Women can be bitches. If you hang around them a lot, you notice their tendency to be catty and bring others down to feel better about themselves, and they tend to be gossipy and mean-spirited while they smile to your face and tell you they like your hair, and whenever groups of them get together they tend to find the weakest person and play upon her weaknesses in order to bring her down. I heard once that when cooking lobsters chefs have to put a lid on a pot full of male lobsters because once male lobsters realize they're in boiling water they will start forming ladders and trying to help each other climb out, but when cooking a pot of female lobsters chefs don't have to put a lid on the pot because once female lobsters realize they're in boiling water they will start pushing the other lobsters under as though they're saying "If I have to die, you have to die too, bitch!"

Now this is probably not true, but it FEELS true, and it's pretty reflective of my own experiences with women. I'm not saying I hate women (you guys know how much I love women, right?) and I'm not saying that women are evil and I'm not saying men don't have their own issues and problems, I'm just getting tired of all the flowery bullshit I hear these days about how all women are wonderful and nurturing and if the world were run by women it would be a better place. Women aren't any worse than men, they're just not any better, either. We're all human and we all fuck things up and do selfish shit and bring people down in our own ways, and people who try to pretend that this isn't so in order to push a message that a matriarchal society wouldn't be as screwed up as a patriarchal society (albeit in different ways) get on my nerves.

I mean that literally, I'm not trying to say it's a deep metaphor or anything (this movie wouldn't recognize a metaphor if it came up and bit it in the ass) the man in this film is a stage performer in the Grand-Guignol tradition, and he literally believes that underneath society's moral facade, women are raging beasts who want to ravage and tear people down and eat their flesh. For those who don't know, Grand-Guignol refers to a theater in Paris which became famous for featuring graphic, over-the-top gory horror shows that purported to be real. The lead character in "Bloodsucking Freaks" is supposedly the last of the Grand-Guignol performers, hosting a popular weekly gore and horror stage show that claims to be real (and of course in this case it IS real) and from the opening of the film we see him using women as tables, chairs, and foot rests. No, I mean he actually sits on women who obediently allow him to do this, they crouch on the floor so he can rest his feet on them, he eats dinner as it rests in plates on a woman's back and he slaps her when she cries out as hot candle wax drips on her.

The women surrounding him are animalistic to the max, behaving like dogs, and he treats them accordingly, throwing food to them and keeping them locked in cages and feeding his enemies to them from time to time. The gore is not particularly realistic looking, but I doubt anyone gave a shit about that when this movie premiered. They were probably too busy having heart attacks about its content. In case you couldn't tell already, this wouldn't have been Gertrude Stein's favorite movie, ok? Anyway, apart from the gore and brutality against women, the plot, such as it is, centers around a cultured woman who is a dancer. The man in the stage show is obsessed with her, believing that her refinement is merely suppressing her true beastly nature, and he kidnaps her in order to train her to be the animal that she really is. Of course as time progresses, she stops struggling against him and succumbs to her environment, truly becoming the beast he believed her to be, and she does some mighty nasty things that are a lot of fun to watch though I think I'm probably going to hell in a hand basket for saying that (and I think I'm supposed to hate this movie, because I have a vagina and that requires me to be offended by things like this). But it mesmerizes me and I can't look away, and I can't pretend that's not the case.

Oh everything about this movie is bad. The acting is terrible (well, the lead actor who runs the show and the girl he kidnaps aren't THAT bad, but everyone else is) and the gore is fake looking and nothing really makes much sense. I'm making it seem more reasonable than it is with my review so don't be surprised if you rent it and find a jumbled mess with midgets and circus animals and ridiculous plot twists that would never happen in a million years. All those things are here in spades. But I'm pretty sure you won't be able to look away in spite of yourself.

Audiences were horrified by this movie. It was protested and preached against and ultimately given more publicity than it probably deserved, being the terrible little piece of degenerate trash that it is. But dammit, I was entertained, and sickened, and fascinated. I wasn't offended (though I can certainly see why others were) and if this movie sounds at all like something you might want to see, by all means, go right ahead. I have extra room in my hand basket.