Bad Biology

Cast: Charlee Danielson and Anthony Sneed   

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 

Inside

Cast: Alysson Paradis, Beatrice Dalle, and Nathalie Roussel 

Directors: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury 

85 minutes (18) 2007

Second Sight Blu-ray    

Rating: 7/10

Review by Christopher Geary 

[Released 5th February] 

Riding on its decade’s bloody new wave of French horrors - including such thrillers as Alexandre Aja’s hallucinatory High Tension (aka: Switchblade Romance), Xavier Gans’ splattery sci-fi masterwork Frontiers, and Pascal Laugier’s astonishing Martyrs - grisly shocker Inside (aka: A l’interieur), brings a gripping claustrophobic power. Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, this stars Alysson Paradis, as heavily pregnant widow Sarah, and the great Beatrice Dalle as a nameless ‘angel of death’ - or something quite like it. 

With diabolical sense of purpose, and an unhurried intensity of destructive envy, Dalle’s almost demonic seeming home-intruder turns Sarah’s lonely Christmas Eve into a night of mortal dread, locked in a gore drenched bathroom. Animation of the unborn baby adds a dimension of CSI styled graphics to the visual impact, and there is clever use of sound effects to build tension and suspense, accentuating an extraordinary violence, which skims along fuzzy borderlines between absolutely nightmarish fantasy and the brutality of a psychopathic reality. 

Although it’s a short 85–minute feature, action plays non–stop as visitors to Sarah’s residence only survive a few moments in the confrontations with Dalle’s antagonist. Cruel and gutsy with a disturbing savagery, very memorably using a large pair of scissors as multi–purpose household weaponry, Inside is a smartly constructed and fascinating thriller. Its agonies transform Sarah’s quiet suburbia into a veritable war-zone of wildly inhuman atrocities, without any hints of compromise or moral restraint. It’s a mesmerising hell of torments, but definitely not suitable viewing for any mum-to-be in a delicate emotional condition.

Extras:

• New commentary by Anna Bogutskaya
• New commentary by Elena Lazic
• First Born - new interview with co-writer/directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury
• Labour Pains - new interview with Alysson Paradis
• A New Extreme - new interview with producer Franck Ribiere
• Womb Raider - new interview with cinematographer Laurent Bares
• Reel Action - new interview with stunt co-ordinator Emmanuel Lanzi
• The Birth Of A Mother - Jenn Adams on Inside 

High Tension

Cast: Cecile de France, Maiwenn, and Philippe Nahon 

Director: Alexandre Aja 

91 minutes (18) 2003

Second Sight 4K Ultra HD

Rating: 9/10

Review by Jonathan McCalmont

Cinema and literature are in a constant state of flux. Genre formulae and canons are not fixed, they are constantly challenged by new and innovative works that, invariably, invite not only imitation but also the re-examination of older works that were once considered little more than creative cul-de-sacs. Traditionally, horror films are made for very little money and with relatively inexperienced directors who make the most of lurid subject matters and formulaic storylines to secure high returns for their investors whilst learning their trade as directors. A glance at the history of French cinema will reveal Art house and mainstream traditions healthy enough to ensure that French film makers have never needed to pass through the crucible of genre filmmaking before maturing artistically. As a result, older French horror films tend to be either part of the Art-house tradition, or part of the trans-European exploitation films of 1960s and 1970s, centred not in France but in Italy.

Twenty years ago, High Tension (aka: Switchblade Romance) is the film that kick-started a wave of French horror cinema, and it is interesting to note how much of those genre films’ DNA is included in Alexandre Aja’s work. The story begins in a country house where Marie (Cecile de France) is staying with her friend Alex (Maiwenn Le Besco) and her family. Marie is masturbating in her room when she hears a sound downstairs. Going to investigate, she witnesses a large man with an obscured face brutally murdering Alex’s family before dragging Alex away and locking her in his van. Marie gives chase and sneaks into the van in the hope of freeing Alex. But who is the man with the obscured face? 

High Tension is notable not only for its levels of stress and incredible violence but also its no-nonsense approach to plot. Where many horror films spend an eternity introducing you to characters and delivering back-story, High Tension jumps almost straight into the action. However, this is not to say that the film is shallow. Aside from the genre conventions that the film plays with, it also through its use of imagery, and its plot development manages to say a number of interesting things about gender roles and how one perceives one-self. For example, is a willingness to use violence an inherently masculine trait and, as a result, are women who decide to use violence more masculine than those who don’t?

Most intriguingly, Aja adopts an Art house posture towards his audience. Rather than explicitly spelling out the film’s ideas and message through exposition, he allows the audience to draw its own conclusions and concoct its own ideas. This, along with the film’s awareness of the sexual politics of horror, has proved to be a hugely influential approach to the material.

Trailer: 

Bonus material:

• 4K UHD presented in HDR10+ approved by director Alexandre Aja
• New audio commentary by Dr Lindsay Hallam
• An Experiment In Suspense - new interview with Alexandre Aja
• The Man In The Shadows - new interview with writer Gregory Levasseur
• The Darker The Better - interview with cinematographer Maxime Alexandre
• The Great French Massacre - interview with special effects artist Giannetto De Rossi
• Only The Brave - Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on High Tension
• Archive ‘making of’ featurette
• Archive interview with Cecile De France
• Archive interview with Maiwenn
• Archive interview with Philippe Nahon