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The Unknown + I was a teenage serial killer

The Unknown + I was a teenage serial killer

I Was a Teenage Serial Killer

I Was a Teenage Serial Killer

Sarah Jacobson

  • 1993
  • USA
  • Horror / Comedy
  • 27mn
  • Black and white
The cult short film by Sarah Jacobson, an icon of the underground feminist scene - in an enraged anarchist vein reminiscent of A Gun for Jennifer - follows the path of an abused teenager turned psychopath, well set on killing all the “sexist pigs” she meets. Paradoxically, its near zero budget, its grainy photography and amateurism make the subversive nature of the message even more efficient.

Credits

  • With : Kristin Calabrese, Phil Calabrese, Steven Nereo, Chris Stoeher...
  • Screenplay : Sarah Jacobson
  • Photography : Sarah Jacobson
  • Editing : Sarah Jacobson
  • Music by : Heavens to Betsy
  • Production : Sarah Jacobson

Alexis Langlois

When I searched through the programs of 30 editions of L’Étrange Festival to find films for this carte blanche, I fell upon this title: I was a teenage serial killer, that immediately appealed to me! Looking up its directress, Sarah Jacobson, who produces and directs DIY political violent films, made me really want to see all her filmography (but also to read her texts, as she wrote about her work as a DIY directress). So I’m hyper excited to discover I was a teenage serial killer on the big screen for the first time with the L’Étrange audience!

The Unknown

The Unknown

Tod Browning

  • 1927
  • USA
  • Drama
  • 1h05mn
  • Mute
A knife thrower works in a circus under the stage name "Alonzo the Armless". Though he still has arms he hides them during his show. His partner can’t stand men’s hands, so out of love, he decides to have his amputated. After his operation, he realizes that his lover, cured of her phobia, now loves his rival.
Announcing Freaks by its setting and obsession for deformity, also produced by MGM, The Unknown remains for many Tod Browning’s best film, no doubt because it’s his finest collaboration with Lon Chaney with whom he will make eight films, like The Unholy Three ( 1925),and West of Zanzibar (1928). A poignant surrealist tale of mad love, that Jodorowsky will remember when writing Santa Sangre.

Credits

  • With : Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Norman Kerry, Nick De Ruiz...
  • Screenplay : Waldemar Young
  • Editing : Merritt B. Gerstad
  • Editing : Harry Reynolds, Errol Taggart
  • Production : Irving Thalberg

Alexis Langlois

I think The Unknown is one of my favorite films. I love Lon Chaney and it's maybe his best role. With Todd Browning, they would always imagine his roles starting from the body: from a character with something extra or missing, they’d write the part and the movie. Lon Chaney was a transformist actor that always reinvented himself through costumes and make-up (he invented many cinema make-up techniques) and his body. Here Chaney has no arms, and that’s why Joan Crawford’s character tells him he’s the only man who can’t make her suffer.

But as always with Browning, true faces are never those you think, and you soon discover that Chaney’s character, Alonso, hides another peculiarity.

It’s maybe one of the saddest love stories ever, and one of the maddest. 

Screenings

05/09 • 19h15 • Screen 100
Screening presented by Alexis Langlois