All right, I know what you’re thinking. It’s a TV episode, not a movie. Well, it’s both. Since there’s nothing tying any of the "Masters of Horror" episodes together, each one is treated as an independent movie, and Cigarette Burns is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. I’d love to see it expanded beyond its one-hour run time some day.
Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus) is a programmer at a small indie theater, specializing in late-night horror flicks. He’s also one of the world’s foremost film trackers, which is why Bellinger (Udo Kier) hires him to track down a print of Le fin Absolue du Monde, a movie shown only once at a film festival some thirty years ago. When the film was shown, the audience erupted into a homicidal riot, and four people died. Since then, the one known print has disappeared, along with the director and every member of the crew. But Bellinger has a better lead on it than most. He has one of the cast locked up in his den - an angel, somehow obtained by the director and brutalized in the finale of the film. Its wings are mounted on the wall behind Bellinger’s desk.
As Kirby gets closer to finding the print of the movie, he begins seeing flashes of his dead girlfriend in subconscious cigarette burns (the small artifact at the top of a frame of film signifying a reel change). Le fin Absolue du Monde drags him deeper and deeper into its power, and horrible things start happening to those around him. The film is so powerful that it has the ability to effect the lives and psyches of those who’ve never even seen it, but simply know of its existence.
Finally, Kirby obtains the print and delivers it to Bellinger. Shortly after the delivery, he receives a call beckoning him back to Bellinger’s mansion for help. When he arrives, the credits are rolling, and Kirby is about to find out just how strong the film‘s power is.
As I’m sure some of you have heard on the grapevine, or know from having seen it, there are some pretty damn great gore FX in this flick, capped by one of the coolest and most creative gore scenes I’ve ever witnessed. But neither that, nor the fantastic performances by Norman Reedus and especially Udo Kier (well, did you expect any less from him?), are why I love this movie so much (but they damn sure help)
Films like Le fin Absolue du Monde in real life, the Deodatos, the D’Amatos, the Francos, etc., have a similar power over genre fans. It was a greater power before things like eBay, as well as Kazaa and other download sites, made obtaining prints of rare or out-of-print movies simple as clicking a mouse, but it’s still there. Once you’ve been hooked by hearing about some legendary, taboo video nasty, there’s nothing for it but to hunt with every tool in your power until you’re sitting in your darkened living room, and the horrors of generations past are playing out their grainy atrocities on your TV screen. It even gets into your psyche, the way the film in today’s movie does (albeit without the power to make you black out and kill people). Imagining what could lie in wait for you on that tape or DVD gets into your head. I know when I was looking for my first copy of Cannibal Holocaust, for example, there was more than one night where my dreams took a decidedly carnivorous turn.
Kirby, despite all he knows about the film, can’t help but watch it anyway. Although Kier knows the film’s power, he must have it for himself. It’s the morbid curiosity that draws people to want to see the taboo, the nightmarish, the monstrous, even if it means sacrificing some part of yourself, or in this case, your whole self, to do it. It’s why we here at the Tomb do what we do, and why you out there read about it and do it yourselves. Cigarette Burns is a powerful statement on gorehounds, and what we’ll do to see the absolute end of the world on film.
Driving back from a trip to Waterloo one day, Fistula and myself were discussing just what it is that drives us to watch gore movies. The real nasty stuff, like Cannibal Holocaust , Make Them Die Slowly , and Last House On the Left. The movies that polite society find morally reprehensible. It’s a morbid desire to find the cinematic bottom of the barrel. By that, I don’t mean Larry Buchanan movies, I mean the foulest, most stomach-churningly gross thing that someone had a sick enough imagination to film with the thought that there were even sicker people out there (i.e. us) who would be entertained by it.
As we see more and more of the red stuff splashed around, it becomes less shocking, and it’s a challenge to find the next movie so grotesque that it still packs that punch for someone who can sit down for a light lunch over Men Behind the Sun. We’re always looking for our Le fin Absolue du Monde. We desire to get that rush of seeing someone’s life slashed away from them for the camera, but still being secure in the knowledge that, convincing as it may have been, that actor stood up after the take, went home, washed off the stage blood, and had dinner with his family. To know that we’re not really sociopaths because we didn’t really put any money in the pocket of a snuff director… did we? Maybe some day one of us will. For us, gore movies are like a drug. The more you take, the more you need to get that fix. As Fistula pointed out, there are only two ways out of a situation like that: you either detox yourself, or you get worse and worse until you go on a gore binge, possibly ending with hurting someone (either directly, or more likely, indirectly), wake up the next morning realizing what you’ve done, and purge your life of the influence. It’s a precarious balance to remain an avid gore addict.
Perhaps some day one of us will be in a movie house of ill-repute, and while looking through the repulsive but ostensibly safe fare out front, the proprietor will invite us in the back for something “really special.” And we’ll know what it is, won’t we? Oh, we’ll try to tell ourselves it’s nothing, just some underground porn from Japan or Thailand, or maybe a lost hardcore reel from an old Joe D‘Amato flick. But we’ll know. And we’ll follow him in the back, and sit there as he starts to thread the film. And will we be able to say no?
The Moral of the Story: Images can be as addictive as drugs, and sometimes even more powerful. Think carefully about what you put in your veins.
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