Donkey Punch (2008)

It took me some five years to finish watching Donkey Punch. Way back when, I rented it from a Blockbuster (remember those?!) but in a sterling example of why the company is still so affluent today, the DVD started skipping 40 minutes in and ruined my viewing pleasure. Today, I saw it, decided that its first 40 minutes had shown promise, and decided to rewatch from the start. I'm actually pretty glad I did. This movie's an interesting one. For one thing, it's odd and somewhat refreshing to not have to listen to 90 minutes of Californian-accented screeches from big-tittied blondes in lingerie. True, English accents are not always the most attractive things (as a kid I always longed to swap my English accent to an American one) but again, it's a little more tolerable to hear girls call each other "babes" instead of "sweetie". Accents are funny things: just as an American picture would have some hick with a Southern drawl be the 'shady' fella, for us Brits, give us a chav and we're terrified. We have a monumental chav in Donkey Punch, whose speech is dismally common in England, and always looks and sounds as if the speaker is swirling a mouthful of toffee.

The chav in question is Bluey (Tom Burke), who is swaggery and mouthy, and has a dormant menace about him, enhanced by a hairlip. Burke's performance, and dare I say it his general non-enhanced appearance, are painfully realistic, to the point where I'd be unsurprised if he'd been raised in some dodgy council estate by a family of criminals, and managed to break out into something better. He's really got the look about him. Anyway, Bluey is one of four guys - the other three are far less distinguishable - who befriend three girls on holiday in Ibiza. The girls are there for the dreaded reason that compels me to cringe so dreadfully: "a girly weekend away". Blllleeeuurrrgghh! We have Lisa (Sian Breckin), Kim (Jaime Winstone, daughter of Ray) and Tammi (Nichola Burley), the two former being the loud, reckless ones who shout "whooo" a lot, and the latter being the shy good girl who's there to get over a breakup. They are spoilt for choice, with Marcus (Jay Taylor), Sean (Robert Boulter) and Josh (Julian Morris) also part of Bluey's crew, and when they're invited on board the yacht the boys work on, the only one who thinks that this is a bad idea is of course Tammi.

The boys are frustratingly difficult to tell apart. I hate it when they do this in films. I'm no simpleton, but when you have three male characters, all with very different personalities and actions, who are of the same body type and colouring, I really struggle to keep on top of it. I found myself distracted by their shirts instead of the movie, just in an attempt to keep track of who was who. Bluey, like I said, speaks for himself, Josh is the mouse, this movie's version of Matthew from I Spit On Your Grave, the simple-minded one who doesn't take much goading to do others' bidding. One of the others is Josh's brother, and the other is the acting Skipper of the yacht while the actual owner is away. When the guys suggest that they "take this party on the high seas", ie leave the marina, Tammi is once again proven to be the sensible one, but not sensible enough to voice her concerns.

She is taken with Josh's brother (I think that's Sean and the Skipper is Marcus - I think) and they get innocently chatting about their failed relationships, while the other girls and boys take the party downstairs to the cabin, having taken hits on a crackpipe and whipped out a video camera. Now just before this, whilst taking a swim, the young vulgarians were discussing various crude sexual acts which no one with any respect for themselves or their partner would perform. Bluey regales the legend of the Donkey Punch, in which the guy takes the girl from behind and smacks her in the back of the neck when he cums, apparently producing an involuntary muscle spasm which is awesome for the guy. "What's in it for the girl?" one of them asks. "I don't understand the question," Bluey retorts.


Josh, being the dimwit that he obviously is from his sheepish cowering, can't believe his luck when he finds himself in the midst of a below-deck camera orgy, and Bluey hops off Lisa to give him a go. He mounts her, and has a whale of a time, until system-overload becomes imminent, and Bluey unwisely eggs him on, "Remember what to do? Do it! Do it!" Thwack! Woman down. Oh shit. Now it looked like a bit of a jab, but apparently poor Joshy don't know his own strength. He has just killed a girl mid-fuck. It's not quite Of Mice and Men.

It's cool to see a horror movie (I guess this just about qualifies) with no masked man or evil genius or crazed loon scouring the seas for dead young flesh. As we can imagine, these 20-somethings are never going to decide calmly that they must go to the police and explain exactly what happened. They are going to play the Blame Game, and turn on one another. And of course, Bluey caught the whole incident on tape (and it's not below him to later suggest earning 'a pound a pop' for it on the net). The rivalries and differences of opinion are what drive the rest of the movie, which gets a little slow towards the end, but it's actually an interesting journey, with intriguing power shifts. For example, the sex scene at first may seem a little female-driven, if you catch me (I hate to say misogynist just because a woman is nude onscreen), but just after Lisa's been killed, all three of the guys in the room are seen full-frontally naked, tackle and all, where the girls never bare so much at any point. We see the guys at their most vulnerable - naked, and covered in the juices of a girl they just killed - and it really works.

Later, one of the girls has managed to obtain the onboard rifle that's changed hands several times, and the raw anger in her voice (and flinching from her assailant) as she threatens him at gunpoint feel very genuine. Power levels fluctuate wildly throughout, with each character having different theories as to who will get off, who will go down, and what the authorities will make of their situations, and these theories are what motivates each character. No one is really on the same level, and eventually the characters seem to lose sight of everything as things spiral further out of control. Crazy thing is, all the shit that happens is down to stupidity and absent-mindedness. I'm of the opinion that without the crazy sexual ideas and crackpipe, these guys could've had a pretty decent time together and all gotten home intact. But then fear and rivalry can do weird things to people.

Although most of the acting is better than expected, the one shining star of the picture is Tom Burke as Bluey, who throughout manages to inject absolute truth into his performance, and he obviously has a good understanding of pain. Do you ever notice in movies that when characters are in physical pain, their reactions never seem quite on par with what you can see being done to them. Anybody who's ever experienced real indescribable pain will know that everything loses structure: your consciousness, your thought patterns, and your will for any form of control. Screams of real pain are distinctive, and quite disturbing because they're just not something you hear often (I guess unless you're a medic or a murderer). Burke is one who understands. His first scream when he's stabbed in the chest is more like a hysterical laugh, as he comes to terms with what has just been done to him. When one of his mates starts pushing on the knife, his screams are bloodcurdling. It feels so utterly genuine.

I wonder if Donkey Punch should have been subtitled "A Cautionary Tale". Even in the six or seven years that have passed since this movie was made, the sexual activities of my contemporaries seem to know no inhibitions. It is perfectly commonplace for people to have sex having only known each other a few hours. Of course, highly-efficient sexual health services make this possible to do safely, but the morality behind it has disturbed me for years. My sister went on holiday to Magaluf a few years back, and I was actually moved to nausea by photos she showed me of a crowd of young holidaymakers, circled around a teenage girl and boy having sex in broad daylight on an outdoor patio, apparently because they had been promised free booze by the reps if they did it. Just writing that out made me feel queasy all over again. I cannot fathom the kind of person who would even consider this offer. It's low, it's dirty, it's disgusting in every way. I hate to sound like a frump, but it is just wrong. This kind of shit is so common that the English media spew similar stories on a regular basis, and reality shows on TV.

The first time I saw this movie, I was just a teenager. Now, I am an adult and mother of a daughter, and it crossed my mind to show her this movie one day, when she's older. I want her to understand that if you have no respect for yourself and your dignity, then no one's going to have it for you. Men and women are as bad as each other. Do you think Lisa (and subsequently Bluey, Josh, Kim, Sean and Marcus) would have survived if she hadn't thought an unprotected orgy with absolute strangers was a good thing? As one of the boys points out to Lisa's friends, "Do you really think her parents want to know what she was doing when she died? That she was fucking strangers?!" Bluey already established earlier that he had no comprehension of a partner's feelings, and yet she deemed him a wise choice. And then had no problem with Bluey suggesting that Josh have a go with her too. She allows herself to be objectified, and then they're surprised when things go wrong. Granted, a girl allowing herself to be objectified may not always result in death (check the labels) but it's a shitty place to put oneself in willingly.

Although it's disputed as to just how lethal Josh's rookie moves are in reality, I think this movie contains some truths about human behaviour and cause and effect. There's the aforementioned respect for lovers, but then, of course, when shit goes down, who is your real friend? Apparently the girls were trusting enough to allow these strangers access to their vaginas, yet once these same fellas have fucked their friend to death and carried out a "burial at sea" (in the same graceful tradition of Bin Laden), all feelings of amity have vanished. I'd hope that the girls, at this point, started scorning themselves for their poor judgement of character, and utter lack of common sense. But if either of these things is true about them, then they probably didn't. Eventually even the original friendship groups (boys v girls) turn against each other. You'd think that really good friends, and decent, mature human beings, would have materialised the following scenario:

[JOSH SMACKS LISA'S NECK. WE HEAR A SNAP AND SHE FALLS DOWN DEAD. JOSH GASPS, SHAKES HER, CHECKS HER VITALS. SHE IS DEAD. HE FLOPS DOWN ON BED AND CRIES]

BLUEY:     Oh my God, man! Oh Christ, it's OK, don't worry. It was an accident, I know it was. Let's call in an ambulance and the police and tell them what happened. And show them, look, I have the camera. They'll know it was an accident, man. You didn't mean to hurt her, it was innocent!

JOSH:         Oh my God, we'll have to. I can't believe what I've done! Oh, I'm so sorry Lisa! [HE SOBS OVER HER BODY] I didn't mean to hurt you! It was an accident.

BLUEY:      Look man, I'll go and tell the others, and make the calls. Everything's gonna be OK... [EXIT BLUEY]

You know, something sensible like that. From there, everybody instead starts trying to shift the blame, and incriminate each other, eventually pretty much everybody on board is down for at least an assault charge, if not worse. But at this early stage, Josh would have been the only 'guilty' party, and even then, with the video footage, it would be manslaughter at the worst. We didn't think he was a bad guy at this point, just a bit of a stupid and gullible and unlucky one. But because of the gang-up he is eventually the subject of, he goes a bit crazy, and by the end of it, has done far worse than the mistake that set this whole shitball rolling. They'd definitely all have been better off had they chosen a sensible course of action, But they're dumb, selfish and all (but one) end up dead as a result. It seems Donkey Punch has more thought and moral behind it than you'd first think.

The Sinful Dwarf (1973)

I'm having trouble finding bad movies recently. The old, minimal-budget exploitation genre can often be a good place to look, but suddenly even that is failing me! I thought when I came across a 1973 production entitled The Sinful Dwarf with a dodgy, hand-painted cover, that I was in for something to well and truly berate, but alas, my beration stores remain somewhat unrelieved. For all that I was sure it was going to be, it was really nothing at all. But it went, sometimes, in unexpected directions and presented times where I had to admire the work. Although, thankfully, plenty of ridiculous touches to sarcastically remark on too.

The movie opens in the street (even by the end, I'm not sure where it's set; most of the actors have English accents, but I'm pretty damn sure British coppers didn't carry guns back then...) with a, uh-- female, playing hopscotch. You'd sort of guess that a female in pigtails playing hopscotch in the street is a child, but on closer inspection, this female doesn't even look adolescent. She looks like a fully grown woman in her early 20s...playing hopscotch. Weird. A hobbling little dwarf with a cane and a clockwork dog approach her, and she is juvenile enough to not only be impressed by the toy, but to go back to the dwarf's house for more. Very weird.

The dwarf is Olaf (Torben Bille), and he runs a boarding house with his crazy drunk mother Lila Lash (Clara Keller). It's a big house with long wooden stairs and corridors, and at the end of the corridor is an attic room with a secret door. Behind the secret door are three mattresses, upon which are three junked-up sex slaves. The latest addition is the Hopscotch Girl. But Olaf and Clara have their sights set on a new girl, the female half of a young couple who come to board at the house. The fella, Peter (Tony Eades) is a writer (not the Stephen King kind, the perpetually-unemployed kind), and I guess the wife Mary (Anne Sparrow) is just a professional hottie.

Just as soon as Peter and Mary have been shown to their room by Olaf (who jumps on their bed in such a fashion that I'd demand a change of sheets), they are busy at it, and the dwarf has pulled the old painting-actually-a-spyhole trick, taking a very enthusiastic front row seat to their peepshow. Voyeuristic little devil! Admire, he may, though. One thing I never expected from this movie was one of the nicest and most moving sex scenes I've seen in a long time. Not only does Miss Sparrow have an absolutely insane body, her fella really appreciates it. They are totally into each other, and he spends his entire coital duration telling her things like "Let me look at you, you're so beautiful". This guy gets it!

Anyhow, with audience and dwarf thoroughly satisfied, it's off to real life. Peter is out looking for work, Olaf is busy playing with his clockwork toys and playing piano accompaniments for his mother's maniacal cabaret numbers, and Mary has nothing to do but snoop around, and so she is quick to notice the weird noises and men coming and going from the attic. Although we really know what is coming, it takes rather a long time to materialize. When it seems that taking Miss Blonde Hair Blue Eyes Big Boobs Mary as their newest recruit is dragging a bit, they have their heroin dealer Santa Claus hire Peter at his toy store, necessitating him to go away for a few days.

Whilst alone, Mary snoops further yet and finds the secret door in the attic, and decides to call the police. But not before she has changed out of her perfectly presentable sweater and jeans into something far more easily removed by force. With just enough opportunity to slip into a button-up mini dress, Mary is on her way, but doesn't get as far as the street. Olaf and his mighty cane (which has an uncanny talent for knocking people unconscious despite its slight frame) are on hand, and she is dragged into the sex slave emporium where her button-up mini dress is easily removed by force. Honestly girl, what was wrong with the sweater and jeans?!

Anyway, they chain her up and shoot her up, and soon she is just another, albeit the hottest, sex slave this side of the attic door. Meanwhile Lila types up a fake 'I'm Leaving You, Goodbye Forever' note from Mary, and leave it in her room for Peter to find upon his return. For a lover who showed he appreciates what he has, Peter is somewhat unperturbed by his wife's sudden disappearance. He goes to the toy shop and tells Santa Claus Mary has left him, to which the fatty responds "Oh, I am sorry. Well, nothing like work to take your mind off it!" and the unconcerned husband seems to agree.

Upstairs in the attic, the girls seem to only have one client (or several guys of equally weedy stature who look very alike), and it's not a wonder this dude's gotta pay for it. He screws like a dog with a limp. Not to mention he always wears the same beige turtleneck. All four of the girls get thrown around in unusual positions, shot at the sorts of angles that haven't existed since pubic hair was apparently boycotted back in the 90s. Then along comes Olaf, to give us a gross preview of what would later be Verne Troyer's weird sex tape. He takes a shine to the lovely Mary, and then he takes the handle of his cane to her. Dude, we didn't even hate you that bad - your mum was obviously the real weirdo - but now you've just stooped to her level. Bad dwarf.

Between all the piano accompaniments and wind-up toys and cane-fuckings, Olaf makes a forbidden visit to Santa Claus' toyshop, where Peter overhears their dope deals. Being the upstanding, starchy-collared, BBC-accented fellow that he is, he promptly informs the police and they arrest Claus, who rats on Lila and Olaf and their highly erotic love palace in the attic. Upon arrival at the house of debauchery, they quickly get to the attic door, giving Lila an amusingly hard shove in front of them. She makes the most hilariously futile protests, to the extent of, "NO! There's nothing in there! Don't open that door!" Way to play it cool, Lila. Naturally, they are undeterred, and finally uncover the four poor sex slaves, with Peter running in to scoop a naked Mary into his arms. All's well, but she seems incredibly minimally affected by her newfound habit with a capital H.

At this point, the copper hands a gun to Peter, and pursues the dwarf of all things sinful. He takes a very sloppy shot at Lila, who dies dramatically on the lap of junked-up Hopscotch Girl, who laughs hysterically at the wretched bitch. A few other coppers who are hanging around in the courtyard outside see Olaf opening the top floor window as if it's a door. Here comes the best shot of the whole movie. Close up of Olaf prepping to jump...Shot of the most obviously-a-rag-doll dummy in a checkered shirt being thrown out of the window...shot of Olaf lying bloodied on the ground. Oh my God, I had to skip it back to laugh again. That dummy is the funniest thing I've seen in some time.

Man, the '70s were a special time! Only then could something like this be made! It's totally stupid, pretty funny, bordering on sinister at times, and has lots of nudity and one seriously, ball-achingly sexy leading lady. I mean, no one really expects anything in terms of acting quality from a picture like this, do they? And there's no doubt that none of these performances are exactly award-worthy, but there are some memorable characters: Olaf being one, with his crooked grin, his wide buggy eyes and gruff Swedish accent, Lila being another, who sort of reminds me of Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan in Annie; she plasters herself with music hall Baby Jane make-up and gracelessly bellows old melodies in weird fruit hats and grass skirts. They are an entertaining duo, who should really have sought their own variety show on TV or something. Landlording really ain't their bag.