General Massacre - 1973
Director(s)
Burr Jerger
Writer(s)
Burr Jerger
Herman Wuyts
Producer(s)
Burr Jerger producer
Cast
Burr Jerger - General Massacre
Christine Gish - Kate Massacre
Tiffany Tate - Wife
Tsai - Corporal
Al Grundy - Lieutenant
Guy Williams - General, as a Young Man
Review by Sven Soetemans
Wow! Heavy, devastating stuff,
"General Massacre" is an ultra-weird film that received some extra attention from me since it's a Belgian-American co-production. With me being Belgian and this being a very rare cult gem…this was an absolute must see. The film describes itself best as a mixture between an anti-war protest film and the psychological analysis of a deranged war freak. This review will simply be too short to sum up all the bizarre (most very shocking) elements "General Massacre" features but I can already tell you it contains enough controversy to last a lifetime. The story focuses on a veteran (the General) who served the military during WWII, Vietnam and the Korean War. He has quite a few alarming conceptions about warfare ("politics are the extension of war", "Civilians are as much the enemy as men in uniform"…) When he returns to his estate in Antwerp, he continues to live under the impression of being in command of his troops and hikes into the nearby woods fully armored. This leads to a couple very disturbing and repulsive scenes that made this production the ultimate nightmare for critics and film committees. Once sequence in particular, in which the General sees an ordinary cow as the "enemy" and butchers it, caused this to movie to be forbidden in several European countries. Granted, the cruelty often is pointless and overly explicit. The above mentioned sequence even looks too realistic…if you know what I mean. But the message "General Massacre" brings is far too impressive to be left untold. War too easily gives deranged people an excuse to feast their perverted world perspectives and the authorities only find out when it's too late! "General Massacre" almost completely is a one-man-project by Burr Jerger who directed, produced, stars and adapted the screenplay from his OWN novel. That's impressive to say the least. This is an unhinged authentic cult film, totally unknown to the world.
Special word of thanks goes out to IMDb-boarder Dario the 2nd. Without his help, I probably never would have seen this neither!
|
