The director of this film, Guerila Metropolitana, either has a huge PR budget or is willing to email and PM me to get me — who am I, anyways? — to watch this movie. At this point, I feel like I kind of had to watch it.

Here’s an example of an audio message I got from him: “You know, the film is going pretty wild. I just had one of the greatest honors: being reviewed a couple of days ago by one of the most important film websites in the world. And that’s off-screen, which is run by some of the most competent film academics ever. And they praise the film. But at the same time, other critics demonize the film, calling it repugnant, offensive, misogynistic and so on. The film is not an easy watch.

I’ll tell you from the beginning. It’s not an easy watch at all. It’s not even horror. It’s horrific, but it’s not horror. It’s quite pornographic, although it’s not porn, but it’s quite pornographic. It’s very extreme, very sadistic.

It is almost plotless. It’s got a very basic plot. The film is highly experimental. It puts the theme of artistic freedom at the center. How far can a filmmaker go in the name of artistic freedom? Voyeurism topics like that are in place. The complete rejection of morality in exchange for enlightenment.

So that’s pretty much the core of the film. The cast, all of them, all the performers, have used aliases to protect their careers and identities. These are performers who are actively involved in the UK independent movie business. They all have regular careers in traditional film, some even in television. So they didn’t want their careers ruined, so they chose aliases. Well, I chose aliases for them.

And the film does have some degree of reality. There are quite a few scenes of real sexual scenes, obviously with consent. But the film is a voyeuristic trip into madness, power and domination. It’s currently in global distribution on DVD and Blu-ray through Blood Pact Films. It is also distributed by a German distribution company. It is on streaming.

Next month, it will be on the 17th for a one-day screening in the state of Indiana at a movie theater. I will send you the picture that Blood Pact Films sent me for a special screening throughout the day. The film is very divisive, very polarizing.

Some have called the film a visionary work of art. Others have called the film an offensive, repugnant piece of film. So nothing in between.

The same reputation that I had with my previous film, Darius, which is a completely different kind of film. This film, The Benefactress, seemed to kind of double whatever reputation I had from my previous film as a controversial, bizarre filmmaker. Please take your time.

Watch the film past the final credits, because it continues for another minute. There’s nothing normal in this film. (Like I say, it’s not an easy watch.

It’s not an easy film. It’s not a nice film. So don’t expect to watch a nice film. That was not my intent. My intent was to create an experimental, extreme piece of cinema and to fuck around with all the classic rules of cinema. That was my intent.

The intent was not to create nice entertainment. There are other filmmakers for that. My main thing as a film director is to experiment. And this film is all about that. The title itself says it all: an exposure of cinematic freedom. So that’s what this film is.

It’s cinematic freedom. It’s not beauty. It’s not being nice.

It’s freedom experimentation to the utmost level. Thank you.”

How could I say no after that message?

After the cult success of Dariuss, director Guerrilla Metropolitana is hired by a dying woman with a fake name, Elektra McBride and a powerful televangelist husband. She only has one demand: to appear in the film via video link. A seemingly virtuous charity worker, Juicy X, becomes the face of a film driven not by art, but by obsession, control and the twisted desires of its unseen patron as Juicy X and Metropolitana himself decimate their victim through BDSM-style treatment.

As we see McBride watching as she breathes air through a mask and occasionally touches herself, we learn more about Juicy X, who claims that she was sexually abused by Metropolitana as she worked on his last film. However, she wants to transcend acting and this film is a way to do that.

Then, with no set narrative, the Mystery Woman is abused sexually until a gun is produced and we finally watch a cleaner (Marie Antoinette de Robespierre) disinfect the scene. 

In a world that has produced cinema like Salo, Sweet Movie, the films of Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco, not to mention Last House On Dead End Street, Forced Entry, Waterpower, Armand Weston’s The Taking of Christina and The Defiance of Good, as well as any number of films by Japanese creatives like Sade Satô, Hideshi Hino, Daisuke Yamanouchi or Hisayasu Satô:, I wonder how shocked anybody can be. 

What works here isn’t the movie as much as the psychodrama created around it. I miss ballyhoo and selling movies; Metropolitana has gone all out to get people to watch this, often on what seems like a one-on-one basis. That’s commitment. What he made feels like a test for the audience to get through or perhaps one where the viewer reflects on all the things their eyes have seen. 

For all the talk toward how shocking this is — and I hate comparing movies to other movies, but here I go — this didn’t destroy me like Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, which puts the viewer through hell thanks to its unblinking eye as we watch people be ruined and yet still retain a storytelling arc, much less one in reverse. It feels closer to the Nick Zedd Cinema of Transgression era, perhaps without the eye of a Richard Kern. 

Often, films like this — I’m looking at you, A Serbian Film — cloak their transgressive nature in a square-up reel explanation that they’re making a political statement or commenting on how the world treats people. Yet they want to have their cake and fuck it repeatedly while you watch, too, and then kill said cake. 

I want to understand what Metropolitana wants from this and what he’s trying to say. At the very least, you have to give it to him to not only go full frontal nude on camera, but to wear a t-shirt of his last film while doing so. 

As they say, always be selling.

You can watch this for yourself on Fawesome.