American Mary

She never wears anything this conservative
while hacking people up.

"She's an artist."

Hello all! It's Thursday at The Tagline and you know what that means! It means a Canadian actress is going to surgically split your tongue and then cut your dick off! If that sounds like just another Friday night to you, well you scare the ever-loving shit out of me then! If it sounds kind of crazy, then you'll probably react similar to the way I did when I start talking about my movie for today, American Mary (which is funny because it was shot in Canada and is full of Canadians). Starring Katherine Isabelle (maybe best remembered as Ginger from the Canadian Werewolf/puberty metaphor film Ginger Snaps) as the titular Mary (and believe me theres a fair bit of titular going around in this film if you know what I mean), American Mary is a kind of freaky revenge horror movie directed by the Soska Sisters, best known for being really creepy Hungarian twins (I mean I don't think they're best known for much of anything, but they are creepy, and twins, and appear in the movie, presumably as creepier versions of their real-life selves.)  Mary is a medical school student aspiring to be a surgeon, more or less immediately alerting you that the plot is going to take a bad turn sooner or later. Mary is strapped for cash, but also appears to have a robust collection of fancy fetish-wear (maybe she was planning for this exact moment I don't know), so to try and make ends meet while she's in school she decides to resort to stripping (I know ITS SHOCKING WHO EVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING). When she arrives at the strip club, instead she is drawn down into the sub-basement by the owner Billy after he finds out she is a med-school student training to be a surgeon. He wants her to keep a guy who had been tortured alive, which she does because she's offered 5000 smackers, in cash money. Who can blame her right? Things sort of proceed as you'd expect from thereOR DO THEY.

Man this is why I HATE going to my dentist.

Yes and no. Mary is then approached by Betty Boop the stripper (no seriously) who wants her to make her friend Ruby anatomically incorrect (well okay not true it's Ruby who wants it but whatever) for an even larger chunk of change. Mary, tempted by the promise of teetering towers of dollars and bills, agrees. Later she throws up a bunch. Kudos to her for not doing it DURING the surgery, that's probably a big surgical no-no. Before Mary can proceed down the dimly lit path of EXTREME body modification, first she is drugged and raped by one of her med-school professors. He probably comes to regret that decision after she has him kidnapped by Billy, and then uses him as her personal practice doll to perform body mods on. Mary shortly thereafter goes into the hack-and-bill profession full time, though typically on people who pay her to do it, rather than just because she wants them to suffer. She performs most of these procedures in what essentially amounts to fetish-wear. I'm not sure how practical it is to perform surgery in high heels, having never done either, but I imagine it isn't the ideal footwear for slicing up someones penis. There is a mutilated penis at some point in this movie. I won't tell you when though! It's going to be a surprise now, see it's an adventure!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...
I guess.

The owner of the strip club meanwhile is cultivating a considerable... what I would call a fear boner I guess, for Mary, who is very attractive, but also could slice you into tiny pieces and keep you alive indefinitely, which sort of could make you nervous about dating her. Not just that she knows how to do those things, but that she is actively doing them to some other guy. Now I'm not saying that guy didn't have it coming, he was a horrible rapist scumbag, but still anyone who hangs another person by large fish hooks after they're done hacking off some limbs... well they're causing some understandable consternation, and I know that personally I would feel some hesitation before deciding to enter into a relationship with them. Because I like my limbs where they are, unaltered. I'm vanilla like that. Anyway, the point is that your mileage may be similar. I was often thinking something like "Wow she sure is attractive! Also I'd like to never be within three miles of her because I don't want by tongue split and my mouth sewn shut!"

When sketchy guys ask me to go to their
house, I do not wear this. I'd wear a dress
made out of guns.

For a movie about people being hacked to pieces and bizarre surgery, this movie actually isn't THAT gross and is substantially less gory than say, You're Next, which was a total fucking bloodbath, that you should totally watch (no really). There are some parts of this movie that were pretty bloody, and certainly a lot of it is graphic and disturbing, but the actual gross out factor could have been a lot higher if they had really wanted to take it to the limit. I barely found myself wanting to look away from the screen at all! That being said, stuff does get pretty weird, and also the scene where Mary is raped is pretty graphic, so be aware of that and if you are sensitive to that kind of content I'd recommend fast forwarding through that part. Overall if you are into horror movies, and enjoy the sort of disturbing revenge fantasy stuff along with the generally kind of bizarre, you could do a lot worse than American Mary. If that isn't your thing, this movie might seem kind of pointless to you. Make the appropriate judgement. As a closing note, I need to add that this whole movie was desperately asking for a NIN song, a Rob Zombie song, or both, but it just NEVER HAPPENED. I was disappointed, especially considering that the entire movie was basically a NIN music video.

That's all for today! With luck my life will chill out for long enough that I might actually get to see a movie in a an actual theater, and I'll pass that value along to you! Otherwise expect more random stuff!