Alert! Right-wing activists buy your
posterboard and El Markos today! Joe Christ is coming to the
Young Avenue Deli on January 21st to screen his sick films, which
contain footage guaranteed to offend everything for which you
stand and foster unseemly notions in our citys precious and
corruptible youth.
With impossibly small budgets forcing him into the role of
uber-auteur, Joe Christ writes, directs, performs in, edits, and
plays on the soundtracks of all his films/videos. I like to
think the viewer is getting around $25,000 worth of movie for the
$3,000 or so I spend on them, since I do all the work myself.
I like for people to get their $5 admissions
worth, Christ declares.

Joe Christ
Photo by Amy Shapiro
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And just what does the viewer get for that hard-earned fin? Sex,
Blood and Mutilation is a shockumentary exploring the extremes of
body play, a curiously PC euphemism coined by Modern
Primitive progenitor Fakir Musafar covering all manner of
self-induced physical trauma from piercing and tattooing
to branding, slicing, and the employment of sundry devices to
perforate, amputate, squeeze, and otherwise alter that which the
good Lord gave you. There are even shots of an anonymous man who
has gone and had his thingy lopped off. But wait, isnt body
modification old news? Hasnt it spread faster than a
two-dollar slattern throughout the 90s, culminating in a
frenzy of tattoo ink and pierced labia, lasting about as long as
Perry Farrell, but leaving indelible marks on the collective body
of an overcaffeinated and underwhelmed Gen X? Sure. But Sex,
Blood and Mutilation does offer a chance to observe Genesis
P-Orridge, of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV fame, playing with
his metal-crusted pee-pee. Also, the late Tattoo Mike Wilson,
Coney Islands pain-proof geek and illustrated man, is
preserved for posterity, performing highlights from his show,
which include such daring feats as the dangling of his doodled-on
naughties over a bear trap. And there is, of course, the
aforementioned anonymous Bobbittation. Cutting edge? Hard to say,
but for fans of alt-culture extremes, and especially REsearch
Magazines exhaustive Modern Primitives, Sex, Blood and
Mutilation should prove to be a pleasingly unpleasant diversion.
But wait,
theres more. Your quarter-saw also affords you a viewing of
Christs comic look at the brutal murders of Dr. Jeffrey
MacDonalds (think Fatal Vision) pregnant wife and two young
daughters way back in 1970. Acid is Groovy
Kill the Pigs is
named for the words chanted by a mysterious woman in a floppy hat
who was present while masked drug addicts armed with baseball
bats and blades went about the bloody business of hacking
MacDonalds family to pieces. At least that was the story a
nicked-up and somewhat rumpled MacDonald told as part of a
not-quite-clever-enough scheme to divert suspicion from himself,
by sending authorities on a snipe hunt, searching for a
fabricated band of killer hippies copycatting the crimes of
antichrist-apparent Charles Manson and family.
And thats still not all! If Sex, Blood and Mutilation
isnt enough, and Acid is Groovy
Kill the Pigs still
isnt enough for your five bucks, Speed Freaks with Guns
opens a peephole into the life of a Texas methamphetamine addict
cum serial killer with a thing for making home
movies. Made, according to Christ, to fuck with
the drug-addled weirdos who were apparently abundant in Dallas
during the 80s, when meth was King. Christ
says, I play a character who is a composite of eight of the
most wacked-out speed-freaks I knew in Texas. Everything my
character says is a verbatim quote from one of those people I
knew, except that this guy has committed a bunch of murders.
On one hand, Christ appears to be little more than a modern-day
P.T. Barnum with a VCR, peddling his grainy videos
(
Looking like something someone shot in a single day
with a home-video camera, according to the freak-devoted
Web site Monsters On The Net) from behind the bullet-proof glass
of the art worlds loftiest notion that any
expression, born from an unshakable need to reflect nature, no
matter how crudely rendered, offensive, or sensational, can be
art. Gaudy treasures born of vanity like Faberge eggs take refuge
beneath this same canopy, as does the lowly macramé. On the
other hand, the man who once ran for governor of Texas on the
Christ is the Answer ticket demanding euthanasia for
the unemployed, has all the makings of a fine folklorist.
Christs stories about fantastical people and mutilated
maniacs are the kinds of stories that creep into our subconscious
and spawn urban legends.
--Chris Davis
Film Vault Suggested Links
Divine Trash 
Sick 
Home Page 
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