 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
THE SEVERED HEAD NETWORK
Contributors:
Eric Stanze
Tommy Biondo
Chad Eivins
Jason Christ
Stephen M. Lashly
Quinn M. BotthofBack in college I was able to talk a good friend of mine into taking a creative writing poetry class me. Anyone who has ever met Mitch could within about 30-seconds of meeting him that he wasn’t the type who went for girly-fartsy crap like poetry. The man’s hero, after all, is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That’s why I asked him to take the class. There’s devious pleasure to be found in watching a testosterone-spewing, Schwarzenegger-freak try to get in touch with his sensitive side. Oh, my little pleasures…
Me, I was trying to be the deeply cool beat poet guy, like Kerouac, only without having read Kerouac (but I own all his books*). The class was the latest in a never-ending series of attempts at wooing the sunshine-loving, low-maintenance, granola-girls.
The god’s were frowning and we were stuck in the Sorority Sister’s class. Mitch and I were about as far from frat as you could get. Our chances of getting dates with these girls were about the same as Old Scratch himself catching and in-house show by the Ice Capaides. You know, after hell freezes over and all. Or so the girls told us on many an occasion. If we couldn’t get phone numbers, at least we could milk the easy “A.”
Mitch never did get in touch with his sensitive side, but he was able to tap into the brutal animal he had kept under lock and key all his life. It took some time for him to open up, but when he did the floodgates couldn’t hold the raging darkness at bay. That man cranked out some of the most beautiful angry poetry I had ever read. Eventually that capricious hostility made its way into Mitch’s prose and screenplays bestowing them with something he had been missing for most of his college career, depth. It was a watershed period for the guy.
That same poetic rage fuels THE SEVERED HEAD NETWORK, a collection of underground shorts from Wicked Pixel Cinema, the people responsible for nightmarish SCRAPBOOK. Checking the production dates, most of the shorts were made in the period between intensely psychological SCRAPBOOK and early amateur effort THE SCARE GAME, a weak exercise in high school gorehound horror. Like Mitch’s poetry, these short films represent a watershed period for the filmmakers, with the best shorts moving away from the confines of narrative structure and into the freedom of abstraction.
There are 11 shorts total, each having little in common with the rest other than their subversive natures. Some merely cross the line of good taste, such as Chad Eivins’ “Vomire”, a nasty music video embracing the intellectual values of college-age liberals, complete with overused images of slaughterhouse waste.** Others, like Tommy Biondo’s “Satisfaction”, a rape-revenge piece, cross the line kicking and screaming with a take-no-prisoners bravado.
Unfortunately, not every short embraces narrative rebellion so gleefully. The weakest efforts are straightforward in their approach. “Put Your Feet in the Wedding Cake” is a conventional music video from Eric Stanze that seems like a step back for him as a filmmaker. Stanze also contributes two other music videos to the compilation. “Victim”, from director Jason Christ, is the last 5 minutes of a slasher flick, complete with that popular twist ending.
The majority of short film anthologies have one or two standout films, usually bookending the filler. While THE SEVERED HEAD NETWORK has its ups and down, more often than not it’s right on the money. THE SEVERED HEAD NETWORK is not for the squeamish, it is not for the closed-minded, and it certainly is not for children. It’s 104 minutes nihilistic intellectualism with images of savage rape, extreme violence, and explicit nudity. As s whole, the results are bleak and ugly, and overwhelmingly inspiring.
(*...along with Faulkner, Joyce, Hemmingway, Shakespeare, the list goes on. It’s tough trying to be well read when you never once actually opened the books. When faced with imminent granola-girl discussions about authors only English majors have read, stock answers are always helpful. My favorite is “there’s a lyrical rawness/poetry to the prose that elevates the work above the period’s contemporaries.” Before she can hit you with a follow up question, always throw them off track and direct the conversation back on her with a faux-personal observation. “You have sad eyes” always worked for me. Ladies, this works in reverse. Who do you think I learned it from? Once you understand that people just want to be understood, you’re In Like Flint.)
(** The number one used image in student productions is that of the cemetery. Number 2 has to do with suicidal tendencies. The third most overused image in college productions is that of the animal cruelty including, but not limited to, animal testing and the slaughterhouse.)
Wicked Pixel Cinema
Sub Rosa Studios