For part two of our deep dive into sex in horror, we look at 2022’s “The Surgeon” and the provocative festival film “Black Eyed Susan”.
We continue our look at sex and horror with a topic we have never discussed before. Both of this week’s movies claim to deal with sadomasochism. One of them goes too far – but not in the ways you expect. The other does it in a way that makes you wonder why they even mentioned it was a part of the plot.
The Surgeon from 2022 is about a performance artist who gets caught in an S&M love triangle. At least, that is what the logline tells you. A better description would be an incomprehensible wanna-be psychosexual thriller that throws everything at the audience, whether it makes sense or not.
Lots of pointless nudity, shocking twists that end up meaning nothing, and characters you will not be sure what to think is just part of one of the worst movies we have ever had on our humble little podcast.
You can watch The Surgeon now on Tubi.
Black Eyed Susan makes much more sense.
It is about a man who takes a job testing a sex robot whose AI learns through punishment. It is a provocative film that never holds back. It also introduces themes that are important in today’s society, whether we want to think about them or not.
The problem is that it has good ideas that it does nothing with. In a type of story that pretty much requires nudity, when is it too much? How strong of a point can you make when you are literally dehumanizing a character? When is a person so far down on their look you don’t even care to look for them?
Black Eyed Susan asks a lot of questions – and many of them are interesting, but do they overcome its glaring faults?
The film is currently not yet available to watch outside of the festival circuit, but you can read another take on the film from the Fantasia Film Festival right here.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST:
Every week AIPT Movie Editor Nathaniel Muir and his cinema partner in crime Blake Heath discuss indie and genre movies you have have never heard of, the ones you cannot hear enough about, and the ones you never want to hear about again.
Episode 369: ‘Find Your Friends’ (2026)
Aside from Art the Clown, what has Damian Leone contributed to horror? We also come dangerously close to gatekeeping while we discuss what extreme horror is. Plus a discussion on the 28 Years franchise somehow leads to a talk about The Bride.
We spend a good amount of time talking about Find Your Friends. About 98% of it is spent on the film’s writing. It does not take long to realize this is not a good thing. There have been plenty of movies that have led to a discussion about the writing. There has been nothing like this one.
The movie clearly deals with sensitive subjects. But it does it in a way that downplays the circumstances, the victim, and its heady themes. It is so bad that we have to constantly reiterate how we are not shitty men. (Who knows? Maybe we are. But that’s a different matter.)
How bad was the writing for Find Your Friends? So much so that we were constantly filing in story beats to make it make sense to us. And even then, we were still frustrated by what we had seen. This movie had all the ingredients to tell a powerful story about how women are treated. It instead was content to erratically work towards its admittedly wild finale.
Adventures in Movies! is a part of the Morbidly Beautiful Podcast Network. Morbidly Beautiful is your one stop shop for all your horror needs. From the latest news and reviews to interviews and old favorites, it can be found at Morbidly Beautiful.
Adventures in Movies! is hosted by Nathaniel and Blake. You can find Nathaniel on Instagram at nathaninpoortaste. Blake can be found on Twitter @foureyedhorror and on Instagram at foureyedhorror. You can reach us personally or on Twitter @AdventuresinMo1.
Music in the background from https://www.FesliyanStudios.com
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Adventures in Movies! is hosted by Nathaniel and Blake. You can find Nathaniel on Instagram at nathaninpoortaste. Blake can be found on Twitter @foureyedhorror and on Instagram at foureyedhorror.
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