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.
I was a cat for halloween! But that’s a bit of a cheat cuz I’m normally a cat :3
short posts do help quite a bit.
I have committed the deadly sin of not dressing up for Halloween… *sigh* Though to be fair, its hard enough finding regular clothes at my size 😛
Victoria, instead of a “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” sign, might I suggest a t-shirt?
Bee, cool. Chicago represent!!!!
Oh, and New England meetup people, let me know the details once you get it sorted out and I can plug the meetup in a post.
This goes for any MB meetups, of course,
Ooh AZ? So… Coyotes! xD Except soon they’ll be the Quebec City Coyotes >_>
(I am FAR too sportslike xD Me and Kirby are sports and anti-sports xD )
@Kirby get tinfoil and you can dress as Steel! 😀
I didn’t last year, not enough going on in tucson (that i knew about). Maybe this year, we’ll see.
I did dress up as Javert from La Miserable once, though. Not that anyone knew (it was my costume from the production), but damn was the outfit cool all the same. I got asked if I was Nemo, which I think makes it cool enough :-p
I rarely ever dress up for All Hallow’s Eve so I usually just tell people I am a serial killer because “they looked just like everyone else!”
Hey David, you could check with Holly on this one, but I believe this is the plan: 6pm on Friday, June 17th at the Prudential Center Food Court in Boston (or Cambridge, can’t remember which).
So, one of my friends at school dresses up in something rediculously fancy each year. One year she was Sweeney Todd, another she was the Corpse Bride, with blue skin and everything. She plans and makes her costumes starting over the summer… Its kinda insane…
Victoria, instead of a “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” sign, might I suggest a t-shirt?
As soon as I find a job!!
I hate it as much as the next person when MRAL hijacks a thread to moan about the amazing privations suffered by an average-looking white middle-class college student, but I dare anyone here to tell me you didn’t get a good healthy laugh out of “short fingers” being listed as a deformity.
Also “morning height” and “evening height.”
And he’s the most hideously deformed person on earth, but we’d never find him in a crowd of average BU students. There’s like a glimmer of self-awareness when he says we’d be surprised at what he really looks like. No, dude, actually we wouldn’t be. We all know you’re a normal-looking kid who probably seems perfectly pleasant until he starts bitching about how God has fucked him in the ass by giving him short fingers that make women spit on him.
Ah well. I’ve given up on wanting to help MRAL, but have to admit this is more entertaining than NWO just going WHORES WHORES WHORES for page after page.
So – worst love scene (mainly because I was looking forward to seeing the hot naked people so much and they messed it up) – Underworld 2. I mean seriously, if the dude’s hips are at her belly button while simulating p in v sex…that does not work.
Oh, and I am in Melbourne. Australia. No meetups for me 🙁
Oh, and for best worst movies, may I recommend:
1. The Apple. Low-budget 1970s sci-fi musical based on the book of Genesis. Amazing in every respect. Contains the song lyric, “It’s a natural, natural, natural desire / To meet an actual, actual actual vampire.” And then you see a vampire for like a second and it’s never mentioned again.
2. Deep Blue Sea. Scientists create giant superintelligent sharks in plan with no obvious drawbacks. Contains the best Samuel L. Jackson moment in the history of film.
3. Wicker Man. The remake starring Nicholas Cage. It’s a documentary where they just filmed the inside of an MRA guy’s head. The first half is excruciatingly slow, but then you get the explanation about the secret island settled by goddess-worshipping female supremacists from Ireland, and soon Nick Cage is punching random women in the face, putting on a bear suit, and punching more women in the face, and it’s all good. Contains the line, “Killing me won’t bring back your goddamn honey!”
4. And Troll 2 gets much-deserved credit as the inspiration for the term “best worst movie,” but Troll (a completely different movie with no connection whatsoever to Troll 2) is entertainingly bad in its own right. Contains Julia Louis-Dreyfuss turning into a naked giggling pixie, which actually isn’t bad at all.
I like Deep Blue Sea! xD If only cuz the 2 ppl who survive are rly not who you thought would. xD I actually thought it was rly cool they killed her off at the end instead of doing the typical “male and female couple w/ sexual tension make it to the end together and survive and kiss” xD
Also yay! The night shift has arrived! 😀 (or the day shift if you’re in Australia)
@Shaenon I laughed at “my family is more alpha than most” xD
(Delurking to get the comments up) Hi Lyn! I’m in the same hemisphere as you!
We need some Asian or Oceanic trolls to spice up the night shift! xD
794 comments! 😀
Yess. Yess.. Gooood.. Comments gathering in ever increasing numbers, threads growing longer than ever before! Soon, very soon, we will have enough power to dominate the internet! So arise, ye commenters from beneath the seas. Fly, ye commenters from mountains high! Gather to me, join your power with mine, and we will storm the very firewalls of this place, til not a blog nor twitter remains, and Manboobz towers over the empty wasteland of the net. March, you armies, march! Together, we who will be one thousand strong, we will rule… THE WORLD!
It’s not exactly day – 5.30 pm. Evening shift. And winter so getting pretty dark already. And hello lurker Magpie! If it weren’t cloudy, we could both look at the southern cross at the same time!
Oh god, I thought I was caught up on the comments but while I was reading you guys posted like a hundred more. I give up!!
But did anyone point out yet that today is the 45th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut? Yes, 45 years ago today it was affirmed that married people have the right to contraception! Only 45 years! 45 years ago my mom was 23 and married (not to my dad). Did she have access to birth control? Was her lack of kids with her first husband just luck? I don’t know. It’s mind boggling to me.
http://jezebel.com/5809552/happy-birthday-to-your-right-to-birth-control
MRAL,
You seem to be interacting in good faith, so I wanted to share a couple of thoughts. I feel that you may be getting hung up on some terminology that, admittedly, we feminists don’t always use clearly. Let;s take “privilege.”
The important thing to remember is that female privilege exists, AND male privilege exists. It it not an either/or choice. All a privilege is is some problem other people deal with that you don’t have. So let’s go back to Schwyzer. You’ve said you read articles where he outlines specific ways that women suffer, and you agree with him there. You also say that you disagree with him about male privilege. But (as I understand and use the words) if you agree that women suffer in certain ways men don’t, you necessarily believe in male privilege–the privilege not to suffer in those particular ways.
That doesn’t mean women don’t have privileges too! As a man, here are a few female privileges I wish I had:
–the option to take dance lessons without having my sexuality questioned
–the option to wear a skirt or pants
–not having to register for the draft
–(in my experience, don’t know the stats on this one) an easier time getting jobs in childcare, retail, and restaurants
–the ability to approach strangers without being seen as a threat
–the option to wear explicitly “sexual” clothes within my subculture
Now, because I am a feminist, I think that male privileges are far more common and more important than female ones. Which I why I’m more focused on policy changes for women’s problems than men’s (also because most of the “men’s problems” are not really solvable by legislation anyway). And if you disagree with that statement in most feminist spaces, be prepared for a tongue-lashing. But right now, all I want you to do is acknowledge that male privilege exists, and female privilege exists, and talking about one or the other doesn’t automatically make you misguided.
Would an all-powerful manboobz interwebs really be in the form of a tower? Bit phallic. I suppose that’s ok though – we’d be totally ironic about it.
Well, I suppose we could convert it to a giant amphitheater… would that be more apropos? 😛