Cinema in the 1980s was all about the meat. "Long live the new flesh," proclaimed James Woods in Videodrome, and when the flesh wasn't being splayed, flayed or contorted into new and nightmarish forms, Long Pig was firmly on the menu during that greedy, decadent decade.
The directorial debut of Brian Yuzna, collaborator of Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon, cult favourite Society joins a polite entrée of cannibal-flavoured fare, such as Paul Bartel's Eating Raoul (1982) and Peter Richardson's Eat The Rich (1987); although the film's nearest dining companion is surely Bob Balaban's Parents, employing the same sense of creeping familial paranoia, and is also from 1989 - as is Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Begging the question: just what was in the water that year?
In an era of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine some shadowy cabal of Republicans or braying Hoorays chowing down on the poor huddled masses ("Mmm, Job Seeker with gravy, anyone?") and Society, where John Hughes meets Davids Cronenberg and Lynch for lunch at The Four Seasons, posits exactly that scenario. Here, the rich really are another species, a race of Mr Stretchys, inbred to hell, and parasitically feeding on the lower orders: "The rich have always sucked off low-class s*** like you!"
As it opens, 17-year-old Bill Whitney (Warlock) seems to have the perfect set-up: home is a Californian mansion, his girlfriend's a cheerleader and, being a C-grade jock type, he's a shoo-in for class president. Drawbacks: notwithstanding a curly mullet Lou Reed would blanch at, he's feeling increasingly alienated from his family, a preppy bunch of West Coast WASPS, and is convinced he's adopted. Mom and dad barely acknowledge him, and his sister bulges in all the wrong places. As he gloomily tells his therapist Dr Cleveland (Slack), "We're just one big happy family - except for a little incest and psychosis." The usual teenage angst? Or is he on to something?
First he glimpses his showering sister through the misty booth twisted completely back to front at the torso, all ass over tits. Then her ex, Blanchard (Bartell) plays him a covertly recorded tape, appearing to indicate that his folks are holding incestuous orgies. "First we dine, then we copulate..." When Blanchard dies in a road accident, Bill becomes convinced of a cover-up, though he is distracted by a mysterious new girlfriend Clarissa (DeVasquez), intent on updating the 'Karma Sutra' with her improbably acrobatic positions in the sack. Until he discovers exactly what Dr Cleveland meant when he told him, "You're going to make a wonderful contribution to society".
While initially and mischievously coming on like some soapy teen melodrama, peopled with 'Baywatch' babes and beach-bullies, Yuzna's impish allegory gradually reveals the maggots with each crunch of the apple (metaphorically, and in actuality); peeling back the epidermis to expose the wormy heart of Beverly Hills.
It seems clear that Yuzna studied Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man at some length. Each subversive moment is calculated to completely wrong-foot a 1980s multiplex crowd, suckled on saggy, silicon horrors. "Cream and sugar... or do you want me to pee in it?" Clarissa casually enquires while pouring Bill's coffee. No wonder it was the critics' darling in Europe (with its tradition of killing rich people) but shelved for three years in the States: the Brat Pack may have been cocaine-addled brothel-botherers, but at least they never fastened a napkin in place while drizzling you with truffle oil.
The 20-minute climax, in which a disbelieving Bill is presented to the nouveau riche as the latest addition to their flesh fondue (the 'Shunting'), remains one of the most startling, shocking, and frankly exhilarating endings in the genre, let alone one of the kinkiest uses of latex in any medium. 2005's Slither may have upped the latex stakes, but SFX genius Screaming Mad George's sobriquet is entirely justified, as a crowd of thoroughbreds, stripped to their underwear, and "bent out of shape by society's pliers" to quote Bob Dylan, rearrange their DNA - dad really is a butthead - and slither through one another's yawning cavities like wet, red slugs.
Had the Marquis De Sade taken too much Camembert before bedtime, he'd be hard-pressed to imagine anything quite so brilliantly disgusting. It may be a one-gag picture, but it executes that gag with wit, flair and delirious abandon. Marx and Engels would surely applaud. Unfortunately, so would David Icke.
The directorial debut of Brian Yuzna, collaborator of Stuart (Re-Animator) Gordon, cult favourite Society joins a polite entrée of cannibal-flavoured fare, such as Paul Bartel's Eating Raoul (1982) and Peter Richardson's Eat The Rich (1987); although the film's nearest dining companion is surely Bob Balaban's Parents, employing the same sense of creeping familial paranoia, and is also from 1989 - as is Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Begging the question: just what was in the water that year?
In an era of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine some shadowy cabal of Republicans or braying Hoorays chowing down on the poor huddled masses ("Mmm, Job Seeker with gravy, anyone?") and Society, where John Hughes meets Davids Cronenberg and Lynch for lunch at The Four Seasons, posits exactly that scenario. Here, the rich really are another species, a race of Mr Stretchys, inbred to hell, and parasitically feeding on the lower orders: "The rich have always sucked off low-class s*** like you!"
As it opens, 17-year-old Bill Whitney (Warlock) seems to have the perfect set-up: home is a Californian mansion, his girlfriend's a cheerleader and, being a C-grade jock type, he's a shoo-in for class president. Drawbacks: notwithstanding a curly mullet Lou Reed would blanch at, he's feeling increasingly alienated from his family, a preppy bunch of West Coast WASPS, and is convinced he's adopted. Mom and dad barely acknowledge him, and his sister bulges in all the wrong places. As he gloomily tells his therapist Dr Cleveland (Slack), "We're just one big happy family - except for a little incest and psychosis." The usual teenage angst? Or is he on to something?
First he glimpses his showering sister through the misty booth twisted completely back to front at the torso, all ass over tits. Then her ex, Blanchard (Bartell) plays him a covertly recorded tape, appearing to indicate that his folks are holding incestuous orgies. "First we dine, then we copulate..." When Blanchard dies in a road accident, Bill becomes convinced of a cover-up, though he is distracted by a mysterious new girlfriend Clarissa (DeVasquez), intent on updating the 'Karma Sutra' with her improbably acrobatic positions in the sack. Until he discovers exactly what Dr Cleveland meant when he told him, "You're going to make a wonderful contribution to society".
While initially and mischievously coming on like some soapy teen melodrama, peopled with 'Baywatch' babes and beach-bullies, Yuzna's impish allegory gradually reveals the maggots with each crunch of the apple (metaphorically, and in actuality); peeling back the epidermis to expose the wormy heart of Beverly Hills.
It seems clear that Yuzna studied Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man at some length. Each subversive moment is calculated to completely wrong-foot a 1980s multiplex crowd, suckled on saggy, silicon horrors. "Cream and sugar... or do you want me to pee in it?" Clarissa casually enquires while pouring Bill's coffee. No wonder it was the critics' darling in Europe (with its tradition of killing rich people) but shelved for three years in the States: the Brat Pack may have been cocaine-addled brothel-botherers, but at least they never fastened a napkin in place while drizzling you with truffle oil.
The 20-minute climax, in which a disbelieving Bill is presented to the nouveau riche as the latest addition to their flesh fondue (the 'Shunting'), remains one of the most startling, shocking, and frankly exhilarating endings in the genre, let alone one of the kinkiest uses of latex in any medium. 2005's Slither may have upped the latex stakes, but SFX genius Screaming Mad George's sobriquet is entirely justified, as a crowd of thoroughbreds, stripped to their underwear, and "bent out of shape by society's pliers" to quote Bob Dylan, rearrange their DNA - dad really is a butthead - and slither through one another's yawning cavities like wet, red slugs.
Had the Marquis De Sade taken too much Camembert before bedtime, he'd be hard-pressed to imagine anything quite so brilliantly disgusting. It may be a one-gag picture, but it executes that gag with wit, flair and delirious abandon. Marx and Engels would surely applaud. Unfortunately, so would David Icke.