|
Post doomsday: A tribe of survivors take possession of a large but
rundown building, killing all who put up resistance - but they don't know
that the building is cursed by some demon god and haunted by a girl in
white that seems to know some secret ... Having taken the building, the
tribe celebrates with what ultimately turns out to be an orgy - only a
young man (Karel Roden) does not participate since he has lost his heart
to a dark-haired woman (Victoria Kidane) who resides in the building's
library, and the two soon become a couple - much to the dismay of the
tribe's chieftain, who wants dark-hair for himself and therefore
challenges the young man to a fight and defeats him. Dark-hair has since
made an escape, but the chieftain catches up with her, rapes her, and then
has her gangraped before the young man's very eyes. But even after the
gangrape, the chieftain won't stop humiliating both the young man and
dark-hair, so much so that the young man eventually tries to commit
suicide but survives his attempt unscathed. He then teams up with a blond
haired tribesman long dissatisfied with the chieftain, and the two catch
the chieftain in a net like a beast, then humiliate him by putting him on
display in a cage. With the chieftain defeated, the young man becomes the
new leader of the tribe, but before long he gets just as cruel as the
chieftain, while blond hair already plans his demise by brutally torturing
dark-hair, killing her mentor, the librarian, and destroying the library. Eventually,
everything leads to the young man and blond hair fighting it out, and our
hero is just about to kill blond hair when he realizes the evil influence of
the demon god on the tribe ... and while the other tribesmen are on a procession to
dispose of the demon god's idol, the young hero and dark-hair follow the
young girl haunting the place through the labyrinthine corridors of the
building - until they end up outside in what could be paradise ... Of
course, in 1989, post doomsday films were not exactly hot news anymore,
not even in Eastern Europe, and this movie is reminiscent of many classic
(and not so classic) films of the genre, first and foremost perhaps Zardoz
- yet Masseba is fascinating in its own right, a film that relies
not so much on its (not exactly original) plot but on its poetic cinematic
language that gets the most out of its limited sets (mainly a rundown
building, actually) and on carefully composed sequences that are more
reminiscent of an art performance than a science fiction film, a film that
keeps its dialogue to an absolute minimum (the whole script for this 90+
minute movie probably contains no more than one page of dialogue) to keep
the film from becoming bland, that relies on atmosphere rather than on
action, and that (successfully) attempts to give its tried and true story
a political dimension - and unfortunately it is also a film that has over
the years become incredibly rare and deserves rediscovery on a large
scale. Recommended.
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
find Masseba at adultvideouniverse.com
