Sickest Of The Sick

August 2, 2010 by Editor
Filed under Mondo Archive

Sickest Of The Sick

A few words on Fred Vogel’s August Underground

Written By: James Of The Dead
Mondo Film & Video Guide Contributor

Often films come out that have the self imposed taglines of being the nastiest of the nasty or the “sickest film ever made” and a lot of times the films are sick but it leaves me questioning if it’s really the big daddy of grossout, the conan of violent celluloid. So when I heard wind of the August Underground films garnering that tagline I proceeded with interest but some trepidation on whether or not the tagline would hold true. Holy shit did it ever hold true.

August Underground is a sick sick little film directed by then a new force to be reckoned within the genre, Fred Vogel. The film the rampages of 2 men throughout town in a balls to the wall tyranny devoid of any consequences. They tie up women in a makeshift basement dungeon and torture them relentlessly. They pick up random drifters only to force sex acts upon them and proceed to pummel the life from them in a secluded witness free burial ground of sorts and that’s only scratching the surface of the first movie.

The entire series of gritty brutality spans over three films being August underground, August underground Mordom, and August underground Penance. While a lot of series and sequels lose massive steam and purpose as the sequels pile up ( SAW franchise I’m looking at you) The A.U ventures are not in that group by any stretch of the imagination the sequels further push the gore-filled tattered and torn envelope. With the second adding Cristie “crusty” Whiles and the front man for Necrophagia “killjoy” to the mix the dynamic created between all the characters pushes the violent escapades into unprecedented heights. Being a fellow Pittsburgh-ian in spirit ( no longer live there sadly) I loved seeing the crew use local settings and having pride for where they come from, I especially loved the scene in Mordom where they invade incredibly strange video, a Pittsburgh based horror store.

What really got me about the third installment “Penance” is the character development between Fred and Crusty, I hope I am at liberty to call her Crusty. I can’t tell you the last time in low budget horror I saw an honest attempt at character development at least one that works, Penance does just that and I was incredibly surprised and impressed. Lets not forget the movies in question however the character development comes with much violence and profanity running amuck, for the subject matter it worked beautifully though.

People tend to harp on these movies for bad camera work or bad acting and to them I say FUCK YOU, go watch final destination or hostel. What Fred has done with the trilogy is give us a realism to the violence, a realism that’s few and far between these days. So many films claim to be the “sickest thing ever made” but they lack realism to sell the sickness and that’s where Fred’s works come in and excel in every way possible.

You have to look at these films for what they are and they make no apologies for being and not compare them to big box Hollywood banality that may garner a tagline of being “sick” . I think that the prolific use of “fuck” and other colorful profanity packaged in with the camera work gives us that level of realism that nobody else can seem to “get”. This can be proven time and time again by doing a little test that I’ve done in the past.

Put in August Underground and queue it up past any credits and hit pause, set someone in front of the TV that’s never seen it or heard of it and hit play. Act like it’s a real snuff film and I promise you the unsuspecting victim you’re putting this through will agree with you.

The first time I watched August Underground was a landmark film experience. In my nearly 30 years of life and 20 years of watching horror I have rarely and I’m talking like once or twice at most wondered if what I was watching was real. It was that damn close to the actual thing! Now I’m sure a lot of people will argue that he’s only doing what the Guinea Pig films did years ago and I disagree whole heartedly. Granted aspects of August Underground definitely play out like the first two Guinea pig films but that series lacked consistency. The later movies got absurd and even silly. Even if you look at the first two films Flowers of flesh and blood and The Devils experiment there is nearly no dialogue. No characters to give a shit about, no dynamics just 2-dimensional torture.

For what they are, Fred’s films are good, really good, but I don’t see myself comparing the two guinea pig films to the A.U series the guinea pig movies came out years ago and have since fallen off the face of the earth to my knowledge there’s been no new installments for years while Fred and company are consistently turning out shock-fests to trump the silly mermaid in a manhole or devil woman doctor. Don’t get me wrong I loved the Guinea Pig films in their own right I just wouldn’t compare them to Fred’s work I’m sure there’s other Japanese films that are just as nasty as the guinea pig films that I haven’t mentioned that some elitists may argue are better or more realistic than the AU films, however every time I sit through one of those “sickest of the sick” Japanese films I find myself toying with boredom more so than shock and intrigue.

Fred Vogel and his contributions to horror and gore cinema are much like a de-gloved skull covered in gore and remnants of humanity impaled on a stake sitting out in plain view where everyone is forced to gaze upon it’s raw gritty ferocity, meaning he’s here in a big way once sucked into these movies it’s very hard to look away. Lets hope that toe tag pictures and Fred himself are shocking people’s senses for years to come. Job well done

James Of The Dead is a contributor at the Mondo Film & Video Guide. He’s also the co-founder of the success Don’t Bite My Arm Vlog. You can view episodes here on the Mondo site on youtube.com