Lucifer Valentine's
Vomit Gore trilogy (2006-10)
I'm undecided about this series. Halfway through the first I had a negative review composed in my mind but then near the end, there's a scene (for want of a better word) in which we see Angela crying and she was so convincing that I started to take more of an interest...
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls - The first of the trilogy that depicts the descent into hell of runaway bulimic stripper Angela Aberdeen (Valentine is a big Kurt Cobain fan apparently). I found it very hard to watch, not so much because of all the blood and piss and vomit but because of the incessant Twin Peaks-style vocal fx and the unremitting stroboscopic visuals. It's all too much and for me just detracts from the impact of the rest of it all.
At this point I was willing to sit through it to the end and then tell everybody how little I thought of it ... but then suddenly there's Angela with tears streaming down her face, either genuinely crying or acting well. After reading some background on the trilogy, I think probably the former.
So I checked out some articles and interviews which gave me an idea of where Valentine was coming from and decided that I wanted to watch the rest of it.
ReGOREgitated Sacrifice - After my brief stint of research I went into this one with fresh eyes, looking on it at as something like a very extreme and surreal 21st Century
Justine ...
It's way more watchable, thanks to Valentine moving on from the audio/visual OTT headache-inducing mayhem of the first. Visually and audially it's all toned down quite a lot, while content-wise it certainly goes further in depicting Angela's increasing madness and descent. Many gruesome moments and of course lots more porn and pissing and puking most of which seems to have little to do with the "story" other than to create an atmosphere of disgust and revulsion as Angela descends ever further into hallucinations and hell. Which to be fair was probably Valentine's intention in which he succeeds and then some. Not much development here though, just an assault on your sensibilities and boundaries.
Slow Torture Puke Chamber - Despite the title there's little or no slow torture in this final installment (unless of course you're really hating the trilogy and are slowly tortured by it, in which case switch it off for crying out loud). As far as gore goes, we're just treated to a lengthy and broken up sequence involving a pregnant woman and baby ... if you thought
A Serbian Film went a bit too far then you'll be wanting to give this one a miss I think. Aside from that, more assorted body contents and porn go to make this film pretty much the same as ReGOREgitated, except that in this one there's less gore.
What kept me watching to the end though (aside from the masochistic desire just to see it all) were the brief intercut monologues from Angela Aberdeen in which she talks about bulimia, vomiting, incest, childhood abuse and general self-loathing ... compared to the first two, this film is positively verbose. I don't know for sure but I'm guessing that most if not all of these monologues come from Valentine's personal experience or somebody close to him and to me they had way more impact than the rest of the films put together. For various reasons it got to me, indeed had me close to crying a couple of times. Finally we have another shot of Angela's face crumpling into tears and that's it, trilogy over.
So yeah, I don't know. To me the trilogy says nothing about anything. What it does do very effectively though is put you in the midst of a lot of surreal horror and revulsion and guilty pleasures too if you're into that kind of thing (not that there's anything remotely erotic about it when characters are so overtly emotionally damaged and abused). Then in
Chamber a few well-chosen words movingly express a lot of what it is to be damaged and self-hating.
I can understand why so many people call these films boring, pointless, lacking story etc. and also why people see them as nothing more than an attempt to shock. Ultimately though it did give me a real emotional response, albeit one that could probably have been achieved without three hours plus of graphic porn and horror. I don't think the trilogy is something I'd recommend to anyone but I'm glad I gave it a chance.