Fellini Satyricon (1970)

"Fellini Satyricon" is an adaptation of Petronius' classic novel about the decadence of ancient Rome circa 50 to 66 AD, during emperor Nero's reign. Federico Fellini's film was made 10 years before"Caligula", which is somewhat similar because of the same time period and location.

It follows the adventures of two male students, Encolpio (Martin Potter) and Ascilto (Hiram Keller). First they fight over the effeminate boy Gitone (Max Born) whom Ascilto sells to a playwright Vernachio (Fanfulla). An earthquake destroys their home, they meet poet Eumolpo (Salvo Rondone) and attend a banquet orgy thrown by Trimalchio (Mario Romagnoli). A widow offers her husband's corpse to her lover to replace the stolen corpse he was guarding. She says, "Better to hang a dead husband than a living lover."

Our heroes are enslaved on a ship, and Encolpio marries the old captain Lica (Alain Cuny) who is soon killed by rivals. A nobleman, supposedly Petronius (Joseph Wheeler), commits suicide and Encolpio and Ascilto tour his grand house and meet an Ethiopian slave. They next kidnap an albino hermaphrodite demi-god from the temple of Apollo. The hermaphrodite dies, causing Encolpio to become impotent. His cure is sex with a whore-priestess, which fails. He fights a minotaur (George Eastman) and survives by telling him, "I'm only a student." Sex with fat Enotea (Donyale Luna) cures his impotence. Encolpio and Ascilto are going to sail with Eumolpo to Africa, but he dies and his will stipulates that his friends must eat his corpse. Ascilto is murdered and in the end their images are transformed into an ancient fresco painting. Fellini said, "In Satyricon, I was influenced by the look of frescoes. At the end, these people, whose lives were so real to them, are now only crumbling frescoes."

Encolpio: "Ascilto... what does the poet say? Each moment presented may be your last, so fill it up until you vomit... or something such?"

The book by Gaius Petronius Arbiter has survived in fragments, so "Fellini Satyricon" is also fragmentary and less than coherent. The hallucinatory journey visually compensates for this with a parade of over-indulgent, garish, and freaky characters, settings and situations. Fellini defined his movie as, "Science Fiction of the past" and said, "There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life." He was attracted to the decadence of ancient Rome because of its rich imagery and colours. The larger than life juxtapositions of beauty and ugliness make the film a mesmerizing, grotesque, surreal, and astonishing feast for the eyes.

"Satyricon" was registered to Gian Luigi Polidoro's film, so Fellini was required to modify the title of his movie. United Artists paid over $1 million to Polidoro for the distribution rights to his version, to keep it off the market until after the release of "Fellini Satyricon".

Strangely, Fellini made a public announcement that the Beatles and Mae West (as High Priestess) would appear in the movie. He never consulted with them, and of course they are not in the film. When asked why the main actors are not Italians, Fellini replied: "Because there are no homosexual Italians."

The dialogue is Italian with some Latin. It is dubbed in, because that's the way the Italians make most of their movies. India, the world's largest maker of movies, also uses this dubbing method because of the many languages and dialects in India. "Fellini Satyricon" was only available in widescreen format due to Fellini's insistence, but I recently acquired a beautiful full screen "pan and scan" version.

The cast includes: Salvo Randone (Eumolpo), Mario Romagnoli (Trimalcione), Magali Noel (Fortunata), Capucine (Trifena), Alain Cuny (Lica), Fanfulla (Vernacchio), Danika La Loggia (Scintilla), Giuseppe Sanvitale (Abinna), Genius (Liberto Arricchito), George Eastman (Minotaur), Marcello Di Falco (Proconsole), Elisa Mainardi (Arianna), Donyale Luna (Enotea), Eugenio Mastropietro (Cinedo), Irina Maleeva (L'ancella), and many others. Writing credits are Petronius, Federico Fellini, Bernardino Zapponi, and Brunello Rondi. Music was composed by Tod Dockstader, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Nino Rota, and Andrew Rudin. Federico Fellini directed.

"Ciao, Federico!" (1971) is a behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of "Fellini Satyricon". It is fascinating to see the movie being made because many of the actors have English accents. Fellini's style and techniques as director are impressive, and he is gracious, patient, larger than life, and completely in control. Gitone plays guitar and sings a Bob Dylan song. Roman Polanski with Sharon Tate visit the outdoor set and Polanski recommends that Fellini should get "stoned" and visit Disneyland. Gideon Bachman scripted and directed.

Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco (1981)

Pixote (Fernando Ramos da Silva), a 10-year-old runaway boy, is arrested on the streets of São Paulo during a police round-up of homeless people. He is sent to a juvenile reformatory where the boys are only pawns in the criminal, sadistic games of the prison guards and their commander. The prison is a hellish school where Pixote sniffs glue to escape from the constant threats of abuse and rape. Pixote endures torture, degradation and corruption, and two runaways are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica (Jorge Julião), a 17-year-old transvesite hustler. Lilica's lover then conveniently also dies, with some help from the guards.

Soon after, Pixote, Lilica, and Dito (Gilberto Moura) find an opportunity to flee from the prison. They make their living by crime, which only escalates to more violence and death. First they stay at the apartment of Cristal (Tony Tornado), a former lover of Lilica, but when tensions arise they go to Rio for a cocaine drug deal. Unfortunately, they get duped by a showgirl. After some time bumming around the city, Pixote and his friends go to a club for another drug deal. While there, Pixote finds the showgirl that took their drugs and stabs her. They become pimps for the alcoholic prostitute Sueli (Marilia Pera), who is definitely past her prime. The group conspires to rob her johns, but that scheme fails when an American john fights back so they have to shoot him. In the ensuing fight, Pixote accidentally shoots Dito as well. Later, after being rejected by the mother figure of Sueli, Pixote is seen walking down a railway line with a gun in hand, away from the camera, his figure disappearing in the distance.

Though depressing and unlikeable, "Pixote" is an outraged response to the hardships suffered by millions of homeless street kids in Brazil who turn to crime to survive and are exploited by criminal gangs because of a loophole in Brazilian law which forbids the prosecution of minors. Most scandalous of all are the corrupt police officers who participate in the murder of countless street children every year, treating it as a form of "pest control". This gritty portrait of juvenile poverty and street crime in Brazil was shot in documentary fashion and used amateur actors whose real lives strongly resembled those in the film.

After completing the film, Fernando Ramos da Silva sank back into poverty and crime, and was murdered at age 19 in 1987, allegedly by police in São Paulo. His life and death was subsequently dramatized in 1996 by director Jose Joffily in "Who Killed Pixote?" (Quem Matou Pixote?), which showed that despite the outcry created by "Pixote", Brazil has done little to alleviate these conditions. John Neschling composed the music. The screenplay was written by Hector Babenco and Jorge Durán, based on the book "A infância dos mortos" (The Childhood of the Dead Ones) by José Louzeiro. Hector Babenco directed. The English title is "Pixote: The Law of the Weakest". In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Beastly Boyz (2006)

Young artist Rachel (Valerie Murphy) is murdered at her secluded lake front house by a group of seven boys. Enraged and shocked by his twin sister's senseless murder, Rachel's brother Travis (Sebastian Gacki) vows to avenge her murder and punish her killers one by one, even if it costs him his soul. Travis narrates this film and can't get his sister's voice out his head as she pleads for revenge from beyond the grave. Guided by his sister's ghostly voice that commands him to take brutal revenge, he hunts down each of the killers and punishes them in gruesome fashion. Sickened by the horror of his own murderous actions, and driven by his sister's vengeful spirit, Travis discovers a fate much worse than murder.

As Travis enacts vengeance for his sister, he seems to enjoy it. His body is a work of art, and the scene where he appears only in his shorts and tortures the equally unclad Alan (Dean Hrycan), who is tied from the rafters of a cabin, is one of the most terrifying erotic scenes ever filmed. Travis' penchant for rubbing the blade of his knife over the skin of the boys before killing them allows us to see the repressed sexual frustration of this avenger. In fact, the knife becomes a phallic symbol in this disturbing tale. After seeing the near-nude Travis get into the shower with one of his victims, the perfectly sculptured Max (Neil William Hrabowy), only to end up stabbing him, the moral of this tale of torture and revenge should be clear: supression of sexuality leads to destruction.

This homoerotic horror movie is carried by long and lingering photographic scenes and background music. There is almost no dialogue, only a few words of voice-over to give some structure. It's a near-silent, visually excessive mesmerizing cinematic poem with primal tensions, and is not for everyone. Dreamlike, disturbing, beautiful, and astonishing, with loads of visceral imagery, "Beastly Boyz" is a unique, original, and bizarre excursion into perversion. Joe Silva composed the incidental music. David Grove wrote the screenplay, and David DeCoteau directed.