Podcasts
‘The Perfection’: Rape/Revenge in the #MeToo Era [Horror Queers Podcast]
Shit Your Pants
After ringing in the New Year with the gayest slasher ever made, Trace and I are doing something that Horror Queers has never done: we’re revisiting a film we’ve already covered!
The film in question is a favorite: Richard Shepard‘s The Perfection, which debuted at Fantastic Fest back in 2018 before premiering on Netflix in May 2019. We covered the film on our Patreon, but received criticism from a few folks about how we handled the discussion of sexual assault (which C/W: this is a secret rape/revenge film!)
In The Perfection, cello star Charlotte (Allison Williams) returns after a long sabbatical to reunite with her mentor Anton (Steven Webber) and court his new protégé, Lizzie (Logan Browning). But the pair’s vacation goes horribly awry when Lizzie becomes sick, ending with an act of mutilation. This, in turn, initiates a string of violent encounters in response to decades of trauma and abuse, all tying back to goals of achieving “The Perfection” in the Bachoff Academy’s “Chapel.”
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.
Episode 211 – The Perfection (2019) feat. Mae Shults
Don’t adjust your feed: we’re redoing Richard Shepard’s twisty 2019 secret rape/revenge film, which drew criticism when we covered it in our first year.
Joining us is musician and Halloweenies editor Mae Shults for a discussion that veers between heavy, confessional, and dumb. We’re talking real-life sexual assault, pooping our pants, and guessing the pop culture moment the film’s wig reveal is referencing.
Plus: debating the responsibility of art (and other criticisms from reviews), praising the performances, and questioning the catharsis of the ending.
Cross out The Perfection (again!)
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re hopping back to 1995 to check out an early Todd Haynes film: Safe!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 220 hours of additional content! We’re wrapping up the year with episodes on Netflix’s Edgar Allan Poe-focused murder mystery The Pale Blue Eye, Shudder’s anthology sequel Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge, the creepy found footage film Skinamarink, Blumhouse’s killer robot movie M3GAN, and an audio commentary on Cloverfield, just in time for its 15th anniversary!
Maybe you haven’t thought about your good friend Sweeney Todd in a while, or maybe you have. The 2007 movie is a bit of a memory, though a fond one – it has a healthy 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth. But 2023’s Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, who your mom thinks is “so talented” (she’s right!), was enough of a hit that its run was extended.
It appears we’re in a bit of a Sweeneyssaince.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who kills his customers and disposes of the bodies by passing them off to pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, who uses them as a special ingredient. But there’s more below the trap door.
Sweeney Todd isn’t just a late 70s musical that turned into a movie; it started as a penny dreadful called The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (author unknown), told week-to-week in the 1840s. Penny dreadfuls were essentially fiction zines featuring serialized stories that were usually horror-based and cost a penny, leading to the very literal nickname.
The String of Pearls differs from the more well-known Sweeney Todd plot in that it follows the investigation of a missing persons case that leads to the reveal of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett’s arrangement, as opposed to the more modern iteration which treats audiences to the duo hatching their homicidal plan and then giving the worst haircuts ever. What a delightfully wild reveal that must have been if you were a reader in Victorian London after weeks of wondering what had become of the missing sailor carrying a string of pearls to deliver to a lovely girl.
Kristen and Will discuss the history and future of Sweeney Todd and works inspired by it this week on Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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