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.
You need psychiatric help. 5’8″ is not short. Do not mutilate your body for something that isn’t a genuine problem.
MRAL if you don’t want to be heightest, don’t be weightest/sizest either…
See, the thing is, I don’t think ppl rly DO care about .25 or .5 of an inch. Or even if you’re 5’8″ or 5’9″ : And you said YOU don’t care, has it occurred to you you’re not alone in that? :]
Let’s just take a straw poll here.
Who here cares if a guy is .25 or .5 inches shorter than they say their height is? How often do you ask ppl about their exact height IRL (i.e. not on the internet)? How much does it matter to you?
It’s not like guys who are 6’2″ just get tackled on the street by women.
Speak for yourself.
Also, seriously, if a guy who’s 5’8.whatever” and a guy who’s 5’11” aren’t standing right next to each other, I might be hard pressed to even tell which is which.
…Like most people, I’m way too busy worrying if I look okay.
Some people lose it at twenty-five. Or later.
Sometimes a good deal later. I’ve heard.
I liked Quills-except for that whole Marquis De Sade nuttery.
As for virgins-I am on number 13 (which is why I call him that) and two of that number were over the age of 30. In fact, I think 13 will be the final one. But I said that after number 9. Damn my kind heart!
“I would trade places with anyone on this blog in a second. If any of you were in my place, I honestly think you’d committ suicide. That’s how strong I am.”
I’m a fat chick who’s the same height as you.
Some people lose it at twenty-five. Or later.
based on MRAL, some people have lost it quite a bit earlier.
The obsession with height is just bizarre to me. The Boyfriend is 5’11”. Boyfriend before him? Barely 5’8″. Boyfriends/casual partners before them? All over the board. I don’t give a fuck about height. Normal people don’t.
Nope. The Room is only entertaining with friends if you play the drinking game. And then it’s still just – my friends and I actually promised never to talk about it again and have since referred to it as “That thing that we never did that must not be spoken about.”
We’d hoped that this would prevent anyone else from ever seeing it. Clearly, we were wrong.
1, In fact, my vision is far too bad to do 3D. I have no binocular depth perception at all. In fact, my vision is so bad as to constitute being significant enough to be legally visually impaired. It takes big old thick glasses for me to see my computer screen two feet from my face. Also, unlike my vision problems, which are genetic (several members of both of my parent’s families also have severe vision problems), your eye is actually likely a congenital, rather than genetic “defect” and is most likely the result of having different shaped eye lids, rather than different sized eyeballs (there are exceptions to that rule-genetic causes of disparate eye sizes-but if you have one of them like infant glaucoma, tumors, or graves disease, I suspect that would have been mentioned first).
2. Height-I am 5’4″, and I am a genderqueer bisexual who has mostly dated women. My brother is your height, MRAL, and seems to get by just fine (he has a rather lovely wife, too). I am the shortest person in my immediate family. My little sister is taller than me. But unlike you, I do not have a bizarre obsession over it, so I am just fine.
3. What was three again? Oh yeah, short fingers. I must admit, I have decent sized hands and long fingers. Of course, my extreme chronic joint pain makes most sorts of repetitive motion not so fun for me. I also have Reynauld’s phenomenon, which means I have to be very careful about things that could potentially cause damage to my hands and feet, because when it is bad, I do not have enough feeling in my fingers to notice injuries until they become severe. Combine that with my thin skin, and I have to check my hands and feet for injuries after every long session of repetitive use, because, even though the pain from the joint problems never goes away, I can’t always feel sensations properly with the skin of my extremities. But, hey, stumpy fingers are omg the worst thing ever, amirite?
4. A family of alphas? Well, since your notion of alpha is really poorly defined, it is hard to say. Some of them do seem to get laid more than others, but most of them are fat and/or broke, so they are omegas? Is a 5’10” crackhead an alpha if he dates another crackhead? What, your family doesn’t have more than one crackhead? Here I thought you were deprived…
Damn, my head hurts, though to be fair, that probably isn’t your fault, MRAL, it is been acting up all day. Of course, I spent part of today debating on whether it was worth going to the hospital with severe pain on the left side of head and the right side of my body because of the expense and the difficulty around my symptoms and diagnoses, but, please, tell us more about how sickly you feel today while I consider taking enough muscle relaxers to knock me out for the night in hopes of waking up in slightly less pain tomorrow.
BTW, don’t call me 5’8, I’m 5’8.5. Or 5’8.25 or 5’8.75. But not 5’8.
And speaking of virginity: I was a couple months shy of 22 when I first slept with someone. Made up for lost time though 😀
@MRAL you should take my advice and wear shades :] Shades are COOL! The Jays had a pitcher named Gustavo Chacin who wore shades even at night and even in the clubhouse… I thought he was the coolest guy ever xD And Bob McCown wears shades indoors. :3
Honestly tho… even if you don’t think there’s nething wrong with you, if just to let out all that anger you have inside, and how you feel the world treats you and ALL the frustrations you have, with your family, not being able to get an internship, or ppl judging you for your height… I think a good counsellor or a therapist could rly help, and if you’re in school, most colleges offer student counselling services 🙂 It would be better than coming here and venting or expressing all your insecurities b/c a) nobody will mock you b) *I* won’t be there to mock you xD c) it’d be confidential d) they won’t be biased or be fighting you ideologically e) they’re actually trained to listen and help :]
What university/college do you go to?
“I would trade places with anyone on this blog in a second.
Imma zombie. Can you IMAGINE the kind of discrimination I see every day? Just try walking through the food court… not to mention the arguments about pre-existing conditions with the insurance companies.
(which is why I call him that)
I thought you were making some bizarre “House” reference.
Yeah, like I said, it’s just just a social thing. I’m not sure if I’m physically capable of having sex.
Leff-tennant, you try living your life as a sexual being whose stupid brain interprets being touched on the shoulder as a physical attack.
On the other hand, being 5’11, it’s really easy to find clothes in my size at second hand stores. I own so many awesome suits. So, maybe it’s a decent trade-off after all.
“Quills really is terrible isn’t it? I wanted to like it so badly – Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet. Joaquin Phoenix before he lost it. But it’s awful. If you’re interested, you’d be better off reading any of the dozens (at least) biographies about de Sade and throwing in Justine for context.”
Yes! I was really disappointed. The heavy-handed symbolism was the worst part: Caine represents Order so he’s always fully clothed, Phoenix is The Middle Ground so he takes his shirt off (not that I’m complaining) and Rush is Nature so he’s completely naked. it was so . . . subtle.
The Room sounds pretty bad. Is it one of those movies where it’s not entertaining so it must be deep?
No, my literal eyeball is actually smaller than the good one (a condition called microphthalmia). Believe you me, if I could fix this problem with eyelid cosmetic surgery, I would have done it years ago).
What about when you’re wearing heels, MRAL?
“I would trade places with anyone on this blog in a second.”
Did you completely miss the part about my weird genetic blood disorder? Because you can have it, and the constant poking and prodding, and the vomiting all over CAT scan machines, the horrendous medical expenses and the $5000 deductible. Please shut the fuck up now. You need therapy.
MRAL, people aren’t calling you 5’8″ to belittle (hur) you. They’re doing that because no one perceives such a slight difference.
Seriously, if being one inch shy of average height is the worst thing that ever happened to you… I’m starting to think your real problem is latching on to sources of blame as “oh no, I can’t succeed at life, this big horrible thing is holding me back,” no matter how absurd.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve got no one but myself to blame for my life–I do live in a society that’s unjust in many ways–but I just don’t obsess over it and I don’t let it block out the possibilities of what I can do with my life.
Hippodameia: I… I liked “Quills”. I’ve seen it more than once… > >
How does it stack up against Manos?
Or Zardoz? Barbarella? Ice Pirates? Star Crash?
Truly there is much suckitude in the world.
hey now, no badmouthing Zardoz.