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 So there was this thing that happened at Columbine High School on April 20th 1999. Later in 1999 two film makers decided to turn this into a film. So far, so exploitative. They would be the first to admit it. But actually the film has merit on its own, and in many ways is both more focused than Bowling for Columbine and braver than Elephant. The film's directors are Joey Smack and William Hellfire, the company Factory 2000 (named after Warhol's own Factory) their previous films a collection of fetish films created on the behalf of a few wealthy benefactors. Titles like The Bizarre Case of the Electric Cord Strangler, Vampire Strangler and Cannibal Doctor should clue you in on the content. Duck! The Carbine High Massacre is self produced, shot for $6,000 and filled with a cast of friends. It's largely improvised, some of the cast look stoned, some actors ham it up, lines are stepped on, it goes out of its way to be as amateurish as possible. It is however an interesting film, one that doesn't feel the need to get solemn and serious in a moralistic way. It instead goes for the literal, detailing the two future killers in the run up to the massacre. What I think works is that Smack and Hellfire grew up in a town like Columbine, they could have been Harris and Klebold. This is what I take from the film, the point is that if this story is going to be told it needs to be told by people that lived in places like Columbine, that grew up with the religion, the lack of job prospects, the school with it's ritualised violence, the violence in the family. Elephant with it's deliberate lack of context and style mirrored on Alan Clarke's film of the same name (about the paramilitary violence in Ireland) is too aloof, we recognise the savagery but it remains alien to us. Duck!... however places the eventual violence of the two killers within the sadistic context of the school and social environment, the father is attacking his wife, the principal letches on the students, there are violent and bloody punishment beatings by jocks for being weird. Yes, this violence is exaggerated in the film but only to highlight how ever-present it is. The two killers are not sympathetic, they are not supposed to be, but they are understandable - this is the message that the film is trying to relay. The film got Hellfire and Smack busted after it was released, scenes of them on actual school property with unloaded weaponary (when the school was shut for summer) meant they were raided by the local cops on felony charges. These were later dropped, but not before making the national news, appearing on Nancy Grace and Court TV. It's an odd film, one i'm loath to actually recommend except as an antidote to the emptiness of Van Sant's own take on Columbine. It's equal parts brave, stupid, naive and knowing. I'll leave by just offering the disclaimer that appears at the opening; "The story depicted in this motion picture is fiction and contains fictious characters, although it is based on actual historical events. We realise that some people may find it offensive, obscene, sacriligious, and thoroughly disgusting. However it was bound to become a motion picture eventually, or even worse a "made for TV" movie. So we decided to do it first. God bless America!" You can watch the film on youtube as actually tracking down a copy is hard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psyb0N4TFzY 
harpomarxist fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 17:50
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Where can I see this movie, OP? I'm not a fan of Elephant, either.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:52
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Where can I see this movie, OP? I'm not a fan of Elephant, either. Ah, I got my copy from Ebay but it looks like it's up on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psyb0N4TFzY i'll amend the initial post.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:55
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Thanks mate. Looks rad.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:05
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This movie does look rad, thanks for posting it. As a side note, harpomarxist, you've been making some great threads around here lately that unfortunately not many people are reading. While I really appreciate the effort and I would love one of these threads to catch on, maybe you'd be better off making these as posts in the recommendations thread, or in General Chat? (So that we can ACTUALLY talk about movies in there.) That's usually the best route for films that you want people to see but don't have enough interest to carry their own thread.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:13
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Vargo posted:This movie does look rad, thanks for posting it. Haha, thanks - I was a bit 'hmm' about the Keiller post disappearing. I gotcha Vargo - i'll put it through recommendations/gen chat first.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:24
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I'm definitely gonna have thoughts after I finish watching this.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:43
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Does this movie do anything The Dirties didn't? From a first reading it seems like a lower-budget version of that film, though perhaps slightly more specific to Columbine.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:57
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flashy_mcflash posted:Does this movie do anything The Dirties didn't? From a first reading it seems like a lower-budget version of that film, though perhaps slightly more specific to Columbine. I'm like a half hour into it, and it seems more like the movie the kids from the Dirties would have made. Like this was clearly written by teenagers in the best way possible. The Dirties has a level of polish it shouldn't, the girl the one kid is pining for is clearly a model.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:03
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flashy_mcflash posted:Does this movie do anything The Dirties didn't? From a first reading it seems like a lower-budget version of that film, though perhaps slightly more specific to Columbine. I've not seen The Dirties, it looks low budget too. It also looks like it's getting respect from the media. I don't think Duck!... can be read in a similar way, it deliberately attempted to court controversy, and is just too disjointed and drug-addled to ever really get accolades.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:11
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I'm like a half hour into it, and it seems more like the movie the kids from the Dirties would have made. Like this was clearly written by teenagers in the best way possible. The Dirties has a level of polish it shouldn't, the girl the one kid is pining for is clearly a model. I had the same criticism of Dirties so I'll check out Duck. Dirties really did get to me though because it was filmed in a Canadian high school that could well be my own (I chalk this up to the design of high schools, in Ontario at least, being somewhat generic but it's still chilling to me).
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Aug 7, 2014 19:49
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What I like about The Dirties is that it superficially has this love of pop culture that turns out to be a cover for one character's shortcomings. The endorsement by Kevin Smith is very apt.
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Aug 7, 2014 20:24
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flashy_mcflash posted:Does this movie do anything The Dirties didn't? From a first reading it seems like a lower-budget version of that film, though perhaps slightly more specific to Columbine. Well, it predates that movie by something like fifteen years, so.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:33
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Vargo posted:This movie does look rad, thanks for posting it. This is sad
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Aug 8, 2014 16:44
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Hat Thoughts posted:This is sad I know. There was one thread from a year or two ago about the Universal Monsters series that died. I enjoyed that thread.
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Aug 8, 2014 16:58
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I watched the poo poo out of this. No, it's not "real", like the mannered, eroticized depictions of teens in Elephant, or even the boyish wannabes in Zero Day, but that's what makes it good. It puts the focus on the other students, like the annoying folk guitar girl, pushy cheerleader for God, the black kid with the chip on his shoulder, JNCO's wearing dickhead bully and all that. All of the adults are flat out cartoon characters, from the bloodthirsty reporter to the lecherous teacher to the drunken sadist father, all written in the sarcastic tone of teenagers. What makes it all so great is that not-Dylan and not-Eric still look like total assholes, and this is what makes them cool. A lot of filmmakers forget what it's like to be a teenager and look back on it as a time of opportunities not taken, days of romantic aimlessness and ennui, but this movie shows the two of them enjoying being little fuckwads. Check out that scene of the one with the buttcut ostentatiously reading Mein Kampf for all to see. You know he is bored to tears by it, Mein Kampf is an extraordinarly lovely rear end book that became a mandatory bestseller, but he wants to be seen reading it, and gets what he wants when the black kid defaces it in front of him.
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Aug 8, 2014 17:28
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I watched the poo poo out of this. Zing. Totally dude. The Klebold and Harris characters are completely pathetic, they're playing this role of outsiders - but everyone else is playing roles too. By the way, Hellfire and Smack look *completely* hosed up in most of their scenes, right?
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Aug 8, 2014 18:29
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You can tell they're hosed up making this movie, too, cause they pay a lot of attention to the soundtrack.
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Aug 8, 2014 18:31
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:You can tell they're hosed up making this movie, too, cause they pay a lot of attention to the soundtrack. Haha, Ultra Bide and King Ghidorah! (not the MF DOOM alter ego) it's grimey as gently caress. I think Hellfire was actually undergoing cancer treatment during this film, hence the baldness. He says he was out of it because of the pills they were giving him, but I read a 'zine that came out after the film that had an interview with Factory 2000, he was described as getting so hosed up on coke they had to finish filming early that day. As far as I can tell, it looks like they got straight back into the fetish films after Duck!... so it's one of those stories without a 'happy' ending. Honestly one of the reasons I thought of talking about the film is because it's destined to not really live on, the film itself is too jokey to ever be considered a hidden diamond and too obscure to really be remembered. I just liked it as opposition to Elephant's triteness. harpomarxist fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 18:56
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Oh, he had cancer? I am now celebrating my forgetting to call him a teenage Nosferatu.
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Aug 8, 2014 19:07
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Oh, he had cancer? I am now celebrating my forgetting to call him a teenage Nosferatu. haha, I think he'd actually appreciate that! But HUNDU THE BEAST GOD, you have an interest in this stuff, give me a recommendation!
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Aug 8, 2014 22:06
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harpomarxist posted:haha, I think he'd actually appreciate that! No Budget movies in general? I, Zombie: The Chronicles Of Pain. The Last Broadcast Born In Flames
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Aug 8, 2014 22:14
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:No Budget movies in general? totally on it, i'd say CREATE YOUR OWN POST but well, hmm
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Aug 8, 2014 22:34
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I would say the Horror thread and the Youtube of the Day are unofficial zero-budget movie megathreads.
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Aug 8, 2014 23:08
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:I would say the Horror thread and the Youtube of the Day are unofficial zero-budget movie megathreads. Dude, zombie masturbation and british accents, what the gently caress?
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Aug 8, 2014 23:47
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harpomarxist posted:Dude, zombie masturbation and british accents, what the gently caress? You know you loved it.
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Aug 13, 2014 14:32
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:You know you loved it. Well, like, yeah, it was pretty great. As a sidenote, after the rapturous response to Cloak and Shag Her and An Erotic Werewolf in London in '08, it looks like Hellfire got funding for Upsidedown Cross on Indiegogo. Starring his wife Erin Russ and David Yow (who has a totally recognisable face, although the only film I know that he's been in is the classic Big Money Rustlas by ICP, apparently he's also lead in the band The Jesus Lizard) it looks like it's not overtly aiming at goth erotica this time so might be something you can take your grandma to see.
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Aug 13, 2014 15:07
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