Monday, March 22, 2021

 'Pigs' (1972) - Marc Lawrence.

For reasons obscure, Marc Lawrence's idiosyncratic, sadly overlooked 70s psychodrama, 'Pigs' aka 'Daddy's Deadly Darling' remains little seen and poorly represented, which is wholly mystifying since it contains innumerable visceral scenes of preternatural intensity to rival that of, Tobe Hooper's 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and, Jeff Gillen's 'Deranged'. Somewhat erroneously labelled as a sordid, porcine grue-fest, while in actuality it deals far more cleverly with the infinitely more dangerous psychosis born of man, rather than the frenzied killer pig splatter movie the poster so luridly suggests it to be.

A beautiful, plainly neurotic young woman, Lynn Hart (Toni Lawrence) arrives at an eerily desolated pig farm, maintained somewhat nefariously by morose, Mr. Zambrini (Marc Lawrence) a homicidal hermit ex-carny with a deliciously deranged, Sid Haig demeanour about him! His nigh on derelict farm and disgustingly dilapidated café being an insalubrious mirror to his moral and psychological dissolution, and very soon our misfit waif, Lynn inexorably succumbs to this isolated, bucolic, anything but soothing milieu of far from dormant dementia, seething bloodlust, and heightened hallucinatory terror!

There's a more than passing similarity to, John Hayes no less disturbing trip into the kaleidoscopic horror of a greatly distempered mind, 'Dream No Evil', with both films imbued with a monstrously debilitating sense of loss and painful longing, and in the case of 'Pigs', Zambrini perhaps mourns his theatrical past, while the fragile girl, Lynn is increasingly desperate to escape something that fulminates disquietingly deep within her restless psyche! Depending on one's sinful sensibilities, 'Pigs' might be appreciated as a minor masterpiece of rustic macabre, this salacious heft of grindhouse Gothic being blessed with fine performances from straight shooting sheriff, Dan Cole (Jessie Vint), and Marc Lawrence's bravura manifestation as the dead-eyed, darkly enigmatic pig fetishist Zambrini. But I genuinely found enormous pathos in the spiritually estranged malaise of the desperately distressed, Lynn Hart, portrayed with disturbing verisimilitude by, Toni Lawrence.

Viewed today 'Pigs' seems all the more plausible, with rural communities around the world withering on the dying vine of capitalism and mental illness being exacerbated by the iniquities of 'Social Media', with a vast majority ceaselessly filtering their lives through the distorted lens of their omnipresent mobile phone! This strange, profoundly unsettling independent horror film from a bygone age has lost little of its considerable 'bite', and it would be monstrously remiss of me if I failed to complement the truly exceptional score by, Charles 'Mr Majestyk' Bernstein. This remains a ferociously dark and nihilistic backwoods horror classic while lacking glossy, cartoonish villains, it contains the uncomfortable stench of truth.

'Don't feed the pigs after midnight unless you want to become one! Marc Lawrence's twisted tableau of far from dormant dementia, seething bloodlust, porcine paranoia, and heightened hallucinatory terror proves grimly irresistible!' - Weirdlingwolf.











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