 film starring Vincent Price. In the original, a scientist swaps heads with a fly after an experiment goes pretty fucking wrong. In the remake, Jeff Goldblum slowly becomes a fly in a transformation that involves his ear and dick dropping off. This is very much an example of creative reasoning for remaking a film. Just in case you've not seen the remake, Goldblum plays an eccentric scientist who believes he has invented a teleportation device that will revolutionise our ability to travel, nullifying concepts of long-distance trains, planes and automobiles. After testing the machine for himself, a freeloading fly gets in with him and as the two are zapped about, their DNA splices and recombines to create a being that is a juicy cocktail of them both. Initially, Goldblum's scientist is empowered by some new found strength and so spends the first half of the film literally fucking his energy away, however as things progress he begins to mutate with his appearance disintegrating at a speed even more rapid than that of Mickey Rourke's real life pork-chop face.

...I think my rash has spread..

In fact, possibly one of the main differences between the original film and the remake is the more recent effort focuses on the horror of a person literally falling apart. Due to its creative effects and intense gore, the film has been labelled as an example of 'body horror' which is a sub-genre pretty much invented by its director David Cronenberg. To quickly explain this term, it's basically exactly what it sounds like with a story depicting a graphic degeneration of our flesh and often as a way of exploring some greater metaphor. I like intelligent films as much as the next person but if we can express big ideas through the use of vomit and a rotten wanking hand then all the better. In the case of The Fly, I suppose the obvious subtext is of the transformation through diseases such as cancer or even everybody’s favourite post-monkey-fuck illness, AIDs. As has been recently pointed out by Cronenberg in an interview, the film is about a man who falls in love and then begins to suffer from a terrible wasting disease. However by wrapping all of that up in sci-fi and horror it becomes more appealing to both producers and a wider audience. I guess from this it can be assumed that on mass we either don't like to be depressed by realism or rather that if we have to watch somebody die then reality just isn't fucking grim enough.

Speaking of interviews, it's interesting to see how much people like Cronenberg have spoken about the love story between Goldblum's turd like scientist and his girfriend Geena Davis. Although it might not initially be the most memorable thing amongst all of the loose limbs and jars of cock, it is, I suppose, the spine of the film. Generally I'm not a fan of romance in movies because it tends to be sappy and unbelievable however here, the relationship is filled with an excess of fucking, unwanted pregnancy, constant fighting and at least one death. I can't relate to any of the saccharin bullshit that Richard Curtis pisses out into cinemas, but all of that bile between a woman and her man-fly does seem depressingly familiar. On which subject it is also worth noting how good Geena Davis's performance here is as she perfectly captures the horror of having a scabby eunuch for a boyfriend.

Introducing the Astonishing Puking Fly-Man!

Also in regards to the DNA of the film, I quite like to think of this as being a kind of deconstruction of the Superhero genre. Like most comic book characters, Goldblum's scientist is involved in a tragic accident but he's sadly not gifted with any powers at all. I mean he does have the ability to dissolve things with his own puke but that shouldn't count because after a heavy night, out so does Lindsey Lohan. The film is sort of like a twisted version of Spiderman but instead of gaining the beneficial ability of climbing walls, Peter Parker grew six more eyes and started shitting out his webs like a sticky net of arse-jizz. The other way to look at The Fly in regards to comic books is that instead of following what could have happened to someone like Spiderman, it's actually following one of the genres villains. People like Doc Ock also have tragic back stories involving scientific fuck ups but in Goldblum's case, the only difference is that there's nobody here to fight him. Well nobody more powerful than some bearded, yuppie twat with a shotgun who wants to fuck his ex anyway.

However, if this was a reaction to the superhero genre then the genius of Cronenberg is that he managed to subvert them about twenty years before they started raping cash at the box office. Although this is probably my favourite of his films, it is a pretty close race with all his work exploring themes of transformation, identity and obsession. I suppose that for me the thing that pushes this above any of his others is the performance from Goldblum as it manages to remain both human and hilarious whilst he continues to grimly rot into a giant, talking scab. Thanks to him there's an unmissable, kafka-esque tragedy to this which is brilliantly depicted during a speech on, “Insect Politics”. But like I say, Cronenberg is one of my favourite directors and I'm almost equally as fond of Videodrome, Crash and Existenz. He's basically the go to guy if you're in the mood for a film about people putting random shit inside their bodies.

So to end on the topic I started on, if a film has to be remade then The Fly demonstrates exactly how it should be done. Whilst maintaining his artistic integrity, Cronenberg has taken a pre-existing movie and updated it for the audience of its time by applying his own iconic sensibilities. I guess in the end, the key to a successful remake is to make sure that the director has a legacy that they just don't want to piss all over. 

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I Don't Like Human Beings

I recently went to the zoo for a friend’s birthday and without a shadow of a doubt my favourite bit was seeing the chimps. Surrounded by children, we all watched as one of the apes balanced on a rope in front of us and then very slowly began to jettison a dollop of shit from its inflated, pink, arsehole. However before his semi-liquid turd hit the deck, he reached around, scooped it out of his slackened hoop and then popped it into his mouth. He then turned around and cheekily showed us his cute monkey smile which was only slightly ruined by the very eye-catching dribble of shite running down his lips. Isn't nature beautiful! On a similar turd-chewing theme, I recently watched The Human Centipede which was hyped a few years ago for its supposedly 'controversial' plot. Now as my monkey story hopefully hinted towards, I enjoy a good poop incident as much as the next person. However that film has got to be one of the worst things that I've seen in a long time and I don't mean because it's gross, I mean because it was just fucking rubbish.

The story in itself is fairly simple to explain... There's a misanthropic, mad scientist living in the woods who decides to stitch three people together by attaching lips to bum holes. You know how sometimes a film can be so bad that it becomes funny? Well, this isn't like that. Even with that plot and factoring in the inevitable shitting scene, the biggest problem with the movie is that it's just so fucking boring. For a start, it hasn't even attempted to be frightening, or if it has then it's failed miserably. Perhaps the problem is that to feel fear you're kind of required to empathise with those being terrorised and yet the main characters here are the most irritating mongtards to have ever walked the Earth. From the moment the two idiot lead girls show up, their voices begin to grate so badly that I was practically giddy when it was time to sew up their fucking mouths. It's therefore down to the mad scientist to hold our attention, but in the way that he torments his victims and despite the bum related operation, he is ironically just an unwatchable pain in the arse. We don't know his motivation and once he's stitched them together he doesn't even do anything interesting with them. In the end, the only thing that's remotely terrifying about him is his obviously freaky face although even that was undermined when I figured out that he looked like a botox-free Cliff Richard.

"We're all going on a Summer holiday!"

So if we take it as a fact that this scary film isn't scary then perhaps the reason for its existence is actually as a kind of gross-out challenge. Humans in general are pretty stupid and I know that there are people out there who like to do things such as 'The Cinnamon Challenge' because they think that puking in front of their friends is funny. I'm not even being snobby about it as I've done it myself, although in my defence, it was a girl’s idea and I was putting a lot of effort into trying to shag her at the time. I figure if dribbling vomit down yourself for a lady isn't enough to get your hump on then I don't know what is. As it turns out, I don't know what is. However, if being gross is the films intention and it’s disgusting plot is just meant to be funny then it fails again by not even showing the damned shit-eating scene in any real detail. I mean, I'm kind of grateful that it didn't because seeing women demeaned and forced to swallow a nutty, chocolate log is a level of sexism that I'm thankfully not quite at yet. However surely that means that the film is now completely pointless? If you want to watch a horror film then there are plenty of others out there that are actually frightening. Or if you want something to gross you out then I'm pretty sure Two Girls One Cup is still floating about on the internet somewhere. Not only is that demented scat-film significantly shorter but it also provides some insight into how little humanity has really come since venturing out of the cave 200,000 years ago.

Here the director expertly expresses fuck all about anything.

Several film reviewers have included The Human Centipede in the sub-genre of 'body horror' which I suppose is justified as the whole face-to-arse thing is done fairly realistically. Sadly though the phrase, 'body horror' and the name David Cronenberg go almost hand in hand and there's not much that can compete with his back catalogue of genius. Cronenberg's films work as excellently as they do because in each case the gore is used as a metaphor for the story’s subtext. For example, on the surface, the crusty Jeff Goldblum of The Fly not only acts as a metaphor for disease but also explores the idea of what it is that makes us who we are. That film proved that it's not only possible to be intelligent but that it can also have a scene in which we see the characters mangy cock has dropped off. In a depressing contrast though, The Human Centipede has fuck all going on below the surface. If you're being really generous then it could be considered that the centipede represents society with the mouth of the Government at the front and the lower class at the back taking all the crap. However that's the thinnest metaphor ever and really isn't explored any further than that basic description. Films like The Fly work by tapping into society’s collective psyche and exploring our darkest fears. If that's the case here then the idea that The Human Centipede is working with is, “Urgh wouldn't it be horrible to get some poo in your mouth!”

So to conclude, it seems that the film isn't gross, funny, scary or intelligent. It pretty much fails on every possible level. There was this one time that I went for a piss in a McDonald's restaurant when somebody noticed that one of the toilets was literally full of diarrhoea. I'm not kidding when I say it was actually up to the very rim. It was then that the dopey sod who'd found the mess decided it'd be a good idea to flush the fucking thing. As water poured in, the obviously blocked toilet overfilled and the shit flooded out. The knob-head who flushed it ended up coated in crap and I stood there helpless and pissing as the lava-like puddle of turd crept rapidly closer. I can only assume that the staff on duty would have earned their exploitatively-low minimum wage that night. However that one moment contained everything that this movie should have had but didn't. It was graphically disgusting, traumatically suspenseful and fucking terrifying. I guess to get across just how bad the film was we could use its own set-up as a little analogy. Imagine three really bad films that are stitched together from mouth to arse. Now feed the first one a lump of crap and then watch as it digests through each of them becoming bigger and more stagnant until eventually being shat out at the back. That final, massive uber-turd floating in an odorous puddle like a tasty clagnut soup is literally about as much shit as The Human Centipede was to watch. Also the title is kind of crap because there's not enough people with enough legs to make up a centipede. If the film did have a sense of humour then they should definitely have called it Kiss My Arse!
 

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Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.

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