THE DEVIL'S BLOODY PLAYTHINGS

Produced by Nan Vouvelle and Zoe Moonshine Written and Directed by Bill Hellfire Editor and Director of Photography - Alex Fuego Christine - Ruby LaRocca Karen - Zoe Moonshine

Have you ever been in a jealousy-filled, selfish, and destructive relationship? Have you ever felt cruelly manipulated by those you put your trust in? Have you ever been humiliated into submission? I hate to say it, but at some point most of us have dealt with at least one of the above at some time or another. Some people can't help but hurt the ones they love, others are downright cruel. I've always thought it was insecurities that brought out the worst in people: possessiveness, manipulation, sadism. We covet what we can not have and the pain of reality compels us to lash out.

Bill Hellfire's THE DEVIL'S BLOODY PLAYTHINGS is a movie about sexual cruelty and revels in the dark side of perversity. It's a study of how much the meek can stomach before they are pushed past the edge and the cornered lion roars to life. Ruby LaRocca is Christine, a woman always on the prowl, and Zoe Moonshine is Karen, the doe-eyed innocent subjugated to Christine's torment and exploitation.

This works especially well thanks to the leads. LaRocca has never been so relaxed in front of the camera, the naturalism she enjoys while inflicting emotional pain is chilling. She's a media-age Marquis DeSade complete with a video camera standing in for a whip. Moonshine is soft-spoken and awkward, and appears oddly comfortable in her character. It's unsettling to think that her real life husband Hellfire might have cast Moonshine to play a weaker version of herself, it adds an extra dimension of perversity.

The plot is straightforward enough. Karen is South African, and seems amiable and pleasant, if not a little naive. She arrives in New Jersey needing a place to live and finds Christine with a room to rent. Christine makes her living off of hidden camera videos, a sort of sexual candid camera. We learn in the very first scene that Christine uses videos of her roommates to keep them in line. She threatens exposing their sexual escapades to the their families or loading them on the internet. Karen is, of course, unaware of this but learns quickly that there are cameras all over her room. Once blackmailed into doing Christine's humiliating bidding, which includes sexual servitude to her perspective clients, Karen begins to lose touch with reality and finally snaps in a blood-crazed orgy of insanity.

The vibe is darkly European, with a heavy side of Polanski's REPULSION dominating the events. Much like Catherine Deneuve's Carole Ledoux in Polanski's film, Karen is sexually repressed. This is juxtaposed by Moonshine's frequent nudity. She's constantly exposed. One could argue that it's a literal representation of her predicament - she naked and vulnerable. She's the antelope to Christine's lioness.

But Christine is just as repressed as Karen, and often she seems in denial of her own lesbian tendencies. She's a voyeuristic predator who likes to linger, not just with her camera's eye, but her own. She's appreciative of a woman's body, but can't stand to be touched by one in a sexual manner, which contrasts her vocal openness. Christine views sex as filthy and dirty, and uses both the act and the organs to humiliate. It's how she justifies her self-worth, and masks her self-loathing.

Like much of Hellfire's Factory 2000 work, THE DEVIL'S BLOODY PLAYTHINGS is sexually explicit, but it never aims to excite. The sexuality is blunt and open, and both actresses feel comfortable exposing themselves, but the wrongness surrounding the nudity leaves viewers feeling dirty or nauseated. As the movie unfolded, i was reminded of Hellfire's BIZARRE CASE OF THE ELECTRIC CORD STRANGLER, one of the F2K fetish titles. That one made me feel uneasy as well. At the time I couldn't understand why a movie about a strangulation fetish needed to exist. After screening TDBP, I think I understand, these movies are cautionary tales meant to shock viewers into awareness about subcultures that shouldn't exist, but do. Hellfire is telling the world that f*cked up people are around every corner, and that we should be afraid. Not just of them, but of those of us who would fixate on them, and purchase videos about them. At the same time, he's turning fetishists off their own fetish. I can't think of anything more underground and revolutionary than that.

The self-distributed dvd release from Electric Daisy Pushers, Hellfire's post F2K company with partners Moonshine and LaRocca, features trailers and bloopers.

The newly released commercial dvd from ei Cinema contains the same features.

Electric Daisy Pushers
Factory 2000

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