Mandy
I don’t think this is for me any more. Early 2000s me would have been all over it, like when I found a DVD rental place that carried Ichi the Killer despite it (as far as I knew) being banned in Ireland. Mandy had a reputation of being way out, pushing the boundaries, an experience unlike any other. And while it kind of was those things, it was very very aware that it was doing them. I could see the thought process in every bit, what’s the wackiest, most extreme thing we could do now. You’re at home on the couch watching a serious movie and thinking, wouldn’t it be crazy if this thing happened, and then this thing happens. Nicolas Cage finds a chainsaw to fight a goon? He pulls out another chainsaw that’s about twice the length to have a swordfight with. Even having written that, it sounds cool, but that’s it, there’s absolutely nothing to care about. It always annoyed me when people would say to stop being critical of, for example, Transformers, because “I just want to see giant robots punching each other”. No you don’t, if there are no stakes, then that’s boring. That’s something AI could generate today. Why did they put humans in the movie if that’s all you’re interested in? If everything is being done just for spectacle, it gets boring. I was ten times more invested in (not in this movie, obviously) a Belgian lady forgetting a button on her cardigan as a symbol of her mental state beginning to crack than Mandy being burned alive in a sleeping bag.
Anyway, yeah, Mandy is Nicolas Cage’s girlfriend, and a cult comes driving by in a bus and their leader likes the look of her. The cult summons some kind of biker Cenobite gang whose purpose I’ve forgotten in the month gap between watching the movie and writing this. So they all pile off to her and Cage’s cabin, take drugs, the leader plays some of his own (honestly not bad) folk music but Mandy laughs at him. So they tie Cage up to a pole, stab him - but not, you know, just killing him and making sure - and, as mentioned above, burn her alive in a sleeping bag. So, oh, it’s a revenge movie.
Cage makes a bat’leth, and goes off and kills everyone involved. It’s all very cool. He lights a cigarette of the burning skull of a decapitated cultist. Are the demons supernatural? Who knows. Why do the cult have their own church building in an isolated canyon or whatever it was? Doesn’t matter, good place for a fight. Cage literally crushes a guy’s skull to pulp with his bare hands and it’s fine.
It’s definitely for someone, and someone probably used to be me, but isn’t any more. Maybe I should never watch Natural Born Killers again.