Vic was six hours into his investigation of the dead irish boxer when he visited Dead Dave. Dave got his name from the hundreds of death threats made against him over the years, mostly due to his profession. He was a full-time rat. Not the type that talked to get himself out of trouble, but the kind that stuck his nose into everyones business so he would have info to sell. If you were shady, Dave knew all about you.

"I need info on a boxer's woman. The dead irishman, Feeney." Vic said without wasting breath on pleasantries.

"Mona?" Dave said. "Did she step in shit, Vic? Nice lady, that one. Too good for Feeney."

"Just tell me everything you know about her. It's business, Dave." Vic was already going through the man's cupboards, making himself at home and looking for booze.

Dead Dave knew this gal for years. The way he was speaking, he might even have a thing for her. Apparently she was beautiful, from a good family with a schoolteacher mom that died when she was a kid, and a father who was a chemist with an industrial company nearby. She went to school, paid her taxes, and on Saturdays was usually beaten bloody by her bastard boxer boyfriend. Dave was too weak to stand up to him about it, and Feeney just joked that she saved him gym fees by letting him "work out" on her. Nice guy. Nice enough for this girl to want him dead, Vic thought. He scratched down her address and paid Dave half of what he was asking, since he was out of whiskey.

Vic punched the wooden door to the Feeney home with shaking hands. When Mona answered she was still in a bathrobe despite it being nearly six pm.

"Go away, whoever you are. I am grieving." She said, swinging the door closed and turning before realizing the unwanted guest had his foot in the door.

"You are gonna want to talk with me lady" Vic said, "I know you killed Jack, and I need to know the details." She gasped at the accusation, but didn't deny it as Vic stepped though the doorway and began rifling through her kitchen.

"I don't know who told you I hurt Jack, but they're damn liars!" Mona said through forced sobs. "I loved him. And he died in the ring, for God's sake!"

Vic found a half empty bottle of bourbon and a coffee mug, sat down at the kitchen table and poured to the brim. "Nobody told me anything, miss" Vic said without taking his eyes off the cup as it rose to his lips. "But if I had a daughter who was getting the shit kicked out of her on a regular basis, I would want to kill the man responsible. And if that man was as tough a sonovabitch as Jack was, I would probably shoot the bastard. Unless I had access to thousands of lethal poisons and had the education to use them, that is." He swallowed the contents of the mug in one gulp and placed it back on the table to be filled again. He had her full attention, and she reached for the bottle to fill his cup for him.

There are few things that inspire the creativity of man greater than torture and murder, and civilizations over time have struggled to combat the unending cruelty displayed by it's citizenry with equally terrible resolve, with varying results. The purpose of these acts have as much to do with preventing such offenses as they do with punishing criminals, as evidenced by the public forum that they are most commonly performed in. Tonight I will give a short list of five such punishments that I believe are particularly inventive and effective in spreading fear and horror among the condemned and beyond.

5.) The Five Pains:

Not surprisingly, China has led the way historically in inhumane execution. They are the only civilization represented twice on this list and could easily fill a respectable torture and execution top ten on their own. The five pains method was invented in the Qin Dynasty by Li Si, an advisor to the emperor. It consisted of the severing of the nose, then one hand and one foot, followed by castration and then cutting the victim in two at the waist. Anyone executed by this method would live through the process until the final cut, making it particularly horrible. But justice has a way of finding the cruel no matter how well protected or powerful they are, and ultimately Li Si found himself on the receiving end of his creation in 208 B.C. after being convicted of treason.

4.)The Blood Eagle:

And what list of brutality would be complete without a contribution by the Norse Vikings? Any culture that grants afterlife exclusively to those that died in violent battle is bound to inspire ingenious abuse methods, and the Vikings give us the blood eagle. This execution method was possibly the most labor intensive, require ing the executioner to detach the ribs at the spine then splay them outward, breaking them, then pulling out and flattening the lungs to appear like the bloodstained wings of a demon. And adding salt to the wound, salt was literally added to the wound. Now that's just plain mean. I imagine this must have required some artistic talent in the executioner to perform correctly, proving again that the best work is always done by those that love their job.

3.) The Colombian Necktie:

This is the only execution method on the list that was devised in modern times, and where better than the heart of violent revolution in South America, Colombia? The earliest examples of this method being used trace it to the civil war known as La Violencia, which broke out in 1948. Aptly named, this act consists of the slashing of the victim's throat, after which the executioner would reach into the wound and pull the tongue out, leaving it to dangle between the collar bones like a gentlemanly necktie. Like all torturous techniques, the main objective would be to inspire fear in those that witnessed the act or found the victim's afterward rather than solely just for punishment of the victim. Although rarely practiced anymore, the brutality of the drug trade has accounted for a few occurrences in the last couple of decades. Here's hoping for a comeback.

2.) Lingchi:

Better known as slow slicing, or the death by a thousand cuts, Lingchi was a public execution style that was designed to prolong death and cause as much pain as humanly possible. It is said that medical doctors of the time provided one thousand strips of paper that bore the names of different locations on the body, and the executioner would draw the strips out, one by one, until the victim died. While this sounds about as horrible a punishment as can be imagined, it appears (in true capitalist fashion) that there may have been a loophole for the rich that were condemned to suffer this act. If the family of the victim paid a sufficient bribe to the torturer then the first strip he pulled from the box would be for the throat, and they would be dispatched with the first cut. But that did not mean they escaped entirely, as the body would still suffer through a few dozen additional cuts before the whole thing ended. And similarly to The Five Pains mentioned above, the corpse of the condemned would be buried incomplete, ensuring that the spirit was separated from the body and denying them an afterlife.

1.) Scaphism:

We have representation in this list from the Colombians, the Vikings, and twice from the Chinese, but there is one glaring party yet to attend this bloody party. Well rest assured, the number one spot belongs to the Persians. Scaphism was possibly the most horrible and inventive form of execution and torture ever devised, and is almost unknown in modern times. Known commonly as the boats, the victim was placed in the middle of two small boats, attached like a coffin with holes to allow the head and limbs to protrude, and then sent to the middle of a stagnant pond to bake in the sun. But the real bitch of this method was in the preparation. The victim was force fed copious amounts of milk and honey, then slathered in honey before being sealed inside the boats. This caused rampant and unending nausea and diarrhea and attracted hordes of flies and maggots to breed inside the coffin. Along with being baked alive, the victim was eaten from the inside out, often ending up with insects crawling out of the nose and mouth. From what I understand this is the punishment that we have lined up for Jerry Sandusky.

Well, there you have it folks. My short list of the worst ways to die that have ever been devised on earth. But the truly creative sadists out there should take this as a challenge, and maybe we can push the limits of advancements in death and dismemberment in the 21st century. My money is on the mexican cartels.

As you may already suspect, Terlet is a kind-hearted, gentle and polite person with a humor that ranges from silly irreverence to downright filthy. Hamtackle (myself) share in his uncommon taste in funny, but I also am fueled by a sincere curiosity about all things horrible and taboo. My pursuits have led me to witness countless videos of atrocities, torture, mutilation and death, but only in the name of a good time. So I thought that I might perform a service to those like Terlet that have no stomach for the violent filth I have come to love, and begin a segment of film reviews for the rare cinematic gems that truly shed light on the darkest side of the human condition. In short, I watch them so you don't have to.

For my first review I have chosen the infamous 2002 Gaspar Noé film

Irreversible

, starring Monica Bellucci. I believe it is still available on Netflix, but you may want to check out the review before viewing as it has two scenes that rank among the most disturbing in modern cinema, leading Roger Ebert to call it "

so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable

"

The film is shot out of sequence (think "

Memento

") helping build a sense of disorientation and suspense, and begins with a chaotic sequence of scenes that shows a violent confrontation in a gay sex club where a man is beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. The event is displayed in a very graphic style, pulling no punches as the victim's head is literally crushed to oblivion. We are then introduced to the three main protagonists, Alex (Bellucci), her boyfriend Marcus, and her ex, Pierre. The trio experience the most nightmarish evening imaginable when they attend a party together, and Alex becomes upset with her boyfriend when he gets drunk, and leaves the party abruptly. While walking home through an underground tunnel she is attacked and savagely beaten and raped by a cruel pimp.

Once again the viewer is spared no gory detail, with an unbroken shot of the act for what seemed like ten minutes. He overpowers her and delivers such a brutal beating that it is hard to tell if she will survive, and the scene is perfectly cringe-worthy. I can only imagine the shock and disappointment of some poor lonely soul that searches for Monica Bellucci nudie scenes online and stumbles upon this mess, because it is a surefire limpness-inducer unless you are a truly depraved sort (I plead the fifth regarding my feelings on this). The rape is detailed in an unnecessarily long unbroken shot, but grants this film a solid showing in any serial killer's personal collection.

From there the two men who love her go on a mission of vengeance, employing shady criminals to track down their target in the aforementioned gay sex club, where a frantic Marcus attacks the pimp with reckless abandon only to be overpowered, but later saved by Pierre, who ends up delivering the killing blow. His aggression is so unrestrained that we are left with the impression that he is still very much in love with Alex.

If there can be any criticism of the format it is that the climax is delivered like a gut punch right away, and we work backwards to find out exactly why the headless gentleman was treated with such disregard, which leaves us with a somewhat slow progression to the ending which allows the trio of main characters to fade into a simpler and more innocent time before the horror. And some may take exception to the shaky and disorienting camerawork, which overdoes the jittering wobble particularly early on, but is clearly an artistic choice by the director. Oh yes, and if you are a fucking moron that can't watch movies with subtitles, it is worth noting that this is a foreign film.

Overall I would say this flick does well with the two most infamous scenes, and I respect the director's decision to include a level of detail that makes it inaccessible to any but the most hardened viewers, but it feels a little lopsided since the vast majority of the plotline is filled with much less violent, non-rapey sort of fare. The message of

Irreversible

to the viewer is one of the fragility of our pleasant lives, and how quickly they can intersect with the ever-present dregs of humanity, and how so often we let them drag us into the depths with them.

So if you are the sort that is only interested in the disturbing bits, you will probably have your finger on the fast forward button most of the time, and will ultimately be disappointed in the end. But if you are interested in a dramatic story of vengeance that unfolds in a unique way and aren't entirely turned off by the occasional involuntary anal sex scene with one half of the participants sobbing profusely, then give this one a shot. The rest of you should avoid it altogether.

I already have a doozy of a film lined up for my next review, but you are going to have to wait until next week. Until then... happy viewing, degenerates!

A wrinkled eyelid opens to expose a bloodshot eye to the morning sun, an unpleasant stimulus to an around-the-clock alcoholic. Detective Vic Musket shook his head a few times before noticing that he was nude from the waist down and covered in vomit, but he put aside his curiosity about the previous night's events. In his experience any night that he blacks out is a night he didn't want to remember. It's kind of like Vegas: what happens in drunken stupor

stays

in drunken stupor. And since he collected on his last case he had many such nights, but instead of an alley and cheap vodka he had an expensive hotel room and all the 12 year scotch he could drink.

Then a faint memory of last night played through his head like some debauchery-filled zapruder film. There was a whore last night. A good one. Suddenly Vic shot to his feet and looked around the destroyed hotel room, certain she had robbed him and left in the wee hours of the morning. It wouldn't be the first time. Vic started tossing the room, looking for a tattered briefcase that held ten thousand dollars and an eleven inch black dildo (for obvious reasons). All he found were four condom wrappers, a pair of soiled women's underwear, and a greased bowling pin, but nothing out of the ordinary. Vic pulled on the panties, which were hardly up to the job of containing Vic's sore genitalia. One testicle dangled out of either side of the g-string, but he took no action to correct it and resigned himself to taking a shit and a shower. He always thought better after evacuating his colon of feces and whatever foreign objects that made their way up there last night.

When he opened the bathroom door Vic was pleasantly surprised to see his briefcase on the counter and wasted no time in prying it open. The ten thousand dollars stared back at him, but no dildo. That was a mystery he wasn't sure he wanted to solve. Secure that he hadn't been robbed Vic decided the whore must have hit the bricks once it was clear he was going to remain unconscious for the immediate future. Relieved, Vic sat on the toilet to start what was likely to be an hour long bowel movement. Then he noticed the shower curtain was drawn... He pulled the curtain back and immediately released a wet splatter into the toilet. The whore was in the bath tub with a sea of red around her, clearly dead. "I'm fucked". Vic thought.

After gathering all his belongings and scrubbing the room for fingerprints Vic hung the "do not disturb" sign from the doorknob, then hastily headed down the elevator and politely paid for another night in cash. "Thank you, Mr. Tipton. We are thrilled to extend your stay." Vic was happy he had the foresight to give a fake name, but truth be told anyone that befouled as many hotel rooms as he did quickly adopted an alias. There were two things on his mind. One, there was no way he killed the prostitute. Vic considered that profession to be more prestigious and altruistic than any legitimate occupation, and some of his best friends worked in the sex industry. Second, there was a killer out there that wanted desperately to frame Vic for murder. Vic didn't pretend that he made no enemies over the last twenty years of depraved detective work, but most of his enemies were of the filth-covered back alley meth addict variety, not the type to organize a conspiracy.

But now the detective had very few options, but he knew which he would take. There was a very important man that owed Vic Musket a favor, and what better time to call it in? But first he would have to turn the ten g's in the briefcase into a decent car to make his way down to Texas...

To be continued...