[Movies] S&Man

On May 13, 2004, an MSN Messenger window pops up on my computer and it’s a link with the intriguing title of Nick Berg decapitation video. Morbid curiosity gets the better of me and I click on it. I watch a man in an orange jumpsuit get his head sawed off by a man in a ski mask with a large knife. Pretty convincing but, I’ve seen better. A few minutes later I learn it was real. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone die on film. I’ve watched bad bootlegs of Faces of Death and, of course, I’ve seen the footage of JFK getting shot and people jumping out of windows on 9/11. But none of this really prepared me for JT Petty’s S&MAN (Sandman), one of the most disturbing movies you’ll ever see. On IMDB, the bottom of the S&MAN page reads, “If you like this title, we also recommend Pink Flamingos.” Not the most accurate comparison but it should serve as an ominous warning that this movie is not for you if you don’t have a strong stomach.

You’ve probably never heard of JT Petty but he writes children’s books, made the second sequel to Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic as well as a short called Soft For Digging which made him a minor celebrity in the underground horror scene. He’s also one of the creators and writers of the Splinter Cell video games; or as he playfully describes, “I worked with the game designers to figure out how the story can make up excuses to shoot people in the head.” S&MAN starts as a documentary on voyeurism but becomes something far more unnerving. The neighborhood Petty grew up in had a peeping Tom who, when his house was raided, was discovered to be in possession of hundreds of hours of footage of his neighbours in their bathroom. The catch is he got away with it because the community didn’t want 200+ hours of bowel movements screened in court for all to see. Of course, Petty saw this creep as the ideal candidate for an interview. “For about two years I was leaving him notes and sending him copies of my movies. I left him a copy of my second movie and was like ‘I’m kind of pervy. I like watching people too. Let’s talk!’ But, of course, a peeping Tom is insanely shy,” and he never agreed to be interviewed.

Meanwhile production for S&MAN has already begun; so what can he do? Well, at about this time the Nicholas Berg decapitation video and photos of Abu Ghraib prisoners being tortured start circulating on the internet. Then movies like Saw and Hostel—which contain more ultra-violence than actual plot—come out and become wickedly popular. “It sort of seemed like there’s this weird confluence of voyeurism and underground horror in modern culture,” Petty explains. Through his connections to the underground horror scene he started tracking that down. “People who were making movies with zero budget would send me a copy of their movie and be like ‘Let’s be friends, this is what I’m working on.’ So I started seeing these movies and realized there’s a whole world of people making horror movies with no money. The movies were usually ridiculous and kind of funny. But then every once in a while there’d be a special effect that wasn’t a special effect. Or real sexuality. Or real violence. Or, possibly, real stalking. Where the filmmaker becomes scarier than the film.”

Naturally, Petty enlists the help of these underground horror filmmakers who are essentially trying to make the most realistic looking snuff films possible. There’s Fred Vogel, who makes films that try to emulate the home movies of a serial killer and has been arrested twice for trying to bring “snuff” films into Canada; Bill Zebub, director of a gem called Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist; and most importantly, Eric Rost, creator of a series of films called S&MAN for which Petty’s movie is named. So the documentary changes its focus from voyeurism to address this question: why do we like to watch people die? “There is that weird double motion of passing a car wreck and looking closer, especially in horror films. Where you see an effect and you’re looking to see how well it’s done. There’s that great throat slashing in the first Friday the 13th where I’m so excited out of admiration for the special effect. And then watching underground horror films where I’m in admiration of Bill Zebub cutting his arm and then you’re like ’oh shit, is that real?’” In S&MAN, whether or not the violence is real is debatable. Whether it’s real enough isn’t.

At one point, Rost, the S&MAN, comments on how people think he’s the S&M Man. “I don’t do that kind of crap” he says. What kind of crap does Rost do then? Try hidden camera stalker snuff films of women. Initially he follows women around and gets to know them without them knowing—“screen tests” he calls them. Then he claims to introduce himself to the subjects and they agree to be filmed and brutally murdered in isolated locations. A source of tension between Petty and Rost is: when exactly does he let these women know he’s filming them? Rost never gives straight answers. In fact, a lot of the interview subjects in the film don’t give straight answers. But that’s okay because the filmmaker’s probably being a wee bit dishonest too. But you really start to question what’s real when Rost actually starts to stalk Petty. This all culminates with a closing scene that will make your jaw drop and haunt you for many nights to come. “I want people to be like ‘Oh wait. Hold on. Some of this isn’t real. What exactly happened and what didn’t?’ I know it’s not a very nice thing for me to do but I also think that’s the most honest way I can make the movie because I’m saying some fairly accusatory things about horror and culture and why we watch violence. But I also create horror and culture that has lots of violence in it.”

S&MAN walks the line between documentary and fiction like someone who polished off a bottle of tequila prior to a sobriety test. When asked about the somewhat dubious ethics of his film, Petty plainly states, “We’re not journalists. We’re storytellers…I’d probably need to make a documentary before I’m a documentarian. If I’d made Fahrenheit 9/11, I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable calling that a documentary. Again, I don’t know what I would call a documentary. You can’t not affect something by pushing a camera at it.” But the whole ‘what makes a documentary a documentary?’ is a stale argument best left to academics. All you need to know is that S&MAN is an entertaining and disturbing horror film that should be enjoyed and savoured like a mouthful of soylent green. If you like the taste, you probably shouldn’t question how it’s made.