Donkey Punch is already notorious for being called “the vilest film I’ve ever seen” by Amanda Platell of London’s Daily Mail. I’m not familiar with Ms. Platell’s work, but having seen Donkey Punch, I can safely say she doesn’t get out much. I doubt it’s even one of the top five “vilest” films playing at Fantastic Fest, even if director Oliver Blackburn proudly announced its provisional NC-17 rating before the screening. The movie clearly intends to shock, but it doesn’t pack much of a…oh no I didn’t.
The first would-be shockeroo is, of course, the title. As our sophisticated readership is no doubt aware, the donkey punch is one of those quasi-mythical sex acts like the Dirty Sanchez or my personal favorite around the holidays, the blumpkin. (And if none of these ring a bell, feel free to google them, although you’ll probably wish you hadn’t.) The general idea vis-a-vis the donkey punch – and I’ll try to put this as delicately as possible – entails a man mounting a woman from behind and, at the brink of orgasm, punching her in the neck in order to achieve what we’ll refer to as a clenching effect. Yes, this act does occur in the movie, and part of the fun – if you can bring yourself to think of it as “fun” – is trying to guess who the eventual participants will be.
The candidates: three lovely young British lasses who look great in bikinis and even better out of them, and four yobs who work as crewmen on a luxury yacht. The guys are varying degrees of loathsome, and the ladies consist of two fun-loving sluts and the recently heartbroken good girl. You won’t need Robert McKee to help you figure out who’ll survive the mess that ensues once the donkey punching goes awry.
Rest assured, there’s plenty of gore and abundant nudity, but that’s true of any number of films playing this festival. Anyone expecting more than a run-of-the-mill Dead Teenager movie out of Donkey Punch – let alone the vilest movie ever – will probably be disappointed. Nice yacht, though.
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