Review of Befouled from Underground Gorellectors Films!
Directed by: Z Smith
Written by: Z Smith
Produced by: Z Smith
Editing by: Z Smith
Cast: No one
Year: 2017
Country: Canada
Color: Color/B&W
Runtime: 1h 4min
Official Website: https://fb.com/BefouledFilm2017
Distributor: Underground Gorellectors Films
I used to be a reader of such publications as Headpress and I devoured many books released via Creation Press. Those things steered me into wild videotape territories and I discovered a mass of underground experimental abominations which dared you to keep watching. You looked away but you sensed the screen glaring and staring into you: “Watch me some more…”
I think having all that under my belt has readied me for a modern twist on those fucked up, but yet, incredible forms of films. Befouled feels like you’ve received an unknown email or a blank disc through the letter box. Like Strychnin (review here), there’s a wake up message contained within if you can get past the knee jerk reactions which films such as these create.
Visions of death, cadavers, war, animals, it’s all here. Humanity. The milk of human kindness has really spilt from the cup. The illustrations within this review can hardly touch the dirty ass of what is truly available here. The fact this runs for over an hour should be seen as a test — or a new interrogation idea for Guantanamo Bay.
Intense colours and noises which become a kind of industrial soundscape, breaks you in roughly, as we witness the growth of bacteria. Perhaps the beginning of life which is so jaggedly explored in Befouled. Thus, we see dead things being fed on (via blurry CCTV and night vision cameras) by packs of animals. The hammering dark thudding electronic beat grinds into the viewer as the images become more graphic. Double exposed and trickery shown as sickly yellow mirrored images. A sheep is slaughtered in a pen. We can just about see it writhe about as the man wanders about. Next he strings a few up alive to slice into. Then pigs and cows are in for it. By now I reckon a good few people would switch off by the ten minute mark. Now, however, I was hooked like the helpless animals. Not as a sadistic pleasure seeking bastard, but as somebody who cut through the fog and found what was really there.
Next up we have somebody’s bathroom, then home. Flushing loo, oranges x 2 and a banana in the classic cock ‘n’ balls shape. Suddenly here’s Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate with his head double exposed and sped up. Admittedly, he doesn’t hang around too long, so it’s on to a fake arm being sliced off, an eye is watching a fuzzy TV all in green hues. Like a Korn video, and meanwhile Salvador Dali with Luis Bunuel popped into my thoughts. Before you can chant, “Long live the new flesh!” as a mantra, we’re deep in a derelict building speeding along the corridors, then a corpse is laid out for autopsy. Yep, here we go, we’re in deeper and deeper, no way out now. Actually, the further the scene goes, the female corpse is being skinned like the rabbit in Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantik. Skin back, organs, brain, all off and out, all compacted into ten minutes.
As if sensing the viewer may need a bit of time out by now, Befouled has a moment or two of a field, with a breeze and disturbing music, of course. Okay, I have absolutely no clue about the next parts. Static on something, yes, then a bright colour as we are maybe travelling the tunnel of hell (opposite of the tunnel of light) by the looks of what waits — a lengthy trippy psychedelic episode it transpires! Once we plop out of the end of this rather fucked up interlude, we’re into a section devoted to war and its consequences. Following on, there’s a mess of surreal shit, like figures leaping at you from a static, red flashing stuff, and… owwww, that poor pig!!! Dazed and in pain, there’s a pig getting its head smashed in slowly. What’s the point? You eat meat, kill it quickly or hunt in the wild to eat, but having a laugh doing this? See, Befouled exists to get under your skin like a termite and piss you off. The pig takes a long time to die as blow after blow rains down. Think animals are lesser creatures do ya? Befouled thinks different! No one is going to stop this though are they?! They’ll just have a go at footage such as this. Befouled rampages onwards to its ending takes no prisoners.
There is nothing nice about Befouled. It is simply reality. Survival of those animals and people who are tougher, sicker, or desperate. No cast, no words. I can say that Befouled is a thing of tragic beauty. It shouldn’t be beautiful! Yet the way it has been constructed is like a modern art painting which bewilders many, or they invent their own idea of what they are seeing before them. Befouled is quite simply, Naked Lunch. It is seeing what is on your fork properly, before it heads into your mouth. You are witnessing the death of animals, you are following the unclean process of humanity.
I have to focus on the soundtrack. It never stops and is very twisted. From industrial to something like dark ambience, it constantly mutates as we ride this terrifying journey. Whoever made it has a keen ear for sheer madness.
Befouled is darkness. It is a tiny skin slither of hell on earth. Befouled will seek out likeminded people by watching who makes it to the finale. This isn’t for fans of Faces of Death or Killing of America, because this is from a lower realm.
After a limited edition run back in February this year, it has been picked up by Underground Gorellectors Films for DVD and will include a few extras as well. As for Z. Smith, to be honest, nobody knows much. He may be a pseudonym for a lot of people, or some grotty teenager in his bedroom smelling of masturbation. However, I hope this isn’t a one-off and I kind of look forward to anything else he/she/they/it may come up with in the future.
