I haven't watched all of this mess. Besides, it's screening on Chiller right now, which means I would only see an extremely censored version anyway. This is the kind of movie that makes me wonder what has happened the the American horror film industry. At one time this might have fit into the old misogynistic grind-house genre. But instead of being a Something Weird Video study in cinematographic personal weirdness, what we have here more closely resembles a badly written bit of internet degradation erotica. The very idea that this could get financed without a house being mortgaged astounds me. The idea of a group of people assembling to work on it without the hiring of friends, drug addicts, prostitutes, and/or low level porn vets says something wretched about America today. Somewhere along the line, cheap horror has lost it's charm. Where once we had a fairly consistent flow of wacky attempts to astound, we now are asked to watch some writer and director indulge in their crude, ugly, masturbatory, fantasies. This is not only true of the discount direct-to-DVD market, but of the well financed Hollywood horror flick of the day. The depths that the director's imagination is willing to plummet is the star of the film. It's as though we are reviewing the portfolios of potential serial killers and sexual sadists. So, if I haven't sat through the whole thing, and I dismiss the current trends in horror cinema, why am I even bothering to comment on something I obviously think is beyond is beyond contempt? Simple. As I said, it's screening on Chiller. For this oozing scab to appear on a basic cable channel in mid afternoon, speaks loudly of how far we have fallen. Chiller and the SyFy network were two channels I hoped to be places where I could indulge my lifelong fandom of fantasy cinema. I'm certainly no elitist. I can speak for hours about the oddball and perverse cheap thrills I've had romping through the twisted subconscious of our less fortunate film makers. But now after more than 50 years of fun, I find myself wondering what the Hell happened. Are the media financiers so cynical and disrespecting of their audience that they can ladle this mung on the publics head without a speck of regret? Like I said, I'm no naive child losing my innocence. I'm a lifelong fan of the good, the bad, and the gloriously loopy in the fantasy realm. I've rationalized this by believing that vigorous fantasy is always a revealing social self portrait, thus worthy of serious attention. I still believe that is true, but the portrait I see is of a grimy, bleak, sadistic, mediocre, artless, landscape that can't even bother to create and present something that approaches competency. The fantasy genre now resembles the cafeteria at the end of Orwell's 1984. A gray place serving inedible food to degraded lost souls who realize that all their dreams were just delusions, and reality is just something so pitiful that suicide isn't worth the trouble. How sad....
Review of Penance
