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On one chilly but lovely afternoon I pranced down the driveway to get the mail. Yeah, I pranced. I was in the middle of having the best day ever. I had the next two days off to do nothing but what I wanted, and off in the distance I could hear the sweet sound of birds chirping and little animated woodland creatures had helped me get dressed that morning while I hummed Disneyesque tunes. In short, it was one of those days where nothing could go wrong.
Then, I opened my mailbox.
Inside it there was a thick, manila envelope which felt like it contained DVD's. Yes! A girl always loves to get packages in the mail! In the sanctuary of my living room I opened the envelope to discover there were in fact DVD's. But these were not just any DVD's; they were independent filmmaker Bill Zebub DVD's. One was entitled DIRTBAGS: EVIL NEVER FELT SO GOOD. On its cover was a cute girl in a bikini with a guy behind her conspicuously slipping a roofie into her beverage. The second DVD was called BREAKING HER WILL, which at first I thought must be a love story until I glanced at its cover: a girl with a ball gag in her mouth, blindfolded, with her arms stretched above her head, obviously being hung from something.
Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore, Bitch. You're in Zebubville, where the population is low and everyone has some kind of mental defect.
Included with the DVD's was a press release. On it was a deranged-looking individual wearing a viking helmet with a pentagram in front of him. Janet, meet Bill Zebub. In short, Bill isn't the kind of guy you would find in the audience of, let's say, the Ice Capades. Well, not unless the show ended with the cast being mowed down by a possessed Zamboni. Bill is hardcore and looking to push buttons and it seems he was gunning to have his index finger planted firmly on mine.
Breaking Her Will (2009)
Starring Brian Joseph Gleitz, Carl Williamson
& Bill Zebub
Written and Directed by Bill Zebub
The press release went on to give a description of both movies. BREAKING HER WILL was touted as a movie attempting to "depict a sexual sadist in a realistic manner." Finally, right? I can't tell you how sick I was getting of all the movies out there that were portraying sexual sadists inaccurately. DIRTBAGS sounded a little more impressive with its claims that Zebub "attempted to shock modern audiences with the same intense impact that John Waters had accomplished in the 70's." According to the press release, a district manager from a large chain of stores happened to watch one of Bill's movies and was so repulsed that he called the company buyer and threatened to call corporate if they didn't pull every single copy off the store's shelves. To a girl like me this only sweetens the pot. I am a sucker for all of the claims independent filmmakers make about how hardcore and offensive their movies are. It seems they are either being denied shelf space at the local video store or being detained at Canadian customs because their product is so ugly, so violent and so unnerving that it can't be unleashed onto a respectable society. Either way, as ashamed as I am to admit it, I'm a sucker for that stuff and I want in!
Basically, Bill was wanting to barge into my clean and tidy world like a bull and mess everything up for a few hours. Sucker! I was up to the challenge. Let the double feature begin. Hit me with your worst, Zebub!
Since BREAKING HER WILL appeared to be in a more serious vein I decided to begin the double feature with it. DIRTBAGS looked like it could be goofy and funny, so any visual assault I suffered from BREAKING HER WILL could, hopefully, be deflected by humor later. The blindfold and implication of possible sodomy on the DVD's cover didn't exactly inspire a fit of the giggles.
An attractive young hitchhiker is abducted by a psycho and winds up where most of these girl do - the basement. There he proceeds to treat her like an animal. She is starved, humiliated and tortured. There is a lot of be disgusted and disturbed by in this movie, believe me. Yes, the kidnapper has a deep crucifixion/bondage fetish, pokes his victim with needles, rapes her with bottles and forces her to perform oral sex (believe me, you'll never eat oatmeal again), but what I found most unsettling was the gradual brainwashing of the victim.
He claims it's not really him, it's the "organization." He is simply following orders. This organization deals in white slavery and he can't really control what country she may end up in. "They" are everywhere. He even convinces her that a friend of hers belongs to it. She asks if any of the slaves ever get rescued. Her tormentor, with nauseating bravado, tells her that maybe with the lesser slave traders but she wouldn't with him and the organization. They are old pros at the slave trade game.
This tactic, albeit disturbing, is nothing new as Jack Ketchum took this point with his demented kidnappers and the heroine in his novel RIGHT TO LIFE. Zebub does it here, too, but the effect is more stomach-churning because you are actually seeing it on the screen instead of in your mind's eye.
She is instructed to shut her mind off and to be grateful she wasn't in Egypt where the masters there have a completely different concept and idea of women. There they like to cut off a component of a certain female body part. Her captor gleefully gets off on the thought of this and treats it like some kind of experiment, detailing his progress.
I do get tired of overzealous auteurs filming scenes of intense and extreme cruelty only to set a weak plot behind in order to claim they are doing some kind of powerful journey into the human psyche. My feeling is that if you want to film certain taboo scenes, fine, more power to you, but don't wrap it up in a veil of bullshit by stating you're attempting to make a statement when really you're just wanting to film a bunch of sick shit but need some kind of reason to justify it. I don't know if that is what Zebub is doing here. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because he seems to be going deeper than that, but it can't be denied that it packs a wallop.
BREAKING HER WILL has the vibe of one of those ABC After School Specials I used to watch in the late 70's and early 80's. There was always a lesson (here it is to not hitchhike), then some kind of repercussion and dramatic fallout (egads, no kidding, I mean, Hellooo!) and then finally an insightful conclusion to the drama (eh, not exactly found here). Of course, the After School Specials of my youth never included ball gags, misogynists or sexual torture, but the concept of the cautionary tale is firmly in place.
I'm not going to divulge the ending, but suffice it to say that it isn't satisfying. After viewing a movie like BREAKING HER WILL, though, you realize there isn't an ending sufficient enough to make you feel better.
The Scoreboard:
Sodomy via Heineken: check!
The word "disturbing" used four times in this review: check!
Main character soiling herself: check!
Obedience-training: check!
Quaker Oats-style fellatio: check!
Dirtbags: Evil Never Felt So Good (2009)
Starring Bill Zebub, Sybelle Silverphoenix, Brian Joseph Gleitz & Valerie Barattucci
Written and Directed by Bill Zebub
DIRTBAGS is almost set up like an insanely perverse version of a Robert Altman film in that different characters are introduced and intertwined along the way. In this particular setting, however, they somehow all have some sort of demented connection to each other.
There really isn't a story to describe here but it begins with a very attractive celestial know-it-all goddess (the lightly dressed Elyse Cheri) who appears to introduce us to a universe where the cohabitants are basically selfish and have not one good bone in their bodies. People who are, well, dirtbags and are used to demonstrate how being an extreme jerk can come back and bite you in the ass.
The movie definitely has it's moments. Bill makes a humorously persuasive argument regarding Santa Claus. In fact, he has great screen presence and a way of delivering a line that makes anything he says funny. He is quite the Renaissance man in this movie, not only playing an aging college student but a black guy complete with shoe polish-style makeup and a swagger reminiscent of any 70's drug dealing movie character.
God help me, I actually laughed out loud at parts and, dare I say it, was kinda-sorta reminded of Kevin Smith's early work in certain scenes. The Pizza Guy scene amused me probably way more than it should have. A gay man using Jackie Chan-style moves set to the backdrop of Heavy Metal? Yeah, me likey.
SPOILER ALERT: The movie does manage to make us feel better by having most of these morons meet their end in one way or another. Bill meets his end in a gruesome way and is given a second chance by the goddess to do things right. Of course, he goes right back to blowing it big time. He just can't seem to get over an ex-girlfriend who is only referred to as The Evil One (the pretty Valerie Barattucci) and it inspires him to sleep with unsuspecting girls and punish them. Cover your eyes my little budding feminists and expect a few 'Hey, that's not really that funny' moments.
DIRTBAGS plays like a John Waters movie in ways and I understand the correlation Zebub made to Waters and his own vision in his press release. For example, in PINK FLAMINGOS we were met with people who wanted to be the filthiest people alive. In DIRTBAGS we get the vibe that Zebub wants to dig deeper, almost ridiculously so, into the concept of what it truly means to go too far. Are there things that just should not be laughed at?
Yes, DIRTBAGS is offensive. I mean, commentary on how gay it is for a guy to eat the body of Christ isn't going to win over any fans at the Christian Coalition, but obviously Zebub isn't looking to do that. Perhaps the real point isn't about going too far but owning what we may or may not find amusing and not letting it define us. Did I find David Carradine's auto-erotic asphyxiation-induced death in Thailand amusing? Absolutely not. Did I chuckle at the New York Post's front page story regarding his death entitled "Hung Fu!"? Well, yeah. Not my proudest moment but should there be a tribal council to vote me off of the planet? I don't think so. Maybe we should just (gasp) relax and not take ourselves so seriously.
But what do I know? My God, give me a break! Who am I - Oprah or that douche Dr. Phil? I'm running on fumes, Red Bulls and a Bill Zebub double feature, people!
Bottom line: This is an all-you-can-eat buffet of depravity. If you think you can stomach it and you have the sense of humor of a 14 year-old boy then, by all means, go for it.
Let's visit the scoreboard:
Gross-out humor via strawberry drink: check!
Brief Appearance by Peter Steele from Type O Negative: check!
Fat drug addict allergic to bees: check!
Using a swimming pool as a restroom: check!
First Zebub review ever to reference Robert Altman: check!
Well, the milk duds were gone and my delicate sensibilities had sufficiently been violated so it was time to call it a night. Ah, visions of little fairies pulling used condoms out of their asses and woman being nailed to crucifixes danced in my head as I slept. In the morning I felt the strong need to shower.
I have since learned that there isn't soap strong or water hot enough to get the residue of this double feature off of me.
Thanks Bill! Let's do it again real soon.
Visit Bill at http://www.billzebub.com/
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janet