Director: Frank Henenlotter
84 minutes (18) 2008
Severin 4K Ultra HD
Rating: 8/10
Review by Christopher Geary
[Released 26th February]
After 15 years away from creating horror movies, Frank Henenlotter made a welcome but outrageous comeback with Bad Biology. Like a drunken Cronenberg imitator, this OTT black comedy-of-errors about shockingly abnormal sexuality is often lurid and repeatedly crude, and yet really too deliriously silly to cause serious offence. Jennifer (Charlee Danielson) is a blonde ‘nymphomaniac’ photo–artist, who has seven clitorises. Her pregnancies seem to last about two hours, and then she disposes of any unwanted ‘babies’ in dustbins (perhaps that’s where early-Henenlotter's mutant Basket Case progeny originated?).
Batz
(Antony Sneed) has a faulty penis, but he fixed it with regular steroid
injections. Apart from inducing a non–stop hour–long orgasm in hookers, the
troublesome side–effects of drugs and his self–abuse result in Batz’s monstrously
unwieldy cock developing a mind of its own, detaching itself from his body, and
tunnelling through skirting and floorboards, going on a sexual rampage (cue:
farcical stop-motion animated penis–creature!). While Jen takes pictures of
models wearing vagina–face masks, Batz has lonely ‘fun’ at home with a Heath
Robinson-style vacuum apparatus. Of course, they are destined to meet.
What
happens when an unstoppable foreskin meets an insatiable sex object is,
perhaps, the ideal, most surrealistic expression of Henenlotter’s body–horror
weirdness. In retrospect, maybe this ultimately peculiar flick is what the cult
director was actually trying for all along? Obvious thematic predecessors
include brain–fart ‘Elmer’ in Brain
Damage (1988), and fiendish examples of twisted fetishism in Frankenhooker (1990).
Bad Biology features porn stars
(Tina Krause, Jelena Jensen), and a main cast of novices, so don’t expect great
acting, but its parody of rapture, a parade of rap studs and junkie whores, and
the comically tacky serial–rape spree, make this knowingly unwholesome treat a nightmarishly
bad–acid antidote to mediocre horror’s predictability and genre respectability.
4K
disc extras:
- Commentary by Frank Henenlotter, DoP Nick Deeg, and Anthony Sneed
- Archival commentary with director Henenlotter and producer Thorburn
Bonus Blu-ray:
- Commentaries (as above)
- Spook House - interviews with Henenlotter, Thorburn, production coordinator Michael Shershenovich, DoP Deeg, retired detective David Henenlotter, and production manager Chaz Kangas
- In The Basement - interview with Charlee Danielson
- Deeg And Sneed – a conversation between Deeg and Sneed
- Swollen Agenda – interview with make-up effects artist Gabe Bartalos
- Beyond Bad – behind the scenes of BAD BIOLOGY
- F*ck Face – photographer Clay Patrick McBride
- SUCK – short film by Anthony Sneed
- Legendary Loser – music video by R.A. The Rugged Man
- Thorburn image gallery – publicity, behind-the-scenes, video covers, death pix
