Rautus

There is no greater tragedy on this earth than loss. Be it a parent, a lover, a friend, even a pet. To have an important piece of your life taken from you, the only comfort you can take is knowing at the very least they lived a full life. The only thing worse than losing a loved one is losing them before their time. It creates a void that can never be filled. All you can do is watch it grow wider as you are haunted by what could have been and what can never be. But no greater is that pain than a parent losing their child. It's a hell seldom escape from. Many are absorbed by the madness of grief and despair.

DARIUSS, from arthouse horror filmmaker, Guerrilla Metropolitana, captures the horror, frustration, fear and derangement of such an ordeal as family in Essex suffer the loss of their young daughter. But if you're expecting a thriller or drama about a family coping and falling apart from their loss, ala DON'T LOOK KNOW, you're going to be in for a surprise. This movie makes Roeg's classic chiller look like a straightforward narrative in comparison. Metropolitana holds nothing back as he takes the viewer on a very dark and disturbing journey into the deepest and foulest depths of the heart of darkness. You better be ready for it because as soon as the movie starts, it doesn't stop with the shocks and surrealism. Whether you like it or not, you are subjected to an ugly and unapologetic world dominated by grief, rage, and perversion that becomes so entwined that by the end, they become one in the same.

Like THE BENEFACTRESS, this too is a bold and daring piece of filmmaking that will leave you thinking about it days after watching it. Like a nightmare that leaves you cold and shivering in the dead of night long after you've awoken.

What constitutes as porn and what passes as erotic art. Many films have trod that fragile line in the past. DEEP THROAT and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES were the adventurous pioneers that dared to treat porn as serious art and open the minds and eyes of the public to sexuality, coining the term porno chic to the masses and earning the ire of many who saw them as filth and trash. Other movies have dared to be explicit with its depictions of sex but done in a more artistic manner, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES was such a movie that boldly blurred the line between high art and exploitation that is still debated to this day. Of course, CALIGULA blurred those lines even further and to this day, it's the only epic scale porno to feature a star studded cast of professional film actors. And last, but not least, there was SALO, an art film that gleefully showed acts of sexual cruelty with sadistic abandon.

Then there was the classier approaches to sex in cinema, first explored by EMMANUELLE and continued by its many sequels and TV spin offs, that paved the way for erotic cinema in the mainstream film industry. Treating sex as if it were a perfume commercial. Sexy yet as appealing as possible to ensure marketability. On the other side of that spectrum, we had the exploitation movies of the 70s and 80s that would take sex and splash it in dollops of violence, FRIDAY THE 13th, hell, any slasher really, the DEATH WISH movies, you name it. Flesh and blood was the name of the game and the home video market made a killing out of it. The 90s would take the sensationalism of exploitation cinema's sexy violence and give it the commercial sheen of an EMMANUELLE movie to reach a wide spread audience, the most famous example being BASIC INSTINCT, which birthed a whole slew of imitations that ultimately imploded in on itself with the notorious SHOWGIRLS.

Since then, sex in movies has lost its edge. With porn so widely available thanks to the internet, what exactly can a mainstream film do that one can't see on an adult film site. An attempt was made with the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY movies but the dark subject matter of S&M made glossy and commercial is as appealing as watching DEEP THROAT PART II.

So, after over four decades of movies that arrived themselves with merging the fine line between sex and art, one would assume that everything that could be done has been done. You'd be mistaken.

THE BENEFACTRESS, an experimental piece of filmmaking takes the bold cinematic approaches to erotic cinema over the years and dares to warp what we know and expect from genre. While showing us some new tricks in the process. What we have here is a movie not for the casual movie goer. Nothing is held back as you are taken on a gritty, and unapologetic descent into sexual exploration and cruel desires. It will shock, sicken, and maybe even excite. But be warned, you will be uncomfortable. Even seasoned veterans of explicit cinema may squirm with the acts presented on camera in glorious black and white, invoking memories of QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY but even more grungy and mean spirited. Your perception of film language will also be challenged as the story is told in a very unconventional manner that, added with the unrestrained sexual behaviour, will make you feel uneasy. Like a couple wanting to explore different kinks and pleasures to spice up their relationship, THE BENEFACTRESS is the cinematic equivalent. If you're tired of seeing the same old tropes in erotic cinema, this is the next step to take it to a whole new level, just be prepared to not like what you see, but at the same time, have an open mind to appreciate what you're seeing. It can't be understated how important it is to have a film like this that dares to blend the line between art and porn in a new and exciting way.

I remember back in 2007 when Monster Madness started, it was a novel idea to dedicate the 31 days of October to cover various kinds of horror movies, from classics from the 30s or 40s, to cheesy or violent 80s horror, to Kaiju films like Gojira. It was an absolute treat for passionate horror fans made by an equally passionate horror fan.

In 2021, it was decided to resurrect the series and do a whole month's worth of reviews where James would once again share his "thoughts" and "opinions" of various horror movies, this time from across the world. There was only one slight snag, this is modern James Rolfe and, as you would expect, he didn't have the time to write 31 scripts for 31 short reviews, despite him claiming that he was busy working on the scripts, but then this is the same guy who claimed he was "on fire" with the 200th episode of AVGN and we all know how that turned out too. If he did work on the scripts, he most likely, at the very least, wrote a few paragraphs down. The bulk of the scripts were instead written by Screenwave staff member and attention/pity seeker Newt Wallen. Now, it's already problematic that James Rolfe can't even be bothered to write down his own personal opinion of a movie anymore for a short 5 minute video, but that laziness was the least of the problems with the Monster Madness revival when it was discovered that the script for the very first episode of the new season, 28 Days Later, was straight up stolen from an old 2003 review of the film. To make matters worse, little thought or effort was put into even trying to hide the fact it was plagiarized. And James, with his lack of time to check the script, or anyone else at Screenwave for that matter, simply reads what's written in his typical lifeless manner, spouting such golden phrases like "crazed cannibal killers" and "mankind's experiments go haywire resulting in destructive results" without a single care or shred of respect for himself, his fans or the channel.

With a terrible start like that, the rest of the season suffered; including James who had to apparently go full force and rewrite the scripts for the other 30 episodes in case Newt had plagiarized anything for them too.

If there's anything to take from this it's never be a lazy hack and entrust your work to someone else who isn't passionate about the project as you're supposed to be, and if you do, make sure to go over their work to ensure it's of the highest quality, and if not, tweak it to make it so. Otherwise you get a nasty blemish like this episode which will never go away, regardless how hard Screenwave tries to hide it and pretend it never happened.

So, can we expect to see a Monster Madness this year or any other year? Unless James finds the time to write them himself and actually share his actual thoughts on a horror film, and put a little enthusiasm and care into his work, probably not. But maybe that's for the best. Do we really want James to drive the nail even further into the coffin he created for Monster Madness? As sad as it is, it's probably for the best to just look back on the classic episodes and enjoy what we had from a much better era in Cinemassacre. Nothing but good memories there.