Dear Reader:
Sometimes, it is best not to know what to expect. Too much foreknowledge could deter a sensitive soul from experiencing an otherwise entertaining and illuminating adventure. Little did I know what I was in for when I decided to view Saw 3D – The Last Chapter. (Don't let the King Kong-esque promotional poster fool you. It's not that kind of horror movie.) It sounded ideal: a horror movie in 3D, and that is what it was. Perhaps the most gruesome movie ever made, it could have been produced by the creators of the OGRISH website of depravity, now kaput. A movie with so much gratuitous torture, violence, and mayhem, it could have been written by Sir Richard Topcliffe and the Marquis de Sade. It was a spectacle so heinous it was worthy of the Roman Coliseum under Caligula. It was the French Revolution and the Spanish Inquisition with an all Rwandan cast. All that was missing was a chorus of corpses singing, “That’s Entertainment!” But this was not a musical.
Little did I realize that this picture was the last and latest sequel to a series of six sadistic SAW movies, and that this was to be the gory grand finale and fond farewell. The film was a series of divertissements of cruel and creative butchery strung together by a theme of marital discord, a sort of “Portrait of a Marriage” in hell. One could argue that the whole movie was a parody of the institution – it was funny at times. I was convinced that more than one messy divorce or bad relationship had been the inspiration for this movie written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the Topcliffe and de Sade of this malignant masterpiece. The execution scenes themselves resembled the most perverse game show ever imagined. “Come on down!” In the picture, an individual is compelled to rescue one or more restrained persons from certain death by performing some grotesque feat involving the freeing of the caged/chained/hog-tied under the unreasonable time constraints of a ticking stopwatch. Like a sick casino, the odds were never on the players’ side.
Taken as a whole, the film was an elaborate snuff movie. Like a pornographic movie, once the “action” started it was tantalizing until repetition and overexposure made the viewer inured to the forbidden. The novel became banal. That being said, the torture and debauchery were tantalizing – for a time. It occurred to me that had the actors been naked during their demise it could have been a double-whammy for the audience. But then, I am reminded that the cover of Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine (June 1978), of a naked woman being put through a meat grinder was not exactly well-received by some. For this movie, at least, that would have been tame.
The saving grace of the picture was its technical mastery. The contraptions and instruments of torture and execution were so ingenious they looked as if they could have been engineered by Michelangelo, so elaborate Rube Goldberg would have been proud. The shear graphic carnage was only redeemed by the artistry of the make-up and the special effects technicians that presented it so convincingly. (I was tickled with the use a single flashing red light bulb to heighten the suspense in a scene before the coup de grace.) 3D was the perfect vehicle for this orgy of dismembered body parts – duck, flying flesh! There was so much blood, the theater could have issued raincoats for the audience.
One obvious drawback to the movie was the lack of big stars. (It is hard to care about the fate of underdeveloped characters.) How much more interesting it would have been to have had well-known actors fall one-by-one under those sordid circumstances. Take for instance the cast of the yet to be released Little Fockers (2010). Can you imagine the movie trailer: “See Dustin Hoffman’s face blown off! Hear Barbra Streisand’s swan song -- her throat slashed! Watch helpless Blythe Danner, guillotined at the waist! Robert DeNiro, as you’ve never seen him -- roasted alive before your eyes! And Ben Stiller, swinging on a rope!” It could have been It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) of gore. The cast was just as long, the killer was so prodigious. Perhaps, there was not the budget to hire all big-name victims required. BTW, Actor Tobin Bell was superb as “John.”
Oh, yes, Saw 3D is a murder mystery, too. The ventriloquist did it.
Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP3mZe1s_nk&playnext=1&list=PLD34DF331269BB00B&index=8
From the vault: originally entitled, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1974), it is now called Flesh for Frankenstein, directed by Paul Morrissey, starring Paul Dallesandro, unique Monique van Vooren, and Udo Kier. (Warhol had zero to do with this movie.) This made a big impression on me when I saw this in 1974. It, too, is a horror movie in 3D. It was like Studio 54 habitués made a Universal Studio movie from the 1930s. There is a little gore in this movie, but it’s the dessert not the main course. Warning: sexual content. Dr. Frankenstein fondles the internal organs of his pastiche patients.
Best of luck in your movie selections, your faithful friend,
Dwight Dekeyser
© 2010 Dwight Dekeyser, Esq. All rights reserved.
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