A BAD TRIP(TYCH) THROUGH HUNGARIAN HISTORY.
Three stories. Three eras. Three men. One is an orderly in a remote outpost during World War II consumed by lust but who passes the boredom by spying on the women around him and discovering his ability to ejaculate fire. The next is his son, a corpulent speed-eater competing for the glory of the Communist state and the attention of a hefty female colleague. The last is their son, a master taxidermist in the post-socialist era who turns his trade onto himself with gruesome effect. This is Taxidermia, a grotesquely surreal offering from director György Pálfi that inscribes the history of his native Hungary into the unusual bodies of three generations of men who are all damned from birth. Based in part on the stories of Lajos Parti Nagy, Pálfi creates a queasy masterpiece of historical body horror not recommended for the squeamish.
Special Edition Contents:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio
- Optional newly translated English subtitles
- Feature-length audio commentary with director György Pálfi
- Making of Taxidermia behind-the-scenes featurette
- Horrific Histories and Bachelor Machines, a brand new featurette with Steven Shaviro on the film’s political and philosophical underpinnings
- Deleted scenes with optional director’s commentary
- Visual design and concept gallery
- Storyboards
- Interactive game
- Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, Pálfi’s feature-length extravaganza of movie love and adventure pieced together from found-footage taken from Hollywood and abroad
- Taltosember vs Ikarus, a short film by Pálfi with optional director commentary
- Theatrical trailers
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by scholar László Strausz
Based on I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!, the autobiographical book of chain gang escapee Robert E. Burns, Mervyn LeRoy’s uncompromising and starkly realistic 1932 drama, about an out of work veteran twice railroaded into the hell of a Georgia chain gang, still has the power to shock. Paul Muni commands the screen in a brilliantly lived-in performance as a man whose only prospect is a life perpetually on the run, and the film’s gritty realism spares no anger at a cruel and unjust legal system. Eighty years later, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang remains the studio era’s greatest social message film and it stands as a crucial turning point for Warner Bros., Paul Muni, Robert E. Burns, and the American prison system.
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