The Profane Exhibit Review from Unearthed Films!
It’s finally here folks. It’s finally here. Well, just about! Way back in 2013 an anthology horror film known as The Profane Exhibit was conceptualized by Amanda L. Manuel to present the audience with a mirror as a reflection of mankind, a reflection of greed, lust, and revenge that embodied corruption to the core. Some filmmakers and producers attached to the project have come and gone, but finally the wait is over. Our lord and savior Stephen Biro stepped into this doomed horror project limbo and unearthed it from the grave. Coming shortly, extreme cinephiles will finally get to view on glorious blu-ray, ten international horror director’s intense tales from Unearthed Films.
We begin with Mother May I directed by Anthony DiBlasi. Mother May I tells the tale of a Catholic halfway house for wayward girls ran by Sister Sylvia, played by Ellen Greene who is perfectly cast in the role. Sister Sylvia has strict rules in her holy halfway house. She particularly gives one girl, Mable (Jennifer Bliman), a hard time. She uses “God’s truth serum” on her. One drop on the tongue and if it turns black, you’re of course lying. As a punishment Sister Sylvia straps the girl’s hands making her beg “Mother may I have another?” Conversely, she gives insincere rewards to good girls in the form of “divine dollars” so that the girls can “purchase a chore free day or maybe a fresh pair of socks.” One day Mable rats out her roomie Sadie (Christine Ahanotu) for having a boy sleep over. This results in some prurient nude schoolgirl humiliation, which leads to us witnessing a darker side to Sister Sylvia. Complete with an awesome looking demonic being.
Following Mother May I is Hell Chef, directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura which is the most oddball short of the entire anthology. A Schoolgirl (Maki Mizui, Tokyo Gore Police) wearing a Japanese Noh mask, picks up a Male Victim (Hiroki Murakami) and takes him home. A mysterious kimono wearing woman carrying an umbrella, appears in her apartment and says she will help her get rid of the body. There’s one problem, he’s not dead yet. She remedies this by squirting a substance from a syringe on a knife to incapacitate him in order to chop him up whilst still conscious. The duo then gleefully chops him up as a figure with long red hair covering her face beats a drum to uplifting happy music. Blood splatters the room, they play with his testicles and then enjoy a bowl of human ramen. This short also features seppuku and the promotion of wrist slitting. Bizarre stuff indeed…
Next, we get one that’s amongst the best of the bunch, with a short film from (unfortunately) retired filmmaker Uwe Boll, called Basement. Boll is responsible for powerhouse films such as Heart of America, Stoic, Darfur, Auschwitz, Tunnel Rats, and the Rampage trilogy. Basement explores a corrupt family which is a similar theme to Nichoilson’s Goodwife (more on that later), wherein we get a seemingly wholesome family, with a dark secret in the basement — their 25-year-old daughter. During dinner one evening, happily married couple, Bob (Clint Howard, Evilspeak, Ice Cream Man) and Lucy (Caroline Williams, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Leprechaun 3) discuss having a date night. Howard gets up from the table, turns on “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven, then brings a plate of food into the basement. There in a windowless room, he gives his daughter her food and mentions her upcoming birthday. “What would you like for your birthday?” he asks. “Outside.” she says as she devours her food. He continues to claim it is too dangerous outside as he unbuttons his shirt. She pleads but is shut down with promises of a pretty new dress. He unbuckles his belt, “Hurry up and finish. Mommy and daddy have somewhere to go.” The rest dear reader, you can surmise. Clint Howard was an exceptional choice for this role, making the situation all the drearier.
Following is masterful filmmaker, Ruggero Deodato’s surprisingly disappointing short, Bridge. The film is the shortest of the bunch, and unfortunately it seems like an afterthought. A boy and a girl run into a mad woman on a bridge who aims to commit suicide, but the children have other ideas. I say this is an afterthought because the short is basically non-existent. It ends before it begins which is a shame not utilizing Deodato’s notorious directing potential. In fairness, Deodato has stated that with this short he wanted to depart from Cannibal Holocaust and drew inspiration from The Shinning to explore the evilness of children. However, whatever good intentions he had at making a solid short film, are left plummeting off that bridge.
Directed by Sergio Stivaletti, Tophet Quorom explores a messed-up society. This is an interesting one, since it’s more akin to an old school Italian horror movie complete with extreme gore. Silvia (Marta Paganelli) has just given birth to twins, but when she requests to see one of the babies her husband (and Doctor) Riccardo (Simplicio De Rosa) claims the child died due to an umbilical cord complication. “But I heard him crying.” she protests. He dismisses her again stating “That’s impossible, dear.” Being suspicious, Silvia explores the castle basement where she finds a werewolf-esque looking woman cradling a baby. When her husband catches her snooping around, things get more horrified, ending with a demonic ceremony. Tophet Quorom has some exceptionally gruesome scenes, complete with baby sacrifice, man-made graphic werewolf transformation, and a gnarly grue-filled, blood-spirting jaw being torn off.
Next, we move on to my favourite of The Profane Exhibit. Period. Ryan Nocholson’s Goodwife, is hands down the best film he has ever made — even as short form. This polished short follows genre favorite Dan Ellis (American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock) stars as John, a family man with a seemingly perfect marriage. However, when his wife Lisa (Monique Parent) stumbles upon a folder containing photos of her husband’s victims, her world crumbles. But what does a “Goodwife” do? She joins in on the festivities. But is this enough? Nicholson’s entry into the series is refreshing and takes him back to the brutality days of Torched. The film is stark black with no humor. In one scene Ellis has a woman handcuffed and strung up to ceiling joists. He burns her with a cigarette and proceeds to take a meat hook to rip her anus apart. All this before taking a leak on her vagina in graphic detail. B-movie starlet Tina Krause (An Erotic Vampire in Paris) also turns up in this one as a victim.
The Marian Dora short film Mors in Tabula was originally screened at Housecore as a completely different film than this. At the screening viewers experienced a different film, which follows a woman who places her life in the hands of a doctor. The film showed depictions of real surgical procedures leaving it hard to discern between real medical footage of make-up effects. Dora decided to pull the original Mors in Tabula for fear of prosecution. Fear not though, he may get his day in court, for the original short will accompany the Unearthed Films blu-ray supplemental features. I have viewed this short and it’s up there with his most grotesque abominations such as Blue Snuff and other such early works. This new version of Mors in Tabula (2) is an entirely different film which depicts an incredibly sick boy (L. Dora), seemingly on the verge of death from mucus buildup due to epilepsy. A Doctor (Witalij Kuhne) is summoned to the small village and is entrusted to help the boy. The doctor immediately starts work on the boy, performing an emergency tracheotomy surgery. As his father (Thomas Goersch, Carcinoma, Voyage to Agatis) holds his son’s legs, the doctor sops up mucus and blood from the hole in the boys throat. This scene is somber and gruesomely real, with sounds of chanting and a Hitler rally being heard in the background. Not as crazy as Dora efforts like Melancholie der Engel, nor does it come close to the fruitless cruelty of Blight of Humanity but it’s definitely a Dora film. It is utterly dark and bleak and a contender for one of the best of the anthology.
Moving onward, Nacho Vigalondo’s Sins of the Father is the most unique of the batch. Here we have a simulated environment of a childhood room where a Son (Didac Alcaraz) confronts is elderly Father (Josep Segui Pujol). By attempting to recreate an act his father committed on him as a child, he wants his father to admit what he did and take punishment for his actions. Will justice be filled on the sexual misconduct of a father?
The final short, aside from the wraparound story, is Todd Schneider’s mighty short, Manna which explores a BDSM club where we bare witness to a man being taken to a back room. We see him laying on a mattress, a black bag covers his head and one by one women enter the room to fuck him. This is the fun before the torment, for what happens next Schneider explores next level BDSM with Vorarephilia (see Vore Gore) — the erotic desire to be consumed by or consume another person or creature. There is some twisted gore and cannibalism to behold here, including fileting legs, roasting body parts on coals, tong removal, throat slashing, eyeball extraction (A Clockwork Orange style), bloodletting, blood bathing, a heart ripped out, and of course voracious naked women feeding on human flesh. There are even naked women wearing pig heads for good measure. Schneider’s Manna is a feast on the eyes and a gorehound’s wet dream.
One of the contentions with the original production of The Profane Exhibit was the lack of a wraparound story to bring cohesion to this beast. Amuse Bouche, directed by Jeremy Kasten does a fine job of intercutting the shorts where we see someone preparing and ingesting human meat, but shot in reverse order ala Irreversible.
Back when I had only viewed a rough cut of The Profane Exhibit, I felt it wasn’t as good as a contender of a horror anthology film like German Angst. However, I eat my words now. The Profane Exhibit is the real deal. It’s what unflinching horror cinema is all about. That proclamation aside, go into this one without the ten years of pent-up jaded hype that you may have amassed. Go in to this one as if this is a new movie because it (more or less) is. The work Unearthed Films have done here in finally presenting this to the annals of horror history is truly commendable.
Directed by: Uwe Boll, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Marian Dora, Jeremy Kasten, Ruggero Deodato, Ryan Nicholson, Sergio Stivaletti, Nacho Vigalondo, Anthony DiBlasi, Michael Todd Schneider
Written by: Amanda L. Manuel, Paolo Zelati, Carlo Baldacci Carli, Ryan O’Neil, Ruggero Deodato, Ryan Nicholson, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Paolo Zelati, Anthony DiBlasi
Produced by: Amanda L. Manuel, Stephen Biro
Cinematography by: Vincenzo Condorelli, Gabrio Contino, Matt Leaf, Yasutaka Nagano, Anthony Roldan
Editing by: Jeremy Kasten, Chance Minter, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Francesca Spinozzi
Special Effects by: Giulia Giorgi, Megan Nicholson, Autumn Cook, Chieko Shimizu, Chelsea Still, Taiga Ishino, Oliver Müller
Cast: Dan Ellis, Monique Parent, Tina Krause, Thomas Goersch, Marta Paganelli, Simplicio De Rosa, Maki Mizui, Haruka Nishimura, Didac Alcaraz, Josep Segui Pujol, Clint Howard, Caroline Williams
Year: 2013
Country: USA
Colour: Colour
Language: English, Italian, German, Japanese
Runtime: 1h 48min
Studio: Harbinger International
Distributor: Unearthed Film
