Skid Roche

Speaking of transgressive banging, Slaves is another hybrid film, but what it’s a hybrid of is a source of many a spirited argument. It received a not very good review in Eros Zine way back before my time. It’s not so much that it’s “controversial” as that some people absolutely hate it. It is engineered to be challenging to the audience, so… surprise.

What seems to have escaped a lot of folks is that the comment intended is at once dead serious and hilariously satiric; to me, it’s so darkly funny that it left me feeling creepy for about ten days, and giggling frequently during most of the 2,780 showers I took during that period. If something can have that kind of effect on me, there’s only one thing I can call it: brilliant.

Slaves is so strange and affecting that if it does not short-circuit your brain on some level, I’m not sure you have one. To call it “thought provoking” or “disturbing” is like calling a boot upside the head “attention-getting.” As an absolute fanatic for weird psychosexual horror films, I gotta put this one right up there with Scanners and Videodrome. Like six chainsaws or something, or maybe no chainsaws but enough whips to supply an army of latter-day deSades. And more vibrators than I can count, if you are a sick depraved pervert.

Read more at Eros Zine.