THE SHORT FILMS OF MARIAN DORA – PART 2: A FILM GUTTER REVIEW

Last time around we started a look at the short movies of Marian Dora, one of the most controversial directors around and someone whose movies have been a feature here at Film Gutter – in fact the series kicked off years back with his movie Debris Documentar. This time around we'll e completing the set of short films from the World of Marian Dora boxset before kicking off with a series of reviews looking at the I Spit On Your Grave movies.

Anyway, here are the remainder of the short films on offer...


EROTIC FANTASY (7 mins)

We open with a soft shot of two burning candles, but that's the only concession to any kind of romance here. From there, a female victim is chained to the floor or what appears to be a church – or some sort of religious building – before being wrapped in plastic with selective holes cut in it. We then see our male captor cutting away at the corpse of (I think) a pig, which unsurprisingly is shown in unwavering detail. There's more than a hint of that infamous scene in Melancholie Der Engel here. The head of the pig is brought over – with burning matches in its eyes – as the woman has raw meat placed upon her, which I think is then eaten off her by a dog (the filming is a little dark and confusing, probably deliberately). Of course there's worse to come, as our male tormentor begins to slice at his captive. We cut away quite swiftly – dare I say mercifully? Very odd, pretty disturbing and I must add I genuinely hope I don't get to meet the kind of person who consider this to actually be erotic... It's captivating in its own way anyway, and Dora somehow manages again to find something compelling in the worst of horrors.
RATING: 7/10.
 
OPUS HOMINIS 2 (13 mins)
 
Sure, the music here might be glorious and neo-religious, but that's about as pleasant at this one gets – even that fades away to be replaced by something much more sinister as this short film wears on. This could almost be something that PETA would use in its campaigns, an unflinching look at animal butchery complete with all the hideous visuals and gutwrenching sound effects of animal suffering you would expect. It's obviously not one of those cases where the animals are being killed for the film – a la Cannibal Holocaust – just a look inside an abattoir that simply doesn't pull any punches. We see innards pulled out, bodies cut in half with cleavers, meat pulled away from bones... even as a dyed in the wool meat-eater, this one left me feeling distinctly queasy. Those ham sandwiches for lunch very nearly repeated on me over the course of this thirteen minutes. It has most of the trademark style of Dora, but doesn't really seem to be saying much ultimately – I don't even feel as though it's really an indictment of the meat industry, which could have been the obvious thing to take away. We close with a shot of a butcher selling the meat, with yet more uplifting music. It runs a bit long for me, even at a pretty meagre thirteen minutes. Not my favourite of the set. 
RATING: 4/10.
 
JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION (16 mins)

This short film is something very different to the remainder, beginning with a look at Jess Franco in a documentary style on some sort of tour – or perhaps even taking a break in between filming. It's very hard to find a lot of information on the short film online to back that up. The music is very different to anything before it also, being much more 70s in style and more 'filmic', taking in many different musical influences. There may even be some songs from Franco's movies. I would expect that someone with more of a love of Franco's movies would probably get a great deal more out of this neo-documentary piece. It's obviously very behind the scenes and candid, although I can't quite figure out what it is behind the scenes of personally. My best guess is that it's some sort of homage to 1970's Marquis De Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir, also know as Eugenie... The Story of Her Journey Into Perversion. With all the above said, I don't feel so qualified in rating this one. Fans of Franco will no doubt get a lot more out of this one than I could, but as always it's well shot and framed and feels like a decent homage.
RATING: 5/10