THE VOICE INSIDE

A man (Elias, LOVECRACKED! THE MOVIE) is tormented by a voice inside his head while travelling on the lonely subway at night. The voice is berating him as a "weak-willed pathetic waste of life". We learn the man has repressed the voice for some time with medication. But now the voice is taking over ...

The man tries to ignore the voice initially, but starts to retort when he reaches the privacy of his apartment and his brain starts complaining about being bored of rotting away inside his lazy head.

The man's verbal retaliation leads to the voice confirming it's ability to dominate the man, and it begins to throw it's power around by compelling the man to hurt himself physically.

First, the man is driven to grab himself by the hair and ram his own face into the white apartment walls. When the man still shows signs of resistance, despite his bloodied broken nose, the brain drags his unwilling body into the kitchen. There, the man is forced to endure his own two hands picking up cast iron stoves from the cooker hobs and ramming them into his face repeatedly.

Covered in blood, the man is exhausted and collapses. But the mind still has a further lesson to teach it's physical vessel, and forces the man to strip naked. Once naked, the voice consolidates it's power over the man by hammering home it's point in one helluva tasteless finale ...

Written and directed by Biff Juggernaut (LOVECRACKED! THE MOVIE), THE VOICE INSIDE is 13 minutes of black-and-white low budget excess that recalls the more insane works of Richard Kern.

The stark, black-and-white photography is akin to, say, FINGERED - while the excessive violence and subversive sexual brutality (all wrapped up in a bitesize running time) reek of pure Kern. Then there's the political undercurrent of the film, which suggests subtexts that would further liken Juggernaut's flick to the New York filmmaker's.

It could be argued that Juggernaut's film is an examination into the enternal inner war between the physical and the psyche - mind over matter. Or, perhaps, the jaw-dropping final moments may seek to subvert the popular notion of masculinity and say umpteen profound things on male sexual psychosis.

Or maybe Juggernaut is just commenting on exploitation cinema itself, using the crudest, most offensive and direct action imaginable to get his hollow point across?

Or maybe, just maybe, THE VOICE INSIDE is yet another attempt at grossing out it's audience. You know, just like the increasingly long list of films so far this decade that seem to exist for no other purpose than to "shock" and "offend" ... AUGUST UNDERGROUND, MURDER-SET-PIECES, SLAUGHTERED VOMIT DOLLS, I SPIT ON YOUR CORPSE I PISS ON YOUR GRAVE, etc.

I could go on. The list is almost as tireless as it is becoming tiresome. I'm all for pushing the envelope in the graphic stakes - but when people having been doing so for over 30 years (Ruggero Deodato, John Waters, Richard Kern to name but three) - we need a little more substance to our excess if it's going to get under our skin!

Anyway, petty grumblings aside, THE VOICE INSIDE does have one saving grace - Ryan Johnston. His editing and photography make the film a whole lot more cinematic than it deserves to look.

Other than that, THE VOICE INSIDE is a mildly diverting 13 minute "episode" for those looking for quick thrills in the 'bad taste' variety. Ideal for parties, I suppose.

More can be learnt by visiting www.biffjuggernaut.com.

Review by Stu Willis