"Graphic Sexual Horror" Review - Written by Mathius Mack Gertz

GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR
USA, 2009, 84min., color
Genre: Documentary
Director: Barbara Bell, Anna Lorentzon
Screenwriter: Barbara Bell
Executive Producers: Anna Lorentzon, Alex Norden
Producers: Barbara Bell
Cinematographer: Anna Lorentzon
Editor: Barbara Bell, Anna Lorentzon
Sound Mixer: Chad Bernhard
Production Company: NC17 Productions,
Website: www.graphicsexualhorror.com
Using a combination of talking heads, graphic website scene stock and behind-the-scenes footage, freshman documentarians Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon paint a unique picture of the psychology and motivation of exhibitionistic bondage and sadomasochistic behavior. In particular, as it pertains to online websites and their creators; in this case the notorious one known as www.insex.com and its founder, Brent Scott, known online as “pd”.

My use of the adjective notorious is not by chance. Over fifty years ago, an actress and model allowed herself to be photographed and filmed in various bondage fantasy scenes. Ultimately this led to her title as the Notorious Betty Page. From 1952 through 1957, she posed for photographer Irving Klaw for mail-order photographs with pin-up, bondage or sadomasochistic themes, making her the first famous bondage model. Klaw also used Page in dozens of short black-and-white 8mm and 16mm "specialty" films which catered to specific requests from his clientele. These silent featurettes showed women clad in lingerie and high heels acting out fetishistic scenarios of abduction, domination, and slave-training with bondage, spanking, and elaborate leather costumes and restraints. Page alternated between playing a stern dominatrix and a helpless victim bound hand and foot. Klaw also produced a line of still photos taken during these sessions. Some have become iconic images, such as his highest-selling photo of Page shown gagged and bound in a web of ropes from the film Leopard Bikini Bound. Although these underground features had the same crude style and clandestine distribution as the pornographic "stag" films of the time, Klaw's all-female films (and still photos) never featured any nudity or explicit sexual content.

Insex did not show any explicit intercourse either. However, Brent Scott did pick up where Irving Claw left off. While Klaw did his work at the beginning of the Sexual Revolution, Scott did his at the beginning of the Internet Revolution. Insex was one of the biggest BDSM pornographic websites on the Internet and arguably the most extreme American pornographic production featuring female submissives. It was also a leading innovator in both live video streaming, pioneering the concept before broadband Internet access existed, and in the depiction of BDSM practices on the Internet. It was also known for its interactive "Live Feeds" which allowed members to make direct suggestions and requests.

Rather than dry and clinical, the filmmakers paint a riveting portrait of how pushing boundaries can empower or degrade a person. Originally curious and experimental, Brent and the girls he hires to perform online become trapped by the financial windfall of the Internet. At its height, Insex.com had over 35,000 members worldwide and the girls were paid thousands of dollars a day. What originally was a thrill became merely a job. What was an exotic hobby for Brent became a taskmaster.

Disturbing is how the need to give his members new thrills caused Brent to cross his own lines, to disregard his “actors” limitations, and “force” them, upon pain of never being called again to work, to subject themselves to pain and degradation. Limitations that without the financial incentive might never have been crossed by either actor or producer. Disturbing as well is how some girls had to sexually service him off-camera to keep the shoot dates coming. Much more disturbing is how the Homeland Security Administration carried out President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s right wing religious agenda; used veiled threats against banks to cancel Insex's credit card program and in so doing, put them out of business in 2005.

Ultimately this is a story of censorship and limits, both personal and public, or the lack there of. While the sounds and images of this documentary will titillate or disgust, excite or repulse, it is what the story of Insex says about us, our government and our society that is the real story. It vividly explores how far we have not come as a species and as a society of freedoms and laws. A must see. Five Stars.