Editorials
When “The Extreme Ghostbusters” Met Pinhead and His Cenobites
Unlike so many sports drinks and snack foods in the late-90s, Extreme Ghostbusters earned its extremity. The younger, decidedly hipper team never went after the troubled spirit of a BMX biker or unnecessarily wore sunglasses. Extreme Ghostbusters wasn’t completely blameless – the grunge-caked cover of the theme song does it no favors and the advertising just had to call it XGB – but its oh-so-edgy adjective really referred to the show’s hellbent dedication to scaring the bejesus out of its core demographic.
As it stood, Extreme was already a sequel to The Real Ghostbusters, a series that mixed in more than a little nightmare fuel with Saturday Morning fun until the Family-Friendly Police of 1980s cartoons forced the creative team to cut it out. Before Slimer was promoted to above-the-title talent, the Real Ghostbusters visited various forms of hell, dealt with repressed trauma from a closet-traveling boogeyman and battled a trenchcoated allegory for child abduction. However dark it got, the show always ended with the heroes dancing down the street in their bright, color-coded jumpsuits.
When some of the same producers decided to make a follow-up in the mid-90s, with the far-too-cheery working title Super Ghostbusters, they found a cartoon landscape much more accepting of adult themes. From tip-to-tail, Extreme Ghostbusters would be darker, even in the most literal ways. Gone was the toyetic, crayon-friendly palette and angular, anime-inspired style of The Real Ghostbusters. Instead, Extreme Ghostbusters showed a washed-out world where night seemed to last 23 hours a day and the edges weren’t softer so much as worn down.
The ghosts looked like broken carnival mirror reflections of those from the original series, almost more alien than supernatural (a Men in Black animated series in almost the exact same style would debut a month later). And whereas The Real Ghostbusters relied on a lot of misunderstood spirits that took something more compassionate than a proton stream to evict, Extreme Ghostbusters was almost wall-to-wall poltergeists. Cannibal clowns that spread like an infection. A return of the child abductor surrogate, this time two of them, in an episode that had to be toned down significantly from its first draft. Bone-stealing demons that leave victims barely alive and looking like deflated balloons.
And an entire episode based explicitly on Hellraiser.
“Deadliners” was the fifth episode of Extreme Ghostbusters’ one and only season, first airing on September 5th, 1997. The character list on the final draft of the episode’s script, penned by producer and returning Real Ghostbusters writer Duane Capizzi, makes it plain:
THE VATHEK – a trio of otherworldly, Hellraiser type demons.
With names like “Crainiac” and “Gristle,” these monsters were as close to Cenobites as a cartoon would allow. Dead skin peeled and pulled taut over the red meat underneath. The leader wears a buzzsaw down the center of his skull. Another has no skull at all, but a pile of gurgling flesh folds, an empty sleeve from which a smaller, pulpy nightmare occasionally emerges to scream. Stitched mouths. Surgical drills for hands. Hollowed out eye sockets. On a show frequently and fatally misplaced in a timeslot aimed at preschoolers.
And who’s responsible for these grotesque parodies of human biology?
H.P. Kline, a reclusive horror writer.
While the episode mentions Stephen King and softens the Lovecraft reference by renaming him J.N. Kline, it paints the fictional author most like another famous horror writer. Much like the rhyming R.L. Stine, Kline made a name for himself with a series of adolescent-aimed scary stories to tell in the dark that happen to start with the letter “G.” The only differences are that Kline’s series is “Gore,” the monsters are always the Vathek, and they just so happen to be real.
When reports come in that J.N. Kline has gone missing and locals have started disappearing around his remote, New England home, the Ghostbusters answer the call.
The monsters only borrow Hellraiser’s designs, eschewing the sexual sadomasochism for a motive kids could better understand and subsequently repress – the ritual carving and reconfiguration of human flesh. The Vathek consider skin nothing more than modeling clay and wax about “infinite aesthetic possibility” romantically and emotionlessly, somehow at the same time. The resulting plastic surgery successes are just as disturbing as their creators, if not even more so.
By the time the Ghostbusters find out Kline didn’t create the Vathek so much as make an ill-defined book deal with them, the episode hews closer to Lovecraft and another Lovecraft-inspired work, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, where another author is imprisoned by his fictionalized, if not quite fictional works. As expected, the Ghostbusters eventually defeat the Vathek, conveniently restoring all their butchered experiments to normal (a common, if understandable cop-out for the show).
At the time, syndicated cartoons ran for 65 episodes almost by default; five episodes a week for 13 weeks, allowing stations to easily program a quarter. Extreme Ghostbusters only saw 40 before it was cancelled. If the timeslot killed the show, a few years of erratically scheduled timeslots buried it. Home video did no further favors – six episodes reached VHS and 13 hit DVD, but only in Europe. Extreme Ghostbusters never quite got enough credit, especially compared to its beloved predecessor. At a time when neither was the norm, Extreme followed a diverse cast of characters into stories that toed the line between scary and terrifying for its adolescent audience.
Fortunately, the series is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu, so the curious and the Clive Barker fans can enjoy Extreme Ghostbusters a whole lot easier than ever before.
Of all the films in the New French Extremity movement, Baise-moi may be the most shocking.
From its aggressive English language title Rape Me to several scenes of unsimulated sex, Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s 2000 film may not drip with the subgenre’s trademark blood and gore, but the story’s overwhelming nihilism feels like a middle finger to the patriarchal establishment.
Inspired by Despentes’s 1993 novel of the same name, Baise-moi stars adult film actresses Raffaëla Anderson and Karen Bach as Bonnie and Clyde-style criminals who rampage through France leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. But this fierce story has a tender core. When we peel back the layers of explicit sex and ostensibly senseless violence, we find the tragic tale of two young women desperate to reclaim their power in a world built on male entitlement.
After a brief glimpse at our female criminals, Baise-moi opens in a local dive bar. A boorish man plays pool with his friends while callously dismissing his girlfriend’s concerns. She hasn’t seen him in nearly a week and simply wants to know if he plans to come home. But he angrily brushes her aside, insisting that he doesn’t have to answer for his selfishness. We will never see this couple again, but their one-sided dispute reflects a world in which women must beg for attention from men who see them as less than human.
Throughout this uncomfortable argument, Nadine (Bach) has been drinking at the bar while men discuss her fondness for random sex. At home, she openly masturbates in the living room, refusing to be shamed by her nagging roommate. We learn that Nadine is a sex worker and follow her to a nearby hotel. Refusing to kiss her john on the lips, she dispassionately performs oral sex then watches TV while he fails to give her an orgasm. Despentes and Trinh Thi play with camera angles to show the extent of Nadine’s disinterest. More concerned with sausage being sliced on an infomercial, she has emotionally disconnected from her own body.
We meet Manu (Anderson), an occasional porn actress, under much more traumatic circumstances. While chatting on a park bench, she and a friend are hauled into a dirty warehouse then savagely assaulted by three strange men. We watch as Manu’s friend (played by adult film star Lisa Marshall) is repeatedly punched in the face while her clothes are ripped off followed by an extreme close-up of actual penetration. It’s a disturbing sequence that rivals New French Extremity’s most infamous texts. But this is the reality of sexual assault and Despentes and Trinh Thi refuse to shield the audience from what we are watching.
Though her friend screams and tries to escape, Manu stares daggers at her attackers while stoically obeying their commands. Her dissociation repels the angry man and he walks away, complaining about “fucking a zombie.” Manu will later explain this emotional detachment to her traumatized friend, saying, “If you park in the projects, you empty your car ‘cause someone’s gonna break in. I leave nothing precious in my cunt for those jerks.” Though they’ve not yet met, both Nadine and Manu have become so accustomed to being used for sex that they see no value in themselves. Manu assures her sobbing friend that,”It’s just a bit of cock. We’re just girls. It’ll be ok now.” then continues on with the rest of her day. While disturbing in and of itself, her response hints at prior trauma and the long-term pain of navigating a world filled with predatory men.
Despentes and Trinh Thi will spend the rest of the film subverting the classic rape-revenge structure. We never again see Manu’s attackers again and she is not driven by a newfound hatred of men. But her rage spills out wherever she goes, directed at anyone who dismisses her humanity. Manu’s brother responds with indignation and demands the rapist’s identities, seeming more upset about an insult to his family name than what his sister actually needs. When he implies that she somehow welcomed the assault, Manu shoots him in the head, steals his money, and walks out the door. Nadine finds herself in a similar position after strangling her conservative roommate to death. In parallel scenes we watch both women reach their breaking points and use murder to flee lives of shameful subservience.
Manu and Nadine cross paths in an empty subway station after the last train has left for the night. With nowhere else to go, they cut a violent path across France, careening towards Nadine’s vague errand. Their first victim is a well-dressed woman murdered for her ATM card. Though Nadine confesses sadness in the aftermath of the crime, she eventually admits, “now I feel really great. So great I almost feel like doing it again.” We remember Manu’s final words to her brother — “Bastards like you always have to hit something to feel alive” — and watch these newly liberated women succumb to the same temptation. Their crime spree seems driven by a need to reclaim power by dominating anyone who gets in their way.
Despite the carnage they leave behind, Manu and Nadine do not kill indiscriminately. Shortly after hitting the road, they pick up two strangers at a bar and have sex on their respective hotel beds. Though they do not physically touch each other, the scene ripples with intimacy as they gaze at each other instead of their men. In a traditional rape-revenge film, Manu would kill these unsuspecting paramours, punishing them for another man’s crimes. But she seems content with indulging in her own physical pleasure and the connection she establishes with Nadine. Both women have found a kindred spirit who will not judge them for asserting their own messy independence.
This is not to say that men are safe around these two unpredictable outlaws. Manu shoots a man in the street when he catcalls Nadine and they ambush and murder a condescending gun dealer. When a prospective john balks at their unapologetic promiscuity and insists on wearing a condom, Manu brands herself “the fucking condom dickhead killer” while mocking the man for his self-righteousness. She degrades and sexually humiliates him before using her high heels to stomp in his face.
Nadine has a similar response to another victim who tries to psychoanalyze her criminality. While opening his safe at gunpoint, the man flirts by insisting her crimes have been caused by a traumatic past only he can understand. Rather than fall for this faux empathy, Manu laughs in his face while Nadine shoots him to death on the living room floor. While certainly asserting their feminine strength, they do not lash out at just any man, but save their rage for male authority figures who condemn their feminist rebellion.
Though they rage against the outside world, Manu and Nadine have no grand illusions of victory and expect to die in the violence they’ve sparked. On a peaceful stroll, the outlaws discuss different methods of suicide, rejecting self-immolation as too pretentious. After tossing around options, they agree to do a bungee jump without the cord, though Nadine admits that she may need help stepping off the edge. To maintain the appearance of control, Manu suggests leaving a banner behind to frame their deaths as a courageous act rather than submission to the establishment. They will not let anyone rewrite their story and insist on going out with their heads held high.
It’s only through boredom that we uncover the hopeless heart of their true motivations. Blowing stolen cash on a fancy hotel, Nadine and Manu drink the day away while staring at the ocean, surprised that they have not yet been caught. With their faces on the cover of newspapers, they have achieved some notoriety, but failed to rock the system they despise. Simply described as two women, “one taller than the other,” their bombastic rebellion now feels more like screaming into the void. They may have found joy in rejecting rigid gender norms, indulging in random sex, and gleefully dominating toxic men, but the patriarchal world continues to turn. In this quiet moment, Manu and Nadine realize that they will not be remembered as vigilante heroes, but two waves crashing against an endless sea of male authority.
As we grow more attached to the ferocious couple, Despentes and Trinh Thi remind us of the women’s villainy, directly resisting an anti-hero narrative. Dressed to the nines, Nadine and Manu storm a swinger’s club where women openly service men. In another film, they would be feminist avengers, shooting violent johns while setting helpless women free. But Manu and Nadine kill everyone they see, leaving no one alive in the establishment. As a climax to this massacre, they force the bartender to strip and kneel on all fours before penetrating him with a loaded gun. It’s a horrific act of sexual abuse that mirror’s Manu’s own ordeal. We’re reminded that while the women’s anger may be righteous, their actions are not. Perhaps this is a showy escalation designed to force police intervention. Or has Manu become the very thing that once destroyed her life: a bastard who hurts others to feel alive?
This crime spree ends just as erratically as it began when Manu is shot while stopping for gas. Nadine burns her corpse beside a frozen lake, ensuring that no one can claim power over what little autonomy her body still holds. Dressed in a man’s suit, the grieving woman prepares to join her friend in death and holds a gun to her head. But she seems incapable of pulling the trigger. While remembering their short but violently joyful time together, we hear a gunshot and see Nadine fall to the ground. Seconds later she opens her eyes to find herself surrounded by police. The spell of her connection with Manu has been broken and the world has finally come crashing in.
We’re left to wonder what their rampage was for. They’ve failed to resist a dehumanizing social structure and will now be simply tossed aside. But the English translation casts an uncomfortable shadow over their motivations. Taken as a command, the worlds “rape me” seem to imply consent that is antithetical to sexual assault. It’s an unsettling turn of phrase that harkens back to a question Manu’s friend asked in the wake of her attack: “how could you let this happen to you?” Though it reflects the story’s aggressive tone, this translated title seems to blame the women for their destructive actions rather than interrogate the system they’ve tried to resist.
But there is an alternate interpretation, one that reflects the story’s tender core. A more accurate Enlgish translation would read “fuck me” or “kiss me,” perhaps nodding to sex positivity or the gentle kiss Nadine leaves with Manu before lighting her makeshift funeral pyre. These alternative titles seem to honor the women’s ferocious journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
Though flawed, villainous, and ultimately broken on a patriarchal wheel, Nadine and Manu have found a way to reclaim something precious in their unapologetic strength and authenticity.
Baise-moi is currently available to stream on Shudder.
You must be logged in to post a comment.