6. Gummo (1997)
The directorial debut of Harmony Korine which did not get a large theatrical release but generated a lot of controversy due to its graphic content and highly stylised narrative. The film does not have a linear plot, rather it is a series of vignettes about some white trash kids who are living in a backwoods town that has been wrecked by a tornado. Tummler drowns a cat and then later has sex with a girl whom he figures out has a lump in her breast. Tummler and his friend Solomon go around looking for more cats to kill. They bring feral cats to a local butcher who wants to sell them on to a local restaurant and warns them a rival cat catcher is on the loose. The boys sniff glue. The gruesome twosome track down the cat poacher Jarrod, who is poisoning the cats. They break into his house and find photos of Jarrod in drag, taking care of his severely ill grandmother. She is on a life support machine which the boys turn off, reckoning she would be better off out of this world. Throughout the film we are introduced to several bizarre characters and situations - a gay dwarf, a man who pimps out his Down Syndrome sister, Bunny Boy, skinheads fighting, kids selling candy door to door, arm wrestling, satanic rituals. The film ends with yet another cat killing by Tummler and Solomon. There isn't much of a plot to Gummo, a case of style over substance. But it is deliberately nasty and transgressive in its execution. A girl describes being raped by her father over the soundtrack. It is hard to poke fun at the characters in the film due to the highly sensitive subject matters that they face. Harmony Korine has a deliberate taste for subversion - the film is startling in its form and themes. I didn't like the cruelty against cats - that was actually the hardest thing in the film to swallow - above the characters' own troubles. Coming across as a gigantic "f**k you" to Hollywood, Gummo, though highly transgressive, is a film to be admired for its chutzpah.