Sex and horror go hand in hand, especially in the slasher subgenre. But sex usually means death, or its used as a weapon, and sexual awakenings are often represented as monster metaphors. Gore is fine, but sex? Well, that’s a taboo thing we should repress. Not always, though. The relationship between sex, violence, and horror is complex, and more and more filmmakers are becoming unafraid to approach it. The latest is Deep Murder, which follows a group of porn stars who start getting picked off by a masked killer. It’s a sort of alternate reality set in a tacky soft-core porn film, where a group of increasingly self-aware stock characters are up against a mysterious killer.
The directorial debut of Nick Corirossi, Deep Murder stars Jerry O’Connell, Christopher McDonald, Chris Redd, Katie Aselton, Quinn Beswick, Josh Margolin, Jessica Parker Kennedy and Stephanie Drake. The film was written by Quinn Beswick, Josh Margolin, Benjamin Smolen and Nikolai Von Keller and is now in theaters and VOD platforms!
From Hell
There’s an adage that prostitution is the oldest profession. While it’s not actually true, the statement does bear a semblance of truth; prostitution has been around for a long, long time. And this period set murder mystery based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell is a pretty good reminder. In Victorian-era London, the life of prostitution for Mary Kelly and her coworkers becomes all the more dangerous when a murderer targets them for his series of brutal murders and post-mortem mutilations. It’s the infamous Jack the Ripper. While From Hell is mostly from the perspective of a drug-addicted police officer, the movie gets up close and personal with prostitution thanks to the Jack’s modus operandi.
Dance of the Damned
Directed and co-written by Katt Shea, and produced by Roger Corman, this unique tale sees a vampire on the prowl at a strip club in search of his next victim. He finds himself drawn to one particular stripper, one with a bleaker outlook and with thoughts of suicide. Because she seems to desire death, he lures and then kidnaps her; she’s meant to be his dinner. Instead, they find themselves connecting over their loneliness; she from her profession and he from his immortal status. Dance of the Damned is more introspective chamber piece than your usual Corman feature. Think the meet cute, dialogue-heavy Before Sunrise but with vampires and strippers.
Peeping Tom
This prototype for slashers is now heralded as a masterpiece, but it proved so controversial upon initial release that director Michael Powell was never able to find work in the British film industry after. It follows the exploits of Mark Lewis, an aspiring filmmaker who works part time as a soft-porn photographer. His current endeavor is a documentary on fear, which means recording the final look of fear on the faces of his victims at the precise moment he kills them. By making the viewer complicit in the film’s use of voyeurism as well as its lurid sexuality, well, it ruffled quite a few feathers in 1960. It was bold and ahead of its time, even if it borrows a bit from Hitchcock.
Piercing
Reed ponders killing his infant daughter with an ice pick. Instead, he decides to channel that impulse toward what he feels is a more deserving victim; an unwitting prostitute. He books a hotel room and begins the preparations after ordering an escort to his room. But the escort he called for couldn’t make it, and instead, he gets Jackie- a hardened prostitute with issues of her own. Reed’s plans quickly unravel as the pair enter one twisted cat and mouse game that exposes their darkest psychological scars while opening up fresher, bloodier wounds in the process. Piercing is based on a novel of the same name by Ryu Murakami.
Cam
Alice works as an online cam girl, and she’s obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. Determined to break into the top 50 and eventually make her way to the number 1 spot, Alice devises more and more daring ways to increase her popularity, including simulating slitting her own throat. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger. Cam uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. In other words, Cam is a rare sex positive horror thriller.
Knife + Heart
Set in the Parisian summer of 1979, Knife + Heart is a modern giallo that follows low budget gay porn producer Anne. Her life is a wreck after her lover and film editor, Lois, ended their relationship. To win Lois back, Anne sets out to create the most ambitious porn film yet. The only problem is that her actors and crew are being picked off one by one by a masked killer, and in the most vicious fashion. Director/co-writer Yann Gonzalez employs all of the familiar beats of a giallo, from synth sound to high-camp dialogue, but it’s all done with a stylish, heartfelt approach and a peek into the world of the gay porn industry and its employees.
Check out soft-porn set slasher Deep Murder NOW available in limited theaters and on VOD platforms.
