Taxidermia - with many spoilers

Taxidermia is a movie that will stay with me for all the wrong reasons.

Learning of its existence, the name alone gave me a feeling of dread. The Human Centipede came to mind, which I have never seen in its entirety, nor do I wish to.

The cover image was of a ridiculously fat man that seemed a novelty akin to “Fat Bastard” from Austin Powers or the fat exploding guy in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Novelty fat people fall just outside my slapstick humour tolerance, although I do understand why other people would be into it. I suppose it’s the one last mockery you can make about a person’s appearance within the boundaries of political correctness - One step down from black face but still rude enough to be shocking. This movie wasn’t worried about political correctness and it seems as if the script may have just read: “Be Shocking”.

Part1

The first of the three sections is the one I find most appalling. The First of the bloodline the movie centres around is a man who's essentially a sexual deviant. I struggled to tell which name was his surname and which was his first name as they appear to call each of the characters by both periodically, as well as the fact this man was an orderly in the military and often called by his last name anyway. It confused me greatly and I’m unsure if names are backward in Hungary anyway, now. This is of course the least unsettling part about story number 1, featuring the man I’ll refer to as PF (for pig fucker).

The obvious points to mention are the penis flamethrower, him fucking a hole, him ejaculating into the stars and him fucking a pig… who is also his boss’s wife? The film had me at penis flamethrower, I was entirely on board. Was the man leaking gas? Was he lighting a dick fart? I couldn’t wait to find out. Sadly no explanation was offered but I was happy enough to let it lie. Then the incredibly arty scene of a revolving bath. Some needlessly disturbing animal carcasses but it was very pleasant to watch. The climax of his story, so to speak, was quite good as he darts between what may be fantasy and may be reality. I was initially under the impression PF had hallucinated that he’d fucked the boss’s wife, when in fact it was a dead pig carcass all along. What exactly was in that candle? Apparently, he fucked both and in a truly ignorant display of basic biology, the film displays a pig baby.

By no means would I say this portion of the film was good, but I did enjoy seeing certain bits happen. What I really didn’t enjoy was the part where PF is seemingly fantasizing about getting a hand job off a child. This needlessly crossed a boundary from gross-out horror-comedy to just plain revolting for the sake of it. It’s as if the director rewatched his creation, believed it wouldn’t be banned in enough countries, and then forced one of the worse things he could think of into the story. It’s completely irrelevant. This first tale was made for the sole purpose of mentioning pigs and vaginas over and over again.

Part 2

The second story about the speed-eating pig offspring was probably the tamest of the three and the one I engaged with least. There was plenty of CGI’d sick and the image of a man forcing down gallons of soup and horse sausage was quite unpleasant, but it didn’t really rival the atrocities of the pig boy’s predecessor.

The movie’s underlying themes become more established throughout this tale. Taxidermia is intended to be a “metaphorical socio-political retelling of Hungary's history from the Second World War to the present day”. This section forced the cold war down viewers’ throats harder than an Olympic speed eater with a ladle full of red caviar straight from a Socialist star.

Part 3

The concluding story of the frail spawn of two failed speed eaters is where the movie’s title comes from. He’s a taxidermist and everything you imagine a sick film would have a taxidermist do... happens. it was very predictable and not very impressive. Yes, he stuffs a human. Yes, randomly a fetus gets stuffed with no good explanation or reason.

I could see the Dad becoming cat food from the off and the scenes of arguments and cage door banging seemed completely superfluous. I was so over the idea of the Dad being eaten that by the time it happened I didn’t remotely care, and would probably have preferred just another scene of him sat contently swallowing lard in silver foil.

This leg of the story completely redeems itself, however, with self-taxidermy. I genuinely had no idea what the taxidermist was doing whilst all of the horrid images of organs being removed were being shown. It wasn’t until a crazy rickety sword thing chopped his head off that it became clear. This, followed by the scene of his remains and taxidermied father being displayed in a museum are what hung in my mind whilst I spent the evening in shock wondering If I’d actually enjoyed the movie, as well as debating whether or not to seek counseling.

So, To Conclude:

Had the entire movie been about the weird taxidermist trying to achieve a horrifically brilliant art display of himself taxidermied, perhaps featuring an exhibition of a man using his cock as a blowtorch, then I’d have scored it 4 thumbs up.

Unfortunately, that horrible peado-y bit in the first third, coupled with the fact that the dialogue was quite dull and hard to follow means it has to receive:-

1 Middle Finger

Here’s a meme -