Behind the Couch

2012 Dirs. Jen and Sylvia Soska Following on from their low-budget but exuberant debut Dead Hooker in a Trunk , the Soska sisters’ sophomore offering is a darkly, wholly unsettling tale of an impoverished medical student who finds herself lured into the bizarre underground world of illegal surgery and extreme body modification. Unfurling as an intriguing character study, American Mary is a much more refined and mature film than Dead Hooker , though it still retains the jet-black humour and off-the-wall tone the filmmakers are quickly becoming known for. Part body horror, part rape-revenge, part black-comedy, the various sub-genres the filmmakers utilise to tell their tale are swirled into one highly distinctive and provocative whole. From the opening moments depicting Mary (Katherine Isabelle, Ginger Snaps ) practising her surgical skills on raw chicken flesh, to the various characters who later enlist her talents to alter their physical appearance, the emphasis in American Ma...

1962 Dir. Chano Urueta Sarah, a practising witch, discovers that her goddaughter Elena’s life is in danger and attempts to help her. The spirits and deities she converses with through her mystical mirror show Sarah the face of Elena’s killer, but command her not to interfere. Elena is soon poisoned by her husband, renowned surgeon Eduardo, who sets about moving his new wife Deborah (Rosita Arenas - The Curse of the Crying Woman ) into their castle. Sarah vows to avenge the death of her goddaughter and sets about communing with dark spirits to summon the ghost of Elena, who soon begins to stalk the halls of the castle and torment her husband and his new bride. With horrific consequences… This is a film in three distinct parts; each more elaborate and fiendishly enjoyable than the last. The first part, which involves the murder of a woman by her husband, and his subsequent remarriage to another woman, is a highly gothic and overwrought melodrama with distinct shades of Mario Bava a...

1960 Dir. Georges Franju Christiane (Edith Scob) is horrifically disfigured in a car accident caused by her father's reckless driving. Her father, famed surgeon Dr Génessier, is driven by guilt and despair to abduct young women, surgically remove their faces and attempt to graft them onto Christiane’s own scarred face. When Christiane realises what her father is doing, she decides that the time has come to show him that he cannot control everything… This was Franju’s feature film debut. Preceding it was a series of short films and documentaries, notably The Blood of the Beasts , a documentary about an abattoir. While not the first film to follow the exploits of a deranged surgeon, Eyes Without a Face was certainly the first to do so in such a poetic, provocative and literate way. It addresses notions of identity, morality, obsession and hope. Written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, writers whose earlier work such as Celle Qui N’Etart Plus and D’entre les Morts had ...