Directed by: Jonathan Doe
ABOUT THE FILM:
Special thanks to Jonathan Doe for providing me with a screener copy for review!
The date was July 14th, 1982. In his apartment in northern Detroit, 33 year-old Robert Beckowitz was relaxing with his girlfriend, then 21 year-old Jeannine Clark. It was like any other ordinary night, as Robert and his girlfriend relaxed and watched the Benny Hill Show on TV. From behind, Robert was approached by 37 year-old James Glover, who then shot Robert in the back of the head and proceeded to stab him over eighty times. Over the next three days, during a drug-fueled stupor, James and Jeannine kept the mutilated corpse and used it for their own sick sexual gratification and entertainment, all the while taking pictures posing with the various body parts. Once the high had worn off and they had their fun, James decided to turn himself in to the police, and the both of them were given prison sentences for the mutilation and desecration of a corpse. Nearly 40 years later, an independent filmmaker would find himself inspired by this bizarre case, and decided to make a movie based off of the case.
The Degenerates is a very straightforward film. There is no real story, and instead we are forced to witness the depraved honeymoon of a newlywed couple. The man enters the hotel room with his camcorder handy. On a large white tarp on the floor lies the naked, dismembered body of his wife's ex-lover. The wife wanders around naked cutting the hair off of the victim's head and picking up the various pieces of the body and putting them back together. The two end up doing all kinds of drugs and have fun as the wife poses for pictures with the corpse and masturbates with it, amongst many other perverse acts...
REVIEW:
A few months back I covered Barf Bunny, the first entry in Jonathan Doe's Erotic Grotesque Nonsense series. While I greatly enjoyed the movie's soundtrack and its special effects, ultimately I felt that the film was lacking anything substantial. It was a simple story about a bunny who loved to puke. This time, Jonathan Doe decided to pay tribute to the pseudo snuff and found-footage sub-genres with The Degenerates, and what results is a truly vile experience. I can say comfortably that this film is ugly in every sense of the word. The cameraman lets the shots linger on everything on display, never once shying away from the atrocities unfolding before our eyes. We hear the pleasure in the voices of this despicable couple as they masturbate with the body parts, and we really feel the sick sense of enjoyment the husband gets as his wife vomits all over the rotting cadaver. It's not very often that I'm actually moved to feeling disgusted by a movie, as I'm so desensitized by a lot of the stuff I've seen over the years. But The Degenerates had a couple of moments that seriously made me squirm in my seat, due in part to the acting, the incredible special effects and the sheer sickness of what these two characters do to this corpse.
REVIEW:
A few months back I covered Barf Bunny, the first entry in Jonathan Doe's Erotic Grotesque Nonsense series. While I greatly enjoyed the movie's soundtrack and its special effects, ultimately I felt that the film was lacking anything substantial. It was a simple story about a bunny who loved to puke. This time, Jonathan Doe decided to pay tribute to the pseudo snuff and found-footage sub-genres with The Degenerates, and what results is a truly vile experience. I can say comfortably that this film is ugly in every sense of the word. The cameraman lets the shots linger on everything on display, never once shying away from the atrocities unfolding before our eyes. We hear the pleasure in the voices of this despicable couple as they masturbate with the body parts, and we really feel the sick sense of enjoyment the husband gets as his wife vomits all over the rotting cadaver. It's not very often that I'm actually moved to feeling disgusted by a movie, as I'm so desensitized by a lot of the stuff I've seen over the years. But The Degenerates had a couple of moments that seriously made me squirm in my seat, due in part to the acting, the incredible special effects and the sheer sickness of what these two characters do to this corpse.
The husband is played by Jonathan Doe himself, and fetish actress Felicia Fisher returns in this film, starring as the wife. Both do an amazing job with their roles, but Felicia's performance stands out in particular. She is obviously very comfortable in front of the camera and is not afraid to show skin or do very perverse things, and I have to applaud her for some of the things she does in this film to make her character seem so abhorrently disgusting. The other show-stealer here is the special effects. The corpse was beautifully crafted piece-by-piece by James Bell, an incredibly talented make-up artist whose work seems to be used in a lot of underground gore movies these days. Even through the hazy, degraded video quality, the amount of detail on each body part is impeccable. I feel that if anything in this movie was seen out of context, perhaps on a bootleg VHS tape, it would probably be mistaken for real snuff because of how top-notch the special effects are. On that note, I greatly appreciate the lengths the filmmakers went in order to make this look like legitimate found footage. The footage seems to have been ripped from a heavily damaged, high-generation VHS, and all of the editing seems to have been done with a VCR, which even further accentuates the DIY feeling.
All in all, The Degenerates is a truly disgusting slice of guerrilla filmmaking, and the lengths the filmmakers went to make this are commendable. The entire time I watched I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if hotel staff were to just wander into the room. I couldn't imagine the hotel ever approving of something like this being filmed on their property, which I'm sure made for a risky shoot. I went into the Degenerates not knowing what to expect after Barf Bunny, and I came out actually enjoying it a lot! If you're a fan of pseudo snuff, found footage or shocking cinema in general, I'm confident that you would absolutely adore The Degenerates.
RELEASES:
-The Degenerates was released on a 2-disc DVD set by Vile Video Productions and Putrid Productions in 2021. This DVD set comes with a making-of featurette, an interview with Felicia Fisher, a music video by the band Griphook and trailers for other Vile Video Productions releases.
-The 2-disc DVD release also comes signed by the cast and crew as part of the Degenerates Limited Edition Evidence Box. Also included is a Degenerates barf bag, a signed 11" by 17" poster, screen-used evidence-bagged hair clippings, and a certificate of authenticity! If you're interested in any of this, I highly recommend checking out the Putrid Productions website!
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