Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Viewer’s Choice

I love Scooter McCrae’s films (Sixteen Tongues, Shatter Dead, Saint Frankenstein), so like any band I adore — or director/writer in this case — I’m always worried when a new creation comes out from them. Definitely, if I’m a true believer of that artist, which I am with McCrae’s work. I mean, I own the script books and the Blu-rays; I’ve watched everything else he’s done multiple times. 

So while Black Eyed Susan is my least favorite of his films, that’s not a bad review. It’s still better and more thought-provoking than anything else I’ve seen this year.

Derek (Damian Maffei) is going through a rough divorce and barely getting by as an Uber driver. Then, he gets a strange offer from Gil (Marc Romeo), a childhood friend. He’s been creating an AI sex bot, one that can take the abuse that he believes men want to deliver to women. He thinks Derek, thanks to his bad marriage, alcoholism and violent nature, will be the perfect one to put the robot (Yvonne Emilie Thälker), called Black Eyed Susan by its tech team, through its paces.

We’ve already seen the robot be abused by another man — who later killed himself — earlier in the film. She is the utter definition of a lack of agency. She can’t walk; her dreams are only of her owner. All she wants to do is fuck. Even when she asks for things, it’s what she thinks her owner wants. In short, she’s the male gaze given form, but one that can’t walk and whose every moment is devoted to male pleasure, especially if that involves assault, as she’s ready to bleed from several areas, not just simulate female arousal.

What I disliked about this movie is that it thinks that BDSM sex is the same as abuse. Degradation, when consensual, is a part of the two partners’ contract and may be something they both enjoy. This suggests that all men, even those who try to be moral, only have the capacity to inflict pain. 

What I did enjoy was the 16mm filming, the Fabio Frizzi soundtrack, and so much of the idea. I wanted more; I wanted to learn what an actual relationship between Derek and Susan could be like. By the time the movie gets going, it feels like it’s already over. Thälker is also incredible in this, and I like how, for being the perfect male sex object, she has so many things that many men would be turned off by: body hair, an androgynous look, and an edge. She feels like an alien. I also enjoyed how Amanda (Kate Kiddo), one of the creators, wants to know how their sessions go. Derek seemingly is courting Susan, who keeps mentioning sex at every opportunity; it’s as if she makes him chaste by comparison.

For all the big questions this film raises, it feels like — again — it ends too quickly and too cleanly. Of course, the people who make the robots have further, darker plans. But is that any reason for Derek to give in to his rage? It feels like we’ve fast-forwarded and lost the plot a bit. That said, I’m not the filmmaker. I’d be interested to see why McCrae went in this direction.

In Anton LaVey’s Pentagonal Revisionism: A Five-Point Program, he said that Satanists should be part of significant change, including the development and production of artificial human companions. He wrote, “The forbidden industry. An economic “godsend” which will allow everyone “power” over someone else. Polite, sophisticated, technologically feasible slavery. And the most profitable industry since TV and the computer.”

In the Rolling Stone article “Symphony for the Devil,” this appears:

“On the way, LaVey talked about androids, his favorite hobbyhorse. He has spent years working on his own android prototypes—his mannequins—preparing for the day when the science of robotics will enable industry to begin producing artificial human companions. ”The forbidden industry,” he called it. “Polite, sophisticated, technologically feasible slavery.” Most of his dolls are store mannequins with their faces sawn off, replaced by latex impressions of his friends’ faces.

“I sculpted one entirely out of polyurethane foam,” LaVey said as we edged across the bridge through the fog. “I inhaled all those fumes trying to create a realistic woman with actual sexual parts. I put so much of my personal fetishistic desire into it that I became like Pygmalion. I kept expecting her to show up on my doorstep.”

“Do you have sex with your dolls?” I asked.

Pause.

“I tried to,” he said. “It was going to be my great test run. Just as I was entering her, the damn room started shaking. An earthquake hit. I figured it was God’s way of telling me something. So I ceased”—he laughed—“my activities of the moment.”

LaVey turned suddenly solemn. “When I say ‘God’, you know, it’s just a figure of speech.””

This feels like it only scratches the surface of what could be, but as I said, with a creator this talented, that may be enough.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Viewer’s Choice

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.

We’ve come to the final page in the last chapter of Horror Gives Back. Before I close the book on another successful journey through horror films I’ve watched for the first time, I’ve saved one of the best for last—Tibor Takács’ I, Madman.

By 1989, horror had pretty much run its course at the box office. Jason may have been taking Manhattan, but he grossed less than 15 million. Freddy didn’t fare much better with The Dream Child, garnering about 22 million dollars. The top grossing horror film of 1989? Pet Sematary with 57 million, slightly less than that Al Pacino film Sea of Love. Audiences were much more interested in spending money on action and family-oriented movies than horror. Perhaps the true horror was yet to come in the next decade.

As far as I, Madman’s box office, it is non-existent. After a regional release, the film was dumped on home video, as so many films were in those days. Eventually, it has taken on a bit of a cult following it seems. With one eye looking in the past and one eye looking forward, I, Madman combines the 1950s nostalgia so many films hoped to capture and pulled it into the turn of the decade.

The film follows Virginia (Jenny Wright), an aspiring actress who works at a local bookstore. She has come across an old book entitled Much of Madness, More of Sin, written by someone named Malcolm Brand. The main character of this novel forms an obsession around an actress named Anna. She does not care for his face, so he decides to just cut off all of his features. His nose. His ears. His lips. His scalp. You know, as one does when one is rejected by a woman.

Unable to find Brand’s follow up novel, I, Madman, Virginia is dejected, but, amazingly, she finds the book at the doorstep to her apartment. In this novel, the character is back, harvesting those body parts he had removed from unsuspecting victims in order to graft them onto his own body. But suddenly, fiction becomes reality, as Virginia begins witnessing murders and is haunted by the man from the novel. Could the events have truly leapt from the page? Or is Virginia experiencing some sort of psychotic break? The fantastical ending perhaps poses more questions than answers.

I, Madman does a fantastic job of combining two worlds: the seediness of a 50s pulp novel, complete with a film noir feel, and a bit of a neo-noir, as Virginia’s boyfriend, Richard (Clayton Rohner), is a detective on the case, torn between solving the crime and believing his girlfriend. Surprisingly, he does not totally dismiss Virginia’s claims. Add a touch of Rear Window, stop motion effects that you never see anymore, and some of the best production design of any film in the late 80s, and a cult classic is born.

I find myself guilty of saying clichés like “they just don’t make films like this anymore”. Truth is, they never made films like I, Madman. It’s almost singular in its originality. Filmmakers are not allowed to take these chances anymore unfortunately. Thus, I do not find modern horror to be that interesting. Like Virginia, I find myself scouring the past for content that lights up my imagination. Luckily, I’m not sure that I will ever hit bottom, as I keep finding fantastic films year after year. 

I can probably start making my Horror Gives Back list for next year. Note to self: add The Gate to films to try to squeeze into a category. I suddenly need more Tibor Takács in my life.