 Having a reputation for being a bit of a sick bastard, no one should be surprised that I’m a fan of this esteemed website’s Film Gutter section. If you didn’t know, Film Gutter is hosted by the very friendly and ludicrously strong-stomached Alex Davis, who watches and reviews an extreme horror film every week. If you’re the kind of horror fan who struggles with gore or strong subject matter, you’d be smart to steer clear of any movie featured in Film Gutter. These flicks are less about ghosts, ghouls, and monsters, and more about the extremes of human suffering, the details of mutilation, and bodily fluids that are generally absent from even the edgier end of the horror cinema spectrum. It is not for the casual genre fan. So, with a foul and formidable collection of movies under reviewer Alex’s belt, and having survived viewing the very limits of radical underground horror, you might assume that he’d be able to watch anything. He’s seen Lucifer Valentine’s “Vomit Gore” films, each of which is a kaleidoscope of bloody puke, sexual abuse, and wince-inducing slaughter. He’s sat through Marian Dora’s Meloncholie der Engel, with its real animal killings, coprophilia, and endless nihilism. He’s even dry-heaved his way through Thanatomorphose, which he said will “stay with [him] forever”. So you can imagine my curiosity when I read that Alex had, for the first time ever, clicked the “Stop” button during one of his Film Gutter movies, and wasn’t able to finish it. My curiosity was piqued. Trumpety-trump: The movie that trampled Film Gutter Q. What manner of monstrosity had proven “too rich” for Alex’s palette? A. The Green Elephant. Alex’s review for The Green Elephant is almost apologetic in tone and has the air of a confession. After almost 200 extreme horror reviews, Alex sheepishly admits that he’s at last met his match. Apparently, he reached a point 42 minutes into the film that made him feel like he might be physically sick if he continued watching. He did not elaborate on the specific scene’s contents within the review, but in a Messenger conversation with me he alluded to it having something to do with faeces. With an idea growing in my mind, I did some basic research into the film but avoided uncovering too much about the horrors it contained; that would have ruined the surprise. Then I recruited two brave fellow horror fanatics – Sinister Horror Company’s Justin Park and DLS Reviews’ Chris Hall – and resolved to sit through the film that had finally proven too much for Film Gutter.  Riding The Green Elephant Justin and I met Chris at his lovely home in rural Wales. Following an afternoon of amateur rock-climbing and a couple of beers, we set up a projector and speakers in what is essentially Chris’s basement – though certainly a comfortable one, which had leather couches – and settled down to watch. The Green Elephant is a Russian art-house extreme horror, where two military prisoners are locked up in a foul, dank cell before starting to really get on each other’s wicks. There’s violence; there’s rape; there’s gore; there’s human shit – all ingredients that you might expect from a Film Gutter movie – but the atmosphere is decidedly different to the other underground horror I’ve seen. The director, Svetlana Baskova, says that she made the film in response to the Chechen War. Apparently she weaves all kinds of social commentary and philosophy into the dialogue and storyline, but these were unfortunately pretty much unintelligible to myself, Justin Park, and Chris Hall. It’s certainly unique and, despite looking like an August Underground flick, it seems to have something to say. It’s shot with grainy super-8 cameras, but rather than feeling like a fake snuff film, the effect that this technique has is more claustrophobic and deliberate. There are even moments between the absurdity and depravity that are oddly beautiful, in the sense that some camera shots are so off-kilter that they barely resemble reality, instead becoming surreal patterns and alien structures inscribed by grime and filth. It’s a slow build, during which the tension and ugly futility of the subject matter increases until spilling into bloodshed and madness. So, spoiler alert, exactly what happened at the 42-minute mark that almost made Alex lose his lunch? Someone did a poo. Well, according to a behind-the-scenes interview with the director, it was a chocolate log. You could forgive Alex for believing that it was real though, and being horrified at the sight of a grown man smearing his naked body and eating several dirty brown chunks. So that just leaves us one question: is it any good? Bee’s knees or elephant’s dung? Unfortunately, it just didn’t work for us. After watching the film, Justin’s immediate quick capsule review was: “It was bullshit, wasn’t it?” He elaborated: “The camerawork was initially interesting. There was a claustrophobic feel to the constant close-ups which meant that you never really had a sense of where you were. What we could see of the setting and costumes was well done, too. It was great to start with, but when it moved away from just the two guys in the cell and we saw the torture and the weirder stuff, it took a big leap and didn’t really explain why.” And did we understand it? “No fucking clue at all,” Chris laughed, and Justin and I agreed. “And the Pantera music? Why would they play something relatively modern and recognisable?” Chris was talking about the first scene of violence in the film, when the camerawork moved into slow-mo and, for some baffling reason, the soundtrack started pumping out a Pantera tune, shattering much of the ambience that it had been building. In the film’s favour: the atmosphere, the setting, and the unique use of an extracted human trachea. Against the film: the fact that it didn’t make much sense to us and didn’t really disturb us much either. So, to conclude, I asked the guys, “Is Alex Davis a pussy?” Justin: “Yeah.” Chris: “Most definitely.” We love you really, Alex…   Comments are closed.
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