Three young women wake up, confused and terrified, in a room that looks like a cross between a normal hospital room and the creepy underground lair of some mad scientist from a horror movie. A video screen flickers on and a creepy older man, looking a bit like Academy-award-nominee Robert Loggia, appears on it, telling the women that he’s their “jailer.” The women, you see, had all been getting abortions when their jailer’s shadowy accomplices kidnapped them and brought them to this strange prison, where they will be forced to live for the next seven months until they gave birth. “You were all on the operating table, all ready to commit murder,” announces a mysterious doctor. “Your babies will be given life just as God planned.”
This is the premise of a new horror film called The Life Zone, which recently had its world premiere at the prestigious, er, Hoboken International Film Festival, a festival that was, perhaps not coincidentally, founded and chaired by the film’s writer and producer, Kenneth del Vecchio. In case you think I’m making all this up, here’s the film’s trailer, which makes The Life Zone look a bit like an equal-parts mixture of Saw, Human Centipede, and The Handmaid’s Tale, with Robert Loggia in the role of Jigsaw/Dr. Heiter/The Commander:
Now, if you thought that something seemed really … off about that trailer, well, you’re not alone. For the film is not, as you might have assumed from my description, a warning against the fanatical misogyny of many in the anti-abortion movement.
No, the film – produced by a pro-life former judge, crime thriller author, and Republican New Jersey state senate candidate – is meant as pro-life propaganda. As the offical press release for the film’s premiere put it:
The film, which appears to cut right down the middle [of the abortion debate], examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist. Del Vecchio and the cast invite pro-lifers to come to this historic event.
During the months the three women are held in captivity, you see, they are exposed to a barrage of films and books intended to, er, educate them about abortion –what their attending obstetrician Dr. Wise describes as “an abortion think tank.” Two of the captive women do indeed convert to the pro-life side; apparently we in the audience are supposed to develop Stockholm Syndrome along with them. The third, as we see in the trailer, tries to induce a miscarriage, which doesn’t go quite as planned.
And this sets us up for the final twist, which I’m just going to go ahead and reveal: once all three women have given birth, Dr. Wise tells them she’s going to sew them all, mouth-to-vagina, into a Human Abortion-pede!
Actually no: the twist is that the “life zone” the three women in has actually been … purgatory! All three “captives,” you see, had died on the operating table while getting their abortions. (Apparently they went to the world’s worst abortion clinic, as first-trimester abortions don’t involve anything more surgically invasive than the insertion of a suction tube; the risk of death from a legal surgical abortion is 0.0006%, one in 160,000 cases, making the procedure many times safer than childbirth itself.) Their time in the “life zone” was a test: the two women who changed their minds were whisked up to heaven, while their miscarriage-attempting, stubbornly pro-choice companion is sent straight to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. Dr. Wise, despite being on the right side of the abortion question, also goes to hell for committing suicide. And, oh yeah, their jailer – Loggia – was Satan. Why Satan and a hell-bound doctor were the ones trying to convert the abortion ladies to the pro-life side I can’t tell you; del Vecchio’s theology is evidently more sophisticated than I am.
The real twist here? As Jersey Journal writer Alan Robb notes:
The Life Zone went viral across the internet [last] Friday after blogs The Frisky and Talking Points Memo picked up on the film’s trailer. … But despite garnering more than 20,000 hits on YouTube in the last four days, only fifty people – including the film’s cast and producers – attended this weekend’s screening, and even those who starred in the movie didn’t know how to interpret its twist ending.
It’s impossible to tell from the trailer if the film is bad in a so-bad-it’s-good way, or if it’s just plain awful. I will try to get hold of it when it hits video, and will report back with my results.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a good horror film set in a creepy hospital, try renting Infection, a Japanese film from 2005. Or, if you’ve got a longer attention span, try Lars Von Trier’s supernatural soap opera The Kingdom, a darkly comic miniseries which takes place in what one might call, paraphrasing Bill Murray’s character in Tootsie, “one nutty hospital.” Both are conveniently available on Netflix instant watch, so you don’t even have to leave your pregnancy dungeon to see them.
EDITED: Added some info on the minimal dangers of abortion procedures.
Even Taub on House has normal eyes.
Ooops, double post. Sorry!
I don’t think MRAL’s lazy, but if he works hard, it’s the wrong kind of work–it’s the kind that’s all things and not people. Unless you are an absolute Einstein-level genius with things, getting people to like you is a very necessary (and sometimes very hard) part of getting your work recognized.
…and this is possible even for tiny little mini-people of only seven inches taller than me, geez. If you want to cry on my shoulder about your height, MRAL, you’ll have to bend down.
“I have a very off-topic question. Do you people think it’s all right just to give your morning height when people ask? ”
Why the fuck do you think any of us care?
Quick thoughts?
NOBODY CARES ABOUT IT. TELL THEM YOU’RE 3 FOOT 5.
As for your off-topic question, MRAL, no one can eyeball a quarter of an inch. Jeez, you could even just get bigger shoes and you’d make that up.
Honestly, this is the first I even realized that “morning height” would be any different. I just measured whenever.
Is morning height something like morning wood? I’m confused now…
Hey assholes, if you don’t care shut the fuck up. I’m asking for tips from those who care. Morning height, “average” height, or night height? Actually, I’ve been thinking of just calling myself 5’9, but maybe that’s pushing it too far?
@MRAL,
“Okay, I’m back. I think that a man who does not want to be a part of his child’s life, then, if he makes it clear at the beginning of pregnancy, should not be denigrated for being a “deadbeat dad”. He should still pay child support in regards to what he personally can afford, however, he is not to be attacked morally for his lack of emotional support. It’s his life.”
I actually agree with all of this, and while we’re at it, can we please stop treating women who DO carry the pregnancy to term and give it up for adoption like horrible mothers who abandoned their children? Can we also stop treating women who decide to raise the child like milking the system?
Unfortunately, MRAL, that’s about all I agree with you on. I still think you’re an idiot for what you said on the groping thread, but compared to people like Mr. Slave, who apparently thinks I’m a murderer, I can see why some here think there’s hope for you.
By the way, about your eye, just a suggestion, but you could try wearing a patch since you can’t see out of it anyway. Seriously, if you think it’s your eye that’s driving people away, there are those with a fetish for eye-patches.
MRAL, how about drumming? Even your stubby little fingers ought to be able to hold a drumstick. And the best thing about being a drummer is that people expect them to be weirdos, so you wouldn’t even have to change your personality.
It also helps to have a sense of rhythm, but as Meg White demonstrated, that’s optional.
I tell people I am five-foot-eighteen.
Except that, oh yeah NOBODY EVER ASKS.
You think nobody is going to call you on this kind of bullshit?
Let’s get back to discussing terrible movies.
“I’m asking for tips from those who care.”
Hold your breath until they respond.
Rounding is perfectly acceptable. The average of 5’8.25 and 5’8.75 is 8.5, so round to 5’9 if it makes you happier. No one will care.
Unless you’re standing next to one of those height charts they have in 7-11s to identify robbers, I can’t tell 5’7″ from 5’10” at a glance, seriously. It all reads as “average-ish” to me.
kirbywarp, yeah, you’re a bit taller in the morning because your spine stretches a little when you lie on your back and sleep. Throughout the day it compresses a little.
For a similar reason, people lose a bit of height as they age… not looking forward to THAT, although I’ve got a good 20 years before any of that happens, at the earliest. By then maybe they’ll have height enhancing pills or something. Since I’ll be rich I’ll be able to afford them. It’s actually a dream of mine that they may also perfect whole eye transplants, although that’s less likely.
By then maybe they’ll have height enhancing pills or something
yeah, I ‘d go with that. (snerk)
Well, zombie I also sometimes just mention it in conversation, it not like people are always “HOW TALL ARE YOU”, but it does come up fairly often.
It’s actually a dream of mine that they may also perfect whole eye transplants,
Well, Geordi was still waiting for that in the 24th century, so I would settle in for a long wait.
By then maybe they’ll have height enhancing pills or something
Viacra.
“Let’s get back to discussing terrible movies.”
Yes, let’s. I think “The Life Zone” may be the worst movie of all time, and I say that having watched “Quills” all the way through.
, but it does come up fairly often.
well, yeah IF YOU KEEP MENTIONING IT.
How about this: SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.
I say that having watched “Quills” all the way through.
Manos? How does it stack up against Manos?
Hey, guys and gals, just catching up with the thread.
You’ll have to excuse the women here, for many of them haven’t absorbed the richly layered mind-expanding symbolism found in the Star Wars novels.
I kid of course. I have nothing against Star Wars novels. I’ve never read them because I don’t really care about Star Wars but I’m sure I’ve read worse. Right now, I’m reading a translation of a 1908 French novel about Martian vampires. However, I don’t claim Le Prisonnier de la Planète Mars is the greatest literary achievement humankind has ever produced. It’s only the sixth greatest, at best.
I believe I can field that one for Mr. Slave: The Rothchilds (no relationship to the Rothschilds) would have just found another patsy.
Without fucking feminism, how would I ever have sex with a civil rights movement? Feminism is slutty, not like that prudish African-American Civil Rights Movement.
23 year old virgin with Asperger’s and a rather bad case of OCD (the ever-present horrifying intrusive images kind, not the hand-washing kind) .
But I’m 5’11 in my stocking feet, and have a bunch of friends, so my life must be all hunky-dory. Right?
Holly, you may not be heightist (since you’re shortish yourself, not surprising. The majority of people (most men, mostly alphas) above 5’11, lets say, are raging heightists, and acutely aware of these things.
Indeed Zombie. And for some reason I am now thinking about that scene in Aliens where the alien bursts out of the guy’s chest.
Now there is an ethical question-if the living creature is not human, it is okay to remove but if it is human, it is not? What makes either one of them right if you are a anti-choice person?