In a sort of dollhouse of identical cross-section hospital rooms, a doctor gorily tears him open, sloppily pulling out guts and slimy blood and jewelry and books (pretty sure I saw the Lee Iacocca book in there!?) until he finds a nasty larval creature with a giant mouth crying like a human baby, which a nurse carries to a large being in a plague doctor mask. I didn’t realize this corpse was our departed Assassin. On my first viewing I thought the story changed in the next segment, where a red curtain opens and an audience is delighted by the silhouettes of monsters tearing open a corpse behind a white screen. He sets the timer on his explosives, but a biomechanical beast drags him away and then it doesn’t go off. It did not occur to me until reading about it that maybe these belonged to all the Assassins who failed before him. At the bottom he finds a giant pile of briefcases. Those that survivor are whipped and herded to a giant screen showing bad teeth and a veiny eyeball while baby sounds are broadcast over loudspeakers.Īnd then the Assassin finds a stairway. There’s something existentially horrifying about the way they just keep walking until they’re casually splatted by machines or flying monoliths or stomped into goo by vicious blob monsters. Some stagger to a hole that burns and devours them, others do manual labor manufacturing monoliths and maggots, or slicing or milking hideous mutant walrus creatures, until they’re flattened by steamrollers or falling objects, and then piles of their bodies are excavated and transported away by rail. On that level he finds a platform elevator that lowers him even further, past the giant mutant head drinking the slime pouring out of the row of people being electrocuted above, past inflating and deflating bladders, to an injection mold machine churning out hundreds of wobbly human-shaped hairballs. It’s all ticking clocks, whirring servos, tinkling music boxes, puttering engines, rattling cages, crackling flames, clicking gears, flittering wings, collapsing earth, air raid sirens, explosions, gunfire, gnomes chirping like Jawas, babies crying in the distance, and most of all the sounds of the Assassin’s thick coat shifting around, and his boots crunching into dirt.Īfter some time on what seems to be the bottom, the Assassin falls through the ground to an understructure of pipes, wiring and tunnels, and finds a filthy lab where animals are being cruelly experimented on. ![]() The score by Dan Wool of Pray For Rain (Cox’s guy since SID & NANCY) is crucial, but so is the sound design by Richard Beggs ( TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM, CHILDREN OF MEN), which helps bring life to these inanimate objects. There’s virtually no human language that can be heard clearly – just some grunts like in those original Aeon Flux shorts. There’s a story here, but it’s all dream logic, told with mood, atmosphere and symbolism, not words. People who demand a strong narrative will melt into a puddle and be lapped up by weird crab monsters with human teeth. He seems to be on a mission to set off a suitcase of dynamite deep in the earth, and most of the movie is a long journey downward, following an ever-crumbling map. ![]() He’s the one who sends a character I know from reading is called “The Assassin” – a man in a gas mask who is lowered in a diving bell past towers and rocks and layers of dinosaur bones and stone idols to a war-torn wasteland. The God of this movie may or may not be a weird priest played by REPO MAN director Alex Cox, one of a few live action characters seen briefly. YOUR LAND SHALL BECOME A DESOLATION AND YOUR CITIES A RUIN.” AND YOU WILL SCATTER AMONG THE NATIONS AND I WILL UNSHEATH THE SWORD AGAINST YOU. It ends, “I WILL MAKE THE LAND DESOLATE SO THAT YOUR ENEMIES WHO SETTLE IT SHALL BE APPALLED BY IT. It’s hard to describe (or know) what it’s about, but its version of the STAR WARS opening scroll is an actual scroll inked with a menacing threat from Leviticus. ![]() MAD GOD is a bizarre stop motion journey through the large intestine of a nightmare.
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