Affliction

A scorching, forty-five minute modern mondo with an intense, breakneck focus on self-abuse and sexual and moral deviancy within underground performance art and culture. Live footage of the performances of G G Allin, interviews with banned-from-drawing comic book artist Mike Diana, and a vitriolic ode to mass slaughter courtesy of the masked Full Force Frank, are amongst the film's more noticeable moments.

Mark Hejnar's film successfully recalls the mondo format in its fascination with cultures that deviate from the everyday, and its assumption that this interest will be instinctively shared by the audience. Indeed, a title-card which introduces startling (for the uninitiated, at least) footage of G G Allin defecating on stage and anally masturbating with a banana alludes to this, the title reading 'What You All Came To See.' Mainstream culture may be appalled, but Hejnar nevertheless appears to be goading it into admitting the presence of a grisly fascination. This is often shocking stuff, for sure, yet frequently with an intentional sense of absurdist humour (Diana struggling to make himself vomit, on demand, over a crucifix) that allows greater access into this patchwork of controlled chaos.

Mark Hejnar, a co-founder of the "Fast'n'Loud" radio show in Chicago in 1983, have been making short films and videos with his band "Pile Of Cows" since the early 80's, and "Affliction" is a film that he's most well known for. "Affliction" won "best documentary" award at the "Chicago Underground Film Festival 1996" and Mark had put more than 3 years into this project. It was promptly rejected from the next handful of festivals he had tried to enter and in 1998 Hejnar did a 12 city European tour with it, which was a great experience for him as he said.

In this 45 minutes documentary, Hejnar shows his viewers some strange stuff with "unusual" personas. Basically movie starts from a segment "Eye Gouge" with this one guy. If you've witnessed one of his shows then you should know what to expect from him. He likes to hammering nails up his nose, eating lightbulbs, sticking his arm in a bear trap and so on, so you'll see a bunch of self-mutilation segments from him. Next individual you'll see is Mike Diana. Most know him as obscene cartoonist who was jailed and charged with obscenity in his hometown for his comic zine "Boiled Angel", which is also featured in this film. I've actually know him as one of Nick Zedd's friends, because I've saw him in Zedd's movies before. Anyway, Mike Diana clearly shows us what he really thinks of religion by vomiting on a bible and a crucifix. Besides Diana's puking segments, there is featured one more his segment in "Affliction".

For the shock rocker GG Allin's fans there will be a pleasure to see GG's onstage antics, plus GG's after show in Atlanta, 1992, where he eats french fries covered with diarrhea and there will be a little more footage with GG in this film. I just want to mention that Mark Hejnar knew GG from the mid 80's. While GG was in prison, he said to Mark, that he was still serious about the suicide onstage, so Mark decided to start shooting GG's shows and antics. The idea was to document the events as they happened before it was all over, so Hejnar toured off and on with GG Allin for the 2 years, documenting GG on camera. Hejnar got close to 150 hours of unreleased GG Allin's video footage, as he said. Also Mark announced that he was making the full length GG documentary, but it has been almost ten years ago, so it's hard to tell about the destiny of this documentary now.

Other interesting individual in this movie is Full Force Frank. Dating back to 1989, Full Force Frank had published some notorious zines where he had promised to commit a massacre one day. In every issue of his zine, he ranted and raved about his killing plans. He was so determined and so outspoken about them that even the FBI came looking for him (or so he said). In "Affliction", Full Force Frank shows his collection of guns and basically talks about mass-murder. Mark Hejnar had never seen him or been at Full Force Frank's apartment by the way. Hejnar wanted to do an interview with him, but instead of that, Full Force Frank had sent him a video cassette with the material that you'll see in "Affliction". In the end of this documentary Hejnar announced that "frank dropped out of sight awhile ago" and yes, it is true. Full Force Frank mysteriously disappeared in the late summer of 1991. He discontinued his pen-pal relationship with everyone, never giving an explanation, but from the beginning of September 1996, he appeared in the internet under the name Joe1orbit and have been an active Usenet poster. Also he was featured in Adam Parfrey's book "Apocalypse Culture 2". Later he created "Forbidden Truth" website that is still online today. I can say that he is pretty talented writer by the way. Anyway this guy is some sort of urban legend. There was so many stories and guesses about him and who he was, that he created urban myth.

Besides the individuals that I've mentioned before, you'll see some cool and weird in-between segments. For example some weird excerpts from Ron Zisook shorts and so on. Mark Hejnar is a really talented director - just look at his "God Loves Over Dose" or "Cumdumpster" videos. "Affliction" was really worth those 3 years of Mark's work. 45 minutes is pretty short of course and after watching this documentary I've wanted to see more and more of this kind of stuff, but you know - it's that kind of situation, that you just can't get enough of it.

"Affliction" begins with with comic artist Mike Diana taking some medication to induce vomiting onto a Bible and crucifix.We have also G.G.Allin getting urinated on,beating himself up and eating french fries covered with diarrhea.The masked guy called Full Force Frank shows the viewer his collection of guns whilst talking about mass-murder.In between these segments are fast paced clips of various body piercings,body scarifications,graphic acts of sex,bondage and mangled dead bodies."Affliction" is truly repulsive and amoral.I was shocked a few times during watching this depraved video.Still fans of extreme cinema should give this sickie a look.