10. Evil Ed (Anders Jacobsson, 1995) & Berberian Sound Studio (Peter Strickland, 2012)
Evil Ed is a low budget, but classic, splatter film from Sweden. It's one of the not very many splatter films to have come from our Swedish brethren. It tells the story of a man named Ed who works as a film editor. Ed has recently been transferred to the splatter department at the studio where he works. His new position has him editing gory, ultraviolent scenes from the B-movie Loose Limbs series. Persistent and repetitive exposure to such insanely violent imagery - and excessive amounts of gore - really start to mess with Ed's psyche. He begins to have violent delusions...and soon enough it becomes a blood'n'guts-fest with pretty much everyone ending up murdered by Ed. Berberian Sound Studios is based on a similar concept, only featuring a sound effects specialist instead of a film editor. Toby Jones plays a British sound effects specialist who has been hired to do the sound for a sexually violent and extremely gory Giallo film (that is never actually seen). The nature of the work, alongside the fact everyone is speaking Italian- a language he doesn't understand- begins to stress him out. In an attempt to cope with this, he starts to focus intensely on his work. All of a sudden his life seems to be taking on the characteristics of the things he has been re-creating in the studio. It's really hard to say what he actually does, or what really happens at the end of this film. Everything in the film suddenly shifts and it becomes very confusing (after only one viewing, at least). Either way, however, the parts of the plot we are concerned with here are quite similar to those found in Evil Ed. With that being said... as darkly humourous and gorily fun as these films are (fruit-gore counts, right?), I question their historical accuracy when it comes to their portrayal of how the film-making process actually affects the mental health of individuals involved in it (other than directors and the odd star, of course). I've not heard of any real-life stories about film editors or sound effects specialists having been driven to homicidal mania because of their work. But if it has actually happened...I probably wouldn't be that surprised.