What makes a film perverse? It could be a character and their individual perversions, or it could be down to the director of the film creating a pervasive air of seediness, but generally the rule of thumb is that highbrow perverted films that carry a 'message' get away with more than the lowbrow films which are viewed to be potentially corrupting to the masses. This class division has been a rule of film classification and censorship since its inception and it carries on to the present day. Subtitled and foreign arthouse cinema generally gets away with more perverse unexpurgated material than your bog standard Hollywood film, which is also more likely to be censored. Even more persecuted is exploitation cinema, whose raison d'être is generally to be prurient and perverted. These films are subject to severe censorship (12 and a half minutes were shorn off the first UK release of House On The Edge Of The Park after a lengthy ban) or remain illegal in some parts of the world (The Bunny Game is still banned in the UK). Perverse cinema has been an attraction for many cinemagoers ever since they clapped eyes on such films as Tod Browning's Freaks or Luis Buñuel's L'Age D'Or, right up to Human Centipede 2 and Antichrist. There is a wealth of perverse films that constitute a rich tapestry in cinema - below are 15 of the most perverse examples.
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
