Ladymol's Review

Excellent! A worse movie than Querelle. I didn’t think I’d ever find that.

Five skinheads in London.

Violence and sex.

Talking about eating shit.

Rape.

Racism.

Hmm, anything else you want to know to NOT watch this movie?

I find it hard to believe that not only would someone make this film, it’s actually discussed seriously as “Arthouse”.

The five, clearly unemployed, spend their time either committing minor robberies with extreme violence – the opening scene where two of them drag a man into the bushes and beat him up for the fun of it is quite sickening; it goes on and on and I had to fast forward in the end – or fucking each other. Both (the violence and the sex) give definition to gratuitous, and as any of you who have read my stories know, I’m not offended by either in any way. 

They are neo-nazis, and we are treated in the opening sequence to one of them beating off over a copy of Mein Kamph (what’s the betting he was reading that in translation?).

There is a girl in the film who I watched with the sound muted.  Seriously, I work with men who swear quicker than breathe, but she’d give them a run for their money. Her mouth is as foul as her morals seemed to be.

Then, to cap it all, as the skinheads pair off and begin to fuck each other, they voice-over reading bizarre accounts of faeces eating and general depravity that also got muted.

Phew, have I put you off yet? If not, all of this is followed by a scene where they break into a mixed-race couple’s flat and proceed to generally abuse and rape them, which seems to be some kind of message. The only thing it relayed to me was that the film shouldn’t have been made.

I try to be fair with all the reviews. So, I am going to admit that when the main couple were having sex together, it was so violent, so joyous, and so masculine that it was quite a turn-on.  However, it’s semi-porn—you see flaccid penises but nothing erect. I’m not sure whether the sex was simulated or not. It didn’t look fake… But the acting in this movie wasn’t even up to the standards of that in the porn Rusty and Palmer have reviewed for us.  Take my advice and buy some real porn and enjoy it. Forgot this obscenity.

Cerisaye's Review

I am very glad this wasn’t the first Labruce film I watched.  If you haven’t tried his stuff before then I suggest you start with RASPBERRY REICH or HUSTLER WHITE rather than this one.  It’s nasty, brutal, violent and ugly.  Because it’s Labruce it’s also very sexy, with moments of laugh aloud humour, alongside the grotesque and downright disturbing- masturbation to Mein Kampf, a black man brutally raped to chants of Monkey, monkey.

The problem was my lack of comprehension about gay skinhead culture.  I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a gay Nazi, neo or otherwise.  You’d think those two terms just couldn’t ever go together, given what happened to homosexuals in Nazi Germany.  Yet apparently (I looked into this after watching the film) there is indeed a tradition of hypocritical homophobic gay fascists- Ernst Rohm (co-founder of the Nazi party later a victim of ‘the Night of the Long Knives’) Jorg Haider (Austria), Pim Fortuyn (Holland), Edouard Pfieffer (France), Nick Griffin (England).  The leader of the 70s skinhead movement in England was actually a gay porn star who died of AIDS.  Then I remembered BENT, Max’s lover with the powerful friend close to Hitler, Greta/George telling Max ‘Queer is out’.  Labruce says porn is fascist in that it fetishises white male domination.  Okay, I get that.

I didn’t think I’d ever say this about shaven headed louts, but some of the guys are really HOT.  Phew!  If they can’t act for toffee, it doesn’t matter ‘cos that’s not why they’re there.  Interestingly one of the characters is called Steve Masters.  I have  a weakness for master/slave porn and prolific writer Pete Brown, always uses that name for his macho hero, a straight guy who discovers the delights of ‘real sex’ through slavery/indenture (check out the Nifty archive).

Labruce loves mixing narrative with porno sequences.  I saw the cut version from an online rental company I’m sure has no idea what it’s got, given its usual supply of limp softcore stuff in the adult section.  I’d LOVE to get my hands on SKIN GANG, the original hardcore edition.

The stories of several men, including a pair of lovers Dirk & Dieter, link together, intercut with sequences variously in B & W and colour, culminating in a violent confrontation that comments on a middle class assimilationist couple, one black the other white, ‘safe’ and boring, vs. the sexy but hugely unPC skinhead gang, who say they’re not gay but have amazing sex.  Earlier we see the white partner in a tea room with a skinhead and the black guy, Leroy, seduce a sexy plumber in their kitchen.  So is he saying all gay men are fascists underneath?  That extreme butch masculinity is a statement against stereotypical views of gay men as effeminate and weak?  I don’t know.  I think the film’s shock tactics mixed with porn obscure any point he’s trying to make.  But Labruce is always watchable.