BAD BIOLOGY (2008)

A view from the inside...of Jennifer.

I was born with seven clits. Seven that I know of, seven I that can feel and touch. Seven separate clitorises, each one constantly craving attention. Actually, I'm pretty sure that there are more than seven,  but the others are buried so deep inside that only a doctor could find them. And I'm sick of doctors. Doctors probing, doctors touching...Doctors, doctors, doctors...To some, I was a perfect example of permanent sexual arousal syndrome, but to most I was simply the girl with the crazy pussy.

-Jennifer, BAD BIOLOGY'S protagonist.

With an opening monologue like that, there was no way in hell that I wouldn't include this film in this year's review series!

From the twisted mind of Frank Henenlotter, the man behind the cult grindhouse classic BASKET CASE (1982), comes this story that reads like what might occur if H.P. Lovecraft went on a four-day tequila and Jaegermeister bender and attempted to write a porno movie. While not actually visually pornographic in the strictest definition of the term, BAD BIOLOGY pulls no punches when addressing the grottier aspects of human sexual function as they might work in cases of extreme and repellent deviations from the physical norm. It's Cronenbergian "body horror" with a pitch black, borderline John Waters-esque sense of humor.

Blonde, attractive Jennifer (Charlee Danielson) is a photographer who aggressively and artfully documents her dark, weird vision of sexuality, a vision that stems from her own...curious condition. You see, Jennifer is some sort of mutant whose difference involves her utterly bizarro genitalia and reproductive capabilities. Having begun menstruating at the age of five and cursed with seven known clitorises (there may be more within her somewhere) that make her perpetually horny and insatiable, Jennifer sees herself as her own species, "a new species. The doctors think I'm a genetic mistake, but I believe I'm an evolutionary leap forward, a female of the future who feeds on orgasms the way you people devour burgers and fries." Her unquenchable need leads her out at night to prey upon assorted thuggish lowlives in bars and dodgy pool halls and drag the unwitting studs back to their places, where she proves to be a thrashingly animated lover who demands her lovers cum insider her and whose inhuman throes of sexual ecstasy occasionally result in her killing her partners (whose corpses she photographically documents). After a typical fatal tryst, Jennifer immediately consumes large quantities of food before retreating to the nearest available bathtub or other private spot where she gives birth to full-term babies less than two hours after conception, then abandons the squalling infants wherever she births them, caring nothing for them because she's sees them as "fake, unfinished freak babies" since "real" babies take nine months to happen. All of this information is imparted within the film's first fourteen minutes, and things only intensify from there.

The masculine flipside to this is Batz (Anthony Sneed), a young man who is a virtual recluse whose isolation is due to his massive, perpetually horny and disturbingly sentient and drug-addicted penis. The Johnson in question got the way it is due to the thing having been accidentally amputated at birth (Batz states that he was never told exactly how that happened), but it was sewn back on and unfortunately completely lacked erectile capability. Since "no parent was gonna pay good money so their son could get a hard-on," the tortured teen began working out and obtaining steroids and growth hormones that he administered directly into his dick, resulting in his unit's very lively and independent attitude. In a pathetic attempt to maintain some semblance of control over his literally rampant member, Batz chokes his system with all manner of dangerous drugs — animal steroids and worse — and tries to satisfy his cock's needs with a jack-off machine that would make Rube Goldberg proud, and the results are not at all good. Needless to say, it's only a matter of time until these two sexual mutants meet, but before that happens they must weather a couple of majorly twisted sub-plots involving odd "art" porno, the disposal of the most inhumanly orgasmic and likely brain-damaged porn actress you've ever seen, and a literal cock on the loose...

BAD BIOLOGY is by no means flawless — none of Henenlotter's films are — but it tackles some very delicate and potentially offensive material with its tongue planted very much in cheek, and its extremely prurient content is especially tragi-comic to those in the audience who enjoy romance and fun sex that makes the participants feel good both physically and emotionally. The plights of Jennifer and Batz are quite miserable and viewers will want to see them connect and find some measure of relief and comfort in each other, but comedy though it may be, BAD BIOLOGY is still quite horrifying at its heart, and it never forgets that for even one minute. I dig it but there are those who might find it a bit too much to take, so carefully consider your own limits for this kind of thing before checking it out. A date movie it ain't, unless you and your squeeze find tormented mutant genitals to be a major turn-on.