Greetings, fellow filth fanatics. I, Hamtackle, have decided to start a new segment on Popular Irony, the filthy five. In it I will provide a list of five strange, offensive, or shocking things in popular culture. I begin this segment with a list of five cult vengeance films that are superbly fucked up, and therefore are excellent for this venue. The films are listed in no particular order, as they are all so very wrong in their own way.
5.) Dead Man’s Shoes
This film is all about an older brother to a mentally retarded boy that goes off to serve in the military, and leaves his brother alone. He has always been his younger brother’s protector, but while he is away a group of criminals and drug dealers take him under their wing. He serves as their personal mascot and plaything, subjected to horrible torments and ridicule. When his big bro returns from the army, there is hell to pay. Highlight: When big bro doses one of his brother’s tormentors with a buttload of LSD and tortures him.
4.) The Proposition
I love modern westerns, and this one is great. It takes place in the 1800’s in the australian outback, and follows Charlie, the middle brother in a three-man family gang that is raping and murdering their way across the desert. Charlie’s older brother is a psychopath and a sadist, and his younger brother is a simpleton and a soft-hearted boy who is mostly along for the ride. When Charlie and his younger brother are captured he is presented with a proposition. Either find and kill your older brother, or watch your younger brother hanged. Highlight: This is the only film that features a rape scene in which the rapist sings a beautiful rendition of “danny boy” while in the act. On Christmas day, no less.
3.) 13 Tzameti
This is a french film that is presented in black and white. The protagonist is a laborer that works for an anonymous old man who lives in a beautiful house. He discovers the secret to the old man’s wealth when he dies suddenly while the boy is working, and uncovers a letter that features a time an a location, with no other directions. The boy decides to take his chances, and ends up an unwilling participant in a competitive game chance with fatal outcomes. Needless to say, his life takes an exciting turn for the worst. Highlight: When the protagonist first appears at the location of the competition and receives a t-shirt with the number “13” written in thick black ink, then walks into a room with two men facing each other, guns pointed at each other's heads, with a bare lightbulb dangling between them.
2.) Freeway
Some films are so brilliantly shocking that they can never be mainstream, but are interesting enough to draw big names to appear in the cast. This film stars Reese Witherspoon and Keifer Sutherland, and is a modern retelling of little red riding hood. Keifer is the big bad wolf, a serial killer that picks up young hitchhiking women to rape and murder. Reese is little red riding hood herself, a streetwise girl that show the wolf that sometimes the prey can bite back. Highlight: When little red riding hood has the tables turned, and mocks the disfigured wolf. “Well, look who got beat with the ugly stick!”
1.) Oldboy
Some of the finest works in shock cinema is coming out of south korea these days. If you haven’t watched Oldboy, then you are missing out so badly that I pity you. The main character is a degenerate drunk, and a horrible father. One day he is abducted from the streets during a rainstorm and spends the next 15 years imprisoned in an apartment without windows, his only link to the outside world in the form of a television set. One day a gas cloud floods his room, and when he awakens he is on the roof of a building with one mission- to find out why he was imprisoned, and who did it to him. Highlight: When Oh Dae Su finally corners one of the men responsible for his suffering, and questions him by tearing out his teeth one-by-one with a claw hammer.
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