Scrapbook [2000] - Eric Stanze Week

Scrapbook is a wretched wrath of repugnancy - a rape of reservations.  If I wasn't already severely scarred from a lifetime of distasteful DVD dung, I surely am now.

Leonard is your regular everyday guy - molested and beaten as a child - only finding gratification from taking a life as a teen.  Now as an adult, he has perfected his post-pubescent pursuit of pillaging and polishing off poon.  The catch in this one?  He's more scrapbook hooked than your Aunt Ruth or arts and crafts nooks.  With only a few pages of documentation left, he has his eyes on a 15mins of fame prize and just one last victim in his sights (Clara).

If Scrapbook isn't the grandaddy of "torture porn", then it's got to be pretty damn fuckin' close - having beat August Underground by a year and Hostel by a half decade.  Although not as depraved as August... or as well roundedly produced as Hostel, Scrapbook out-engages the former and out-bitch-slaps the latter.  All thanks to it's indie nature - a nature that is truly it's handicap and it's upper-hand.

In typical indie fashion, Stanze works with a basic budget of bubkis.  The outcome...sparse gore (for a torture film), amateurish and atrocious dialogue at best, cheap audio effects, and minimal style filmmaking.  But all that forces Stanze to get creative - focusing on fear-setting physical acting, location soiling, basic yet spine-chilling synth score, and a brilliant yet anti-climactic conclusion.

What's in store for ya?   There's urination humiliation, point-of-view pedophiliac fellatio, death via polaroid camera, toe chopping, tit slapping, pornographic photograph wallpaper, a booze bottle turned bloody dildo, and a 5 mins chase across a farm with a left tit hangin' and floppin' out of a wife beater...priceless.  Scrapbook, without a doubt, is one of the most gut-churning films I've ever had to cower through.

7/10