This here article what you see underneath this introduction was originally submitted to the good folks at The Harry Knowles Digest. Unfortunately, there was an influx of news about how Hellboy Will Own Your Ass that day, so The Duke's exquisite wordplay went unacknowledged. Here then, is the complete text of that momentous, much-bootlegged appraisal of the Switchblade Romance, known to the French as Haute Tension.
Alexandre Aja's festival favourite Haute Tension is the latest film in the enormously successful Demented Psychopath Gets Psychopathic With Regards Females franchise. You may remember other notable entries in the series, like The Burning and The Freddy Krueger Affair. There are, however, several notable differences regarding this particular outing, and for the benefit of any students of the genre what might be reading, I will present these differences to you in an easily digested yet grammatically impeccable manner.
Firstly, this one here is French, and, as such, stars French actors and actresses, and even goes so far as to be set in France.
Secondly, this one here is all controversial, and just so you remember that, we get some irrelevant shots of a woman masturbating about ten minutes in by way of putting the "super" back in superfluous, and also illustrating the controversial nature of it all. Anyone with a disposition regarding the old controversy had better be careful, because if it's anything at all, Haute Tension is controversial. Nary a scene goes past without a lashing of the old controversy.
Now, one would be forgiven for assuming that a film with a title like Haute Tension might be tense to some degree, possibly even a very high one. This, however, is to ignore the fact that the English translation of the title is not The Highest Of Tensions, or even Very Tense Indeed, but actually Switchblade Romance.
I'd imagine they decided that Haute Tension means Switchblade Romance after taking into account several pertinent factors. For one thing, Haute Tension isn't really all that tense. A suitable title might have been Middling Tension With Long Periods Of Tedium, but since that was rather unwieldy, they finally settled on Switchblade Romance. So as you don't assume it's a horror film or anything daft like that. It's a love story, don't you know, possibly involving retractable knives, but still terribly edgy and worthy and so on.
I expected great things from this. I expected to be made feel rather uncomfortable for a time, owing to the high levels of tension herein. I expected to be shocked, surprised, and to go "No, God, Please Make It Stop". Each of these prophecies were proven grossly inaccurate, however, when mine arse finally touched velvet and the whole shebang unraveled.
The film starts in a manner similar to Jeepers Creepers, so much so in fact that were one to indulge in the satanic practices of file sharing, one would assume they had downloaded a copy of said film dubbed into French. Two students in a car, bickering and making jokes about the sexing, and then they're on a highway, which is lonely, as is a highway's wont, and next thing you know there's corn-fields as far as the eye can see.
But just so you don't start thinking, holy shit, this is just like that film by the fellow what did Clownhouse, we get to see a man getting a blow-job from a severed head.
Article comments
1 - Chris Kent
Oh my God! Just about the funniest damn post I've ever read......Excellent work here. I figure any post that references Amityville II, Robert Wise AND Duel, has got something going for it. Glad to hear they properly renamed From Dusk Till Dawn.....
As for blow jobs and heads of corpses - uncomfortable to say the least, though remember reading about such activities in Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho...a book I refused to keep on my bookshelf after reading it. Though I did respect the film version, which left out that specific activity......
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Thanks for the kind words chris! Yes, i remember reading American Psycho, and constantly telling myself that it'll be grand, this'll only last a page or two and then it'll setlle down. And then breasts exlplode. But it'll calm down! And then a kid gets stabbed in the throat. But it'll calm down!! Very, very uncomfortable experience, yet strangely compelling all the same. I thought the film was grand, but by leaving out 90% of the violence, it kinda just ended up as Wall Street with better jokes. The Rules Of Attaction, however, is a brilliant film, although i have yet to read Ellis' novel.